More or less all people has if only a slight concern in music or culture know that Johann Sebastian Bach is the musician and composer of all times, master for the great, consolation for the small – the list of epic attributives may go on and on. But why is that? This is hard to answer, the phenomenon covered by the four letters also denoting musical notes, outgrow the life-work itself. It is a clan we discuss here, dozens of predecessors and progenies, offspring of blood and “spirit”.

In our series of composers, we have thus arrived at the great origin, the saint of the saints, the giant who in his slippers and wig was an totally common, inconsiderable artisan. The miracle is in the notes, the everlasting flow of melodies, and – irrespective of faith and religion – the breath of the Holy Spirit that ignites life into this unexplainable, extraterrestrial music centuries after.