released 3/22/2024
In light of Passiontide and Holy Week, Ken Myers revisits three interviews from the year 2000, which was the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. These interviews — with Calvin Stapert, Robin Leaver, and Christoph Wolff — provide an illustrative background for listeners to appreciate Bach’s theological attentiveness as well as his scholarly genius. Stapert (author of My Only Comfort: Death, Deliverance and Discipleship in the Music of Bach) describes Bach’s cantatas as “musical sermons.” Bach’s choral music, Leaver (author of the booklet J. S. Bach as Preacher: His Passions and Music for Worship) reminds listeners, was liturgical in intent, written to help congregations grow in devotion. And Wolff (author of Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician) suggests that Bach was a kind of “musical scientist”; he believed that music is a way of knowing and imitating the complex order of Creation.
36 minutes
PREVIEW
The player for the full version of this Feature is only available to current members. If you have an active membership, log in here. If you’d like to become a member — with access to all our audio programs — sign up here.
Related reading and listening
- The physical beauty of music — Music can be likened to a cathedral, says professional guitarist Gordon Kreplin, when it creates through silence and sound a meditative space into which one may enter and encounter God. (14 minutes)
- Congregational singing in Martin Luther’s time — FROM VOL. 137 Liturgical scholar Robin Leaver clarifies some misconceptions about Martin Luther’s commitment to congregational singing. (10 minutes)
- Creation as beauty and gift — FROM VOL. 67 David Bentley Hart describes how the Christian understanding of Creation as beauty and gift, as the outward expression of the delight the Trinity has in itself, reveals a vision of reality different from the pagan or fatalist vision of reality. (12 minutes)
- Genealogy of a work of praise — For Good Friday, Ken Myers tells the history of the text and music behind the popular hymn, “O Sacred Head, now wounded.” (27 minutes)
- Music that demands an existential commitment — Jaroslav Pelikan on the radical differences between Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Passions
- The dance of law and freedom — Calvin Stapert on the experience of joyous order in Bach’s music
- The infinity of beauty in Bach — David Bentley Hart on why Johann Sebastian Bach is the greatest of Christian theologians
- Pierced feet, wounded side, bloodied head — As Passiontide begins (the coming Sunday), Ken Myers introduces listeners to Membra Jesu Nostri, an hour-long cycle of seven cantatas written about 1680 by Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707). (16 minutes)
- The music and the notes are precious — Ken Myers encourages an understanding of the Church as a particular culture that should be nourished and sustained, and then describes the history of an Advent hymn written by St. Ambrose. (27 minutes)
- Stabat Mater dolorosa — Ken Myers offers some thoughts on the aesthetics of sympathy, and introduces some of the musical settings of the remarkable medieval poem known as “Stabat Mater dolorosa.” (23 minutes)
- Passions before Bach — In preparation for Holy Week, Ken Myers presents a whirlwind music history lesson with musical examples from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. (22 minutes)
- Bach’s Passions in context — Calvin Stapert on the evolution of an ancient musical-liturgical tradition
- Meditative music for Passiontide — At the start of Passiontide, Ken Myers introduces listeners to works by the Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus which highlight the theme of lamentation. (18 minutes)
- Origins and attributes of Handel’s Messiah — Calvin Stapert explains the origins and character of Handel’s Messiah and describes the work as a Christocentric theological response to the nascent deism in the society and church in Handel’s time. (19 minutes)
- Music for Good Friday — A conversation with Marcus Rathey and Michael Marissen about Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion. (12 minutes)
- J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion — Divine glory and human suffering
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 137 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Gilbert Meilaender, James L. Nolan, Joel Salatin, Michael Di Fuccia, Robin Leaver, and Michael Marissen
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 135 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Bob Cutillo, Hans Boersma, Dana Gioia, Matthew Levering, Bruce Gordon, and Markus Rathey
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 127 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Christopher Shannon, Kevin Vanhoozer, Oliver O’Donovan, Rebecca DeYoung, Thomas Forrest Kelly, and Calvin Stapert
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 120 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Douglas Rushkoff, Phillip Thompson, Jonathan Wilson, James Bratt, D. C. Schindler, and Paul Elie
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 107 — FEATURED GUESTS: Victor Lee Austin, Ellen T. Charry, Anthony Esolen, Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Allen Verhey, and Calvin Stapert
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 88 — FEATURED GUESTS: Diana Pavlov Glyer, Michael J. Lewis, Steve Talbott, Darryl Tippens, Everett Ferguson, Alexander Lingas, and Calvin Stapert
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 80 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stephen A. McKnight, Tim Morris, Don Petcher, Vigen Guroian, Paul Valliere, and Calvin Stapert
