J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

attitudes were representative, or even very influential. The music of J. S. Bach
remained a minority taste for much of the nineteenth century. Most of his admirers—
many of them expatriate Germans—came from outside the musical establishment
(could Bach have appealed so much to Samuel Wesley otherwise?) Nevertheless, for
Wesley at least, what the Bach movement lacked in size and influence it made up in
passion and cohesion. At one point he proposed ‘the Formation of a junto among
ourselves, composed of Characters who sincerely and conscientiously admit and
adhere to the superior excellence of the great Musical High Priest; and who will bend
their Minds to a Zealous Promotion of advancing the Cause of Truth and Perfection’,
this ‘In order to ascertain who are verily and indeed “The Israelites in whom is no
guile”’; 78 a Davidsbund before Schumann, so to speak. As with the Davidsbund, it is
doubtful whether Wesley’s ‘junto’ had a very concrete existence outside its creator’s
mind. He goes on to compare the state of music in England to that of the Roman
church before the activities of Martin Luther, and advocates a form of musical
Reformation: ‘It is high Time that some Amendment should take place in the Republic
of Musick, and I know of no engine equally powerful with the immortal and
adamantine Pillars of Sebastian’s Harmony. I really think that our constant and
unremitted question to all who call themselves Friends to excellence should be “Who
is on our side—who?”’
The theological underpinning of Samuel Wesley’s rhetoric goes much further
than the occasional religious metaphor. Unlike that of many other nineteenth-century
musical theorists and critics it is in no way submerged, but fairly leaps off the page.
The first of his ‘Bach’ letters begins by referring to ‘Saint Sebastian’, his works ‘a
musical Bible’, speaking of ‘our Demi-God’, and Wesley’s own ‘profound admiration
(and Adoration if you like it as well)’—all this on the very first page.
78 Letter to Benjamin Jacob, 13 August 1808, Olleson, Letters, p.71.
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