Intro:
I visited Leipzig, Germany, the last two summers (’22 & ’23) for deeply personal pilgrimages to the annual Bachfest in Leipzig, Germany. Bachfest Leipzig is an 11-day celebration of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach performed by the most excellent musicians and ensembles from around the world. Bach’s genius drives Bachfests in a number of places, but this is THE Bachfest, the one in Leipzig where he spent the last 27 years of his life. I hope to make it there again in ’24. It’s become my own Burning Man.
Personal passions drove these visits to Leipzig, Germany, it’s true, but the impact did knock loose a couple of “work-related”—I mean—“professional” questions that bounced around my head while I made my rounds.
Bach composed the most magnificent examples of human art and intelligence one can imagine. If you know me you know how I feel about Bach’s music and how much I have been studying it over the years, so actually making it to Leipzig was Quite the Actual Big Deal.
Leipzig is a German cultural capital. Aside from Bach it has been the home or home base to composers Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara Schumann, Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, and many more. Wagner was born in Leipzig although they don’t seem to want to toot that horn much, probably because he was such an anti-Semite. But Frederich Schiller wrote his “Ode to Joy” in Leipzig, so there!
The Questions:
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H. Doug Matsuoka etcetera 