All that deep-seated religiosity
‘God pleasing music’
Turns my compass awry.
The pattern making
Is beautifully austere
Like Arabic tiling
But its gilded mathematics
Its secure serenity
Often fails to prick my senses.
The use and reuse of formulae
Lock step in its constructive logic
Denotes a masterful mind
But the Lutheran soul is steely
The incessant modulations
Ordained on sin and regret:
So much worship of a righteous god
Idolatrous, the words chanted
Over an over again
Until they have shaped and ebonised
Around the cabalistic threads
Of his kneeling orthodoxy.
He is Baroque
Mated with the filigree world
Of incessant curlicues
But unlike Handel
He does not seem graceful in secular words
Deaf to life’s operatic peaks and guttural conclusions
Too much weeping
Too much abasement:
Must I worship Bach?
Gar Jones: February 2017