Bach, Joy of Man's Desiring

Abstract

The resonance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, although it may seem a truism, exceeds the limits of the Baroque and reaches up to the present day, in the expression of his more than a thousand pieces, verging on perfection. This article aims to argue the thesis that the musical work of the German composer can be seen as a universal paradigm of the colossal and the sacred, aesthetic attributes that would make his legacy one of the moments of greatest epiphany in the history of music. With a methodological and theoretical nod to Derrida, the paper is carried out through a philosophical deconstruction, showing as its main result that The Well-Tempered Clavier and the chorale Jesus bleibet meine Freude [Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring], would be, in effect, iconic expressions of the colossal and the sacred, respectively. The way of approaching the thesis is ascribed, from the beginning, to a rather orthodox perspective, that is, recognizing that the possible colossal or the possible sacred in Bach’s work can only be truly corroborated through an interpretation attached to the composer’s genuine spirit, and this spirit only lives in the original score of each piece.