Chapter 2 notes at the outset that there is a growing interest among biblical scholars in reception history that has spawned considerable theological attention to paintings, music and novels. This chapter is more personal in character, suggesting a number of artistic works where the author could not imagine, at the time, how they could have been done better – the first a complete performance by Yo Yo Ma of Bach’s Cello Suites at the 1995 Edinburgh Festival, the second an astonishing painting, the race-horse Whistlejacket by George Stubbs, featured in London’s National Gallery, and the third an ancient bronze sculpture, The Boxer at Rest, in Italy’s Museo Nazionale Romano. It also looks at a celebrated novel, The Bell, by Iris Murdoch that features a fictional sermon on Matt. 5.48 and raises significant issues about artistic and moral human perfection and the contentious distinction between Murdoch’s novels and her philosophical writings. The chapter also looks at the debates about the theological relevance of the arts variously by David Jasper, Paul Fiddes, David Brown and Jeremy Begbie today, with reference also to Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich of the previous generation.

It was an essential dimension of Bernstein’s personality to be actively involved in public engagement with (usually) classical music, bringing it to the masses with an accessible approach. This chapter explores how he used writing and broadcasting to communicate his own passion for music, as well as his insights as a composer, conductor and musician. Talking about ‘what makes music tick’ was as much at the heart of his mission as composition and performance were, and whether talking about Beethoven and Bach on primetime television in Omnibus or publishing his public lectures as bestselling books, Bernstein’s efforts in music appreciation helped to solidify his image as perhaps America’s most recognizable and popular classical musician.

This essay recounts the life and death of Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar (1696–1715) on the basis of previously unexamined archival documents. The Prince was a gifted musician who played a significant role in the careers of both Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann. Evidence presented here for the first time reveals that Telemann was a particularly important presence during the Prince’s final year. The bond they forged during this difficult time led the Prince to entrust Telemann with the publication of concertos he had composed as a youth but which were reconceived in light of his illness as a kind of musical testament.

Until the recent emergence of women composers from the shadows, the name Schumann coupled with that of Bach in the context of compositional influence would have been taken to indicate Robert Schumann. However, their marriage diaries reveal that Robert and Clara Schumann were involved in studying together the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, specifically the two books of his ‘Forty-Eight’ Preludes and Fugues. This chapter first explores some implications of the documentary evidence of Robert and Clara Schumann’s engagement with J. S. Bach’s music, as well as Clara Schumann’s perception of her compositional efforts. The case studies that follow consider the impact of Bach on Clara Schumann as a composer, focusing on her Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 16 (especially No. 1 in G minor) and her Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17 (with particular reference to the first movement and finale), and ranging from direct connections to broader compositional traits. Comparison with Robert Schumann’s fugal writing proves revealing with reference to the finale of his Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44, and the finale of Clara’s Piano Trio. Concluding remarks explore the nature of intertextuality, and the wider context of nineteenth-century Bach culture in relation to the work of women composers.

During his lifetime, Brahms accumulated a sizeable fortune. Although the early days were not without difficulties, his finances then accumulated steadily and virtually uninterruptedly. When he died in 1897, he left behind not only manuscripts of his own works, but also an extensive collection of other composers’ autograph manuscripts (including of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, etc.) as well as bonds worth over 181,000 Gulden.The size of the sum is evident when one compares the rent that he paid his landlady Coelestine Truxa between 1887 and 1897 for his three-room apartment in Vienna’s Karlsgasse, which amounted half-yearly to 347 Gulden and 25 Kreuzer.

Brahms grew up in the Hamburg‘Gängeviertel’, an area of workers, small-scale artisans and tradesmen in modest circumstances [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’]. Later on, when he could determine his own lifestyle, luxury still held no appeal.

Typically for many musicians of his day, Brahms was artistically active in multiple ways, not only as a composer but also as a performer, mainly as a pianist and conductor, piano teacher and director of musical societies. He never perceived himself as primarily a pianist; however, playing the piano – in private and public – was inseparable from his artistic and compositional identity. Schumann remarked on this as early as 9 November 1853 in a letter to the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, to whom he had recommended the young man: ‘his playing is truly a part of his music; I cannot recall hearing such unique sound effects’. Brahms received his initial piano training in Hamburg from Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel and then from Cossel’s teacher Eduard Marxsen, who had trained in Vienna and who also advised Brahms in composition (Brahms never attended a conservatory) [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’].