on Von Schenk and Pelikan in the recent CTQ. Sauer's greatest line: "although Von Schenk was never accused of being humble." Most lovely thought in the article on Pelikan is that weeks before his death, he is still listening to Bach, to the B Minor Mass.
For Lutherans, music is part of our piety... so the fact that Pelikan died listening to Bach's B minor means in my mind, at least, that he died a Lutheran... at least on some level of his being. It was not aesthetic that moved him but the message of the mass -- thoroughly and deeply rooted in Lutheran faith and piety.
ReplyDeletePelikan was a longtime close friend of Godfrey and a frequent guest at die Abtei.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, we found nothing Lutheran about the H-moll Messe at all but rather Catholic -- a bittersweet indication that the mature Bach as his days were drawing to a close sensed the incompleteness of Lutheranism, that Lutheranism is what happens when you try to be Catholic without being Catholic, by taking his 1733 Dresden "Lutheran Mass" (Kyrie and Gloria only) and expanding it into a full Mass art-form (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei).
Perhaps Pelikan saw it the same, with the EO though as the purer form of the apostolic faith.
Good thing Back did not live in our times, or that our times have no Bach, otherwise, the Gloria being one of several options for that part of the ordinary nach Vatican II, he might not have gotten past whether to use the Gloria, This Is The Feast, or something else, even in a "Lutheran Mass"!