“SCHIEBEN, MARIA, SCHIEBEN!” yelled the midwife to poor Maria Bach 337 years ago today.
It’s hard to believe that Johann Sebastian Bach is human. Listening to his music, I’d find it easier to believe him the offspring of a family of regulator clocks, or a vision of humanity dreamed up by a slumbering calculus textbook. Apparently, he was quite human, and had a reputation for being curmudgeonly and abrasive, even in his youth. Why, he once got in a serious altercation in a pub for mocking a bassoon player in front of the musician’s girlfriend. “Zis is vat you zound like” I imagine him saying, as he blew raspberries to enrage the unfortunate bassoonist.
His music even fell out of favor, but was fortunately revived by Felix Mendelssohn, who understood the genius in the staves. The world came to follow, and a dedicated librarian even leapt off a moving train as it was being strafed by WWII fighter planes, sheltering original manuscripts under his coat as he hid in the woods. His mission to save the Music and get the treasure out of Germany succeeded. (The secondary moral of the story is: when a librarian says hush, you’d best listen.)
I had a dream last night where Ethan Allan sat at alone at a nondescript table, ready to sign his children’s books. “Oh, I grew up with Grandfather Twilight, and I’m such a fan. Please keep up the good work” I told him in this dreamy conflation of an American hero and Barbara Helen Berger. The interpretation? There’s giants - pillars of society, all around us, doing their foundational work, and we have a choice to do the same.
Where would we be if Maria hadn’t “Schiebened” (my brief search for the German translation of Push.) If Johann hadn’t composed? If Felix hadn’t marveled and shared? If that librarian hadn’t dared?
Jordan Peterson posits the question: “Do you want to have a meaningful life? Do you really? Fine. Then everything you do matters.”
I’m jamming on this banger from 1720 as I get to work this morning. You know, the one the librarian saved. Crank it up, we’ve all got much to do. And Happy Birthday, Johann.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="
title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>