[lbo-talk] Jobs in religion, was Marxism and Religion

[Tim Francis-Wright]

andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> 95% is probably too way high. Maybe 60%. Bach worked
> 10 years as concertmaster in the Weimar court and
> another five or six at Coethen composing largely
> secular music like The Well Tempered Klavier. He spent
> the last 25 or so years of his life composing mainly
> religious music as the concert master at Leipzig. I
> don't think there is any reason to doubt that Bach was
> sincerely religious, but not a fanatic, just religious
> the way most educated people were in the first half of
> the 18th century. It sort of came with the territory,
> part of the wallpaper.

60% sounds about right.  While the vast majority of Bach's
vocal and organ works were religious in nature, his other
works for keyboards or for other instruments were almost
all secular pieces.

And even during his time at Leipzig, Bach wrote some of
his best secular works (Goldberg Variations, Art of the
Fugue, Musical Offering).

By the time Beethoven came around, the political economy
of composing was much different.  For one thing, it was
much easier for virtuosi to make money from their craft,
primarily by giving concerts in large halls.

--tim francis-wright