Prodigious composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, not only walked 200 miles just to hear Buxtehude play the violin, but composed some of the most incredible concertos, partitas, sonatas, and suites ever experienced.  In fact, Bach wrote so much music that his second wife used some of it to make curlers and the Lutheran Church wrapped sandwiches with Bach’s music.  At the end of every single piece of music, he inscribed “For God Alone the Glory.”

Bach’s written compositions took ten editors over 50 years to publish.  Felix Mendelssohn is greatly responsible for the revival of Bach’s music with Mendelssohn’s premier of St. Matthew’s Passion.  J.S. Bach was once challenged by a French musician named Marchant to a harpsichord contest – when all of the ladies and gentlemen of the court gathered to hear the contest, they were informed that Marchant was spooked and slipped out the back door.  Not to disappoint the audience, Bach sat down and improvised the Chromatic Fantasy.

NASA launched a CD sampling the Earth’s music in the hope that an extraterrestrial nation would discover it. Recordings by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elvis & The Grateful Dead were included.  For a moment, NASA thought to burn a recording of one of J.S. Bach’s works on the CD but  at the last moment decided against it.  They thought it would be bragging.

One of my favorites is Partita #1 in B minor play masterfully by Yehudi Menuhin: