Where Bach was jailed, Asians pay homage
Michael E. Lawrence, writing for the New Liturgical Movement , has discovered this gem. Uwe Siemon-Netto, in residence at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis has a beautiful piece from the January, 2008 issue of the Asian Times . It is on the throng of Asians who will visit Weimar, Germany to see where Bach composed most of his organ works and was jailed. Here is a snippet from this marvelous essay: The influx of Asians to Bach sites in Germany has been perplexing musicologists and theologians alike for decades now. They come in droves not only as tourists but also as serious students of music. Of the 850 students at Germany’s oldest state conservatory, the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in Leipzig, 148 are Asians, chiefly South Koreans and Japanese, according to Ute Fries, dean of students. Bach was musical director of Leipzig’s Thomaskirche for the last 27 years of his life and wrote most of his cantatas there. Leipzig’s late “superintendent” (regiona...