It’s fascinating to me that if you type into Google “Why is J.S. Bach so special as a composer?” the answers that come up are pretty much endless.  Different people, from laymen to concert pianists and musicologists all cite very legitimate reasons for his being considered so brilliant, and it would be very difficult to disprove anything that is written. What’s more, the answers come in everything from short sentences to expansive YouTube videos.

While some will point to the fact that he was a master of counterpoint, and others write about the ways in which he perfected musical forms like the fugue, all while also creating harmonic innovations that became fundamental in all of Western music, and all with a mathematical precision, for me the answer—today’s Lightbulb Moment—is that Bach used his great intellect and astonishing musical abilities to do one truly great thing—to compose from his soul.

One of the things I am discovering more and more as I get older is that music at its best is a channel for communicating through our instruments the strongest and most passionate feelings that exist in our hearts, minds and souls.  Whether it a piano, a voice, a violin, or a guitar, there are within all of us deep-seated feelings of happiness, sorrow, joy, sadness, and everything in between that achieve their greatest magnitude through music. Bach is considered one of the greatest composers of all time because he managed with everything he wrote to convey a deep sense of spirituality through an order and symmetry of notes and phrases, measures and movements that continue today to speak to the heart of all we are as human beings.

Mr. Cosmo and Mr. Alexander have often said that as musicians we have been given great gifts which we must use to bridge the gap between our humanity and divinity.  I think about this a lot as I pursue my own career, and use this as a kind of goal in everything I play.

We know Bach was a deeply religious man. A lifelong Lutheran who was greatly influenced by the theologian Martin Luther.  I have to believe that with every note Bach wrote he was trying to make that gap between his humanity and his divinity smaller and smaller. 

 How else can any of us explain such heavenly music?