Summer 1993

Volume VIII, Number 2

In This Issue

Bach’s Career as a Church Musician: Early Years by Don O. Franklin

My purpose, in this series of articles, is to examine Bach’s relationship to Pietism in light of the new research that has been carried out in theological circles over the past two decades. Many church historians, including Peter Erb, Ernest Stoeffler, and Dale Brown, no longer describe Pietism as a separatist movement that sprang to life at the end of the seventeenth century and quickly spread throughout northern Europe, eventually reaching America. Rather, they argue, it needs to be seen as the outgrowth of a reform movement that began shortly after the Reformation and continued well into the nineteenth century. In response to this more comprehensive — some call it revisionist — view of Pietism, music historians have begun to reevaluate and reinterpret the movement’s influence on church music. In the case of J. S. Bach (1685-1750), a reappraisal is important not only because of his stature as a composer, but also because he was active as a church musician during the period in which Pietism reached its peak in Germany.