Michael Marissen
The Significance of Religion in the Life and Works of J.S. Bach
Monday, March 21, 2022 at 7:00 PM EST on Zoom
The presentation will focus on an evidence-based understanding of the person and music of J.S. Bach. Leading writers have tended to present Bach as a quasi-Freudian genius, a quasi-scientific scholar, a quasi-pantheistic aesthete, or as a great artist seeking special creative stimuli to compose individual works. With better knowledge of historical materials and of the Bach repertory, however, these views come to look like impositions of a modern mindset onto a devoted premodern Lutheran composer of Lutheran music.
Michael Marissen, a freelance lecturer and writer based in New York City, is Daniel Underhill Professor Emeritus of Music at Swarthmore College. His publications include The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (Princeton), Lutheranism, anti-Judaism, and Bach’s St. John Passion (Oxford), Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah (Yale), Bach & God (Oxford), and essays in Harvard Theological Review, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times.