Thirsting for Art

I was reading Ann Althouse this morning, who often has interesting takes on the issues of the day and found this post: Thrusting for faith. She identified the word "thrusting" as a misreading of the original which was "thirsting" making rather more sense! But what I found interesting as the rest of the quote:

Why are so many, especially so many young people, drawn to this ideology? It’s not because they are dumb. Or because they are snowflakes....All of this has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life—the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt. An epidemic of loneliness. A crisis of meaning....

“I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thrusting for faith.” That was Arthur Koestler writing in 1949 about his love affair with Communism. The same might be said of this new revolutionary faith. And like other religions at their inception, this one has lit on fire the souls of true believers, eager to burn down anything or anyone that stands in its way....

Back in 1970 I was something of a lost soul. I grew up without religion. My parents were basically atheists though out of a sense of parental duty they sent me--briefly--to Sunday School until I rebelled and occasionally I went to church with my grandmother who was religious. None of that took! With the exception of one teacher I found school uninspiring. My mother was an old-time fiddler, but that didn't fire me up. I did get captivated by rock and blues music and played in a band for my high school years. But that also proved insufficient. Politics? For those of us who grew to maturity in the 60s politics was a pretty weak reed. My father's suggestion that I go to work in a bank I regarded with sheer horror. So I was wandering from one bad job to another: waiter, tree-planter, clam-digger, salal-gatherer and in between sleeping in until noon. Then I discovered classical music and Bach in particular. A friend took a picture of me I wish I still had. I am leaning out of the living room window cradling in my arm a box containing three vinyl records of the Bach Mass in B minor--sort of my version of Moses coming down from the mount with the tablet of the 10 commandments. I lost that copy years ago, but the same performance with the same cover (roughly) is in a DGG Bach Masterworks box on my shelf:

Now classical music wasn't the only thing that rescued me from the Slough of Despond, a chance remark by a friend helped. He had gone off to university, something I had not even considered, and was back for the holidays. We spent a nice evening chatting which included some discussion of ukiyo-e, the Japanese art of woodcut prints which I had recently discovered. As he left at the end of the evening he casually remarked "you really are university material." And next year I did indeed go to university which was the other important turning point in my life. I think the two things that rescued me from an aimless life were first of all Bach and classical music and second of all a decent university library in which I reveled in reading things like Copleston's History of Philosophy and Dante's Divine Comedy.

I think Bach rescued Dmitri Shostakovich as well when he was judge at a Bach competition in Leipzig in 1950, the dark days of the end of Stalin's reign and the 200th anniversary of Bach's death. Shostakovich wrote his own set of preludes and fugues after Bach on his return to the Soviet Union. I am about to put up a post reviewing Igor Levit's new recording.

In any case, I think that art, music in particular and Bach most especially, makes a better than most substitute for religion. At least, it worked out well for me. Here is the Kyrie from the Bach B minor Mass in the Karl Richter recording: