The evangelism of J.S. Bach

In my last en article, we thought about what we could learn about J.S. Bach’s deeply Christian answer to the question “Who is music for?”

This month, I want to follow this up by seeing what Bach can teach us about evangelism, through an encounter he had with Prussian King Frederick the Great in 1747, three years before Bach died.

Frederick was the ultimate Enlightenment monarch: secular, modernising, excelling not only in war, but also in music and philosophy. He evidently acknowledged Bach as a master musician, wanting his opinion on the recently invented fortepiano. However, Bach would also have stood as an embodiment of everything Frederick was trying to overturn: an old-fashioned composer with old-fashioned Lutheran beliefs writing old-fashioned music. Bach’s invitation to the palace was not so much the King showing respect to a master, but for the King to show the old being overshadowed and surpassed by the new.