Robert Shaw

Bach Among the Theologians

Arts & Literature

“"Jaroslav Pelikan, a commanding and perceptive historian of Christian institutions and thinking, reveals to us first of all Bach's own intellective, philosophical, and theological environment. Second, through an affectionate and wide-ranging familiarity with his works, he shows us the influence upon Bach's basic and pervasive Lutheran orthodoxy of the strong contemporary currents of a 'romanticizing' Pietism and a 'rationalizing' Enlightenment. He does this with fluency, good humor, and a winning absence of missionary zeal. To the performing musician and inadvertent 'Protestant' he presents information which is pertinent, provocative -- and scarcely otherwise obtainable.”