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From Persian New Year: Happy Nowruz –– to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Birthday 

Examples of my favorite music are Persian classical music and Bach’s music. And of course, much more – the Blues, folk traditions from all over the world, etc. etc… All music is deep expression of soul, joy and exuberance, sorrow and longing, strength and lament, reverence and devotion. And that is what I love so much: music takes devotion, whether as listener or as musician. It invites us into the inner chapel of our human condition. It encompasses all human experience and knows no boundaries, goes beyond language and nationality, speaks across times, ethnic roots and territories. Music asks us to open our ears, heart, skin and senses, so we can vibrate with its messages…. For me it encompasses the whole range from earthly delight to divine transcendence. This Monday, I am breathing in and out celebration & meaning in order to lift my spirits. Watering the garden the birds all around me agree. 

 

March 21st marks the Persian New Year. It is the biggest holiday for Iranians, wherever the diaspora is living, all over the world. Offerings and altars are made, special foods are eaten, rituals performed, and it all has meaning. As I am writing this, my Iranian neighbors Ladan & John are responding to my earlier Happy Nowruz text, sending me these pictures: 

Melody and Moneli with the New Year Table 

And today is also Bach’s official birthday. He was born in 1685, three-hundred-thirty-seven years ago. Without Bach’s music my young parents would not have survived spiritually the postwar years of devastation, shell shock, hunger, displacement, and poverty. My father was an atheist, but they both went to hear Bach music for free, played at the St. Markuskirche in München, walking distance from where they lived in Schwabing, the artist quarter. One does not have to be religious to be moved by Bach’s music, especially in sacred spaces and with good musicians. The organist and cantor of St. Mark’s Church (Markuskirche) was Karl Richter who arrived from Leipzig in 1951. He’d been cantor and organist at the Thomaskirche where Bach himself was appointed as Thomaskantor more than two hundred years earlier. Richter ended up becoming world famous. Many renown singers participated in his presentations. 

 

Whenever my parents spoke about those performances in the early fifties, including later ones in concert halls – Bach’s cantatas, masses, passions, oratorios, and organ music, conducted by Karl Richter, with his Munich Bach Choir & Bach Orchestra, and the splendid soloists, the long-lasting standing ovations – I would get goosebumps as a kid. The music helped heal their spirit. And I, too, feel music’s sacred movement in my bones, especially now when war is back in Europe and a deep old ache is present.



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