Well, Bach is back. And he's facing Richard Hooker in today's Saintly Sixteen matchup. Where but Lent Madness will you find such deliciously absurd pairings?

Yesterday, Bertha of Kent trounced Edmund 82% to 18% to advance to the Elate Eight.

Also yesterday, Tim and Scott released another rousing episode of Monday Madness. You've surely already seen it, but you can watch it here.

And finally, here's your occasional reminder that you can always visit the Brackets tab to find the write-ups from earlier rounds and refresh your voting memory. Just scroll down and right underneath the updated bracket, you'll find links to all the earlier matchups.

Time to vote!

Johann Sebastian Bach

In his novel Diary of a Bad Year, J.M Coetzee writes: “The best proof we have that life is good, and therefore that there may perhaps be a God after all, who has our welfare at heart, is that to each of us, on the day we are born, comes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. It comes as a gift, unearned, unmerited, for free.”

People love Bach. Mention his name, and some music lovers close their eyes or sigh with pleasure. The Princesse de Polignac, who presided over an influential musical salon in 1920’s Paris, wrote that a Bach chorale “reconstitutes the past, and proves to us that we have a reason for living on this rock: to live in the beautiful kingdom of sounds.” Many have found their life’s inspiration – even obsession! – in Bach’s work, but those unfamiliar with him may find themselves asking…what’s the big deal?

Bach’s catalog was not merely prolific or virtuosic, but strikingly bold. Take the opening of his St John Passion: immediately you’re confronted with a sonic churn; swirling violins and piercing oboes and surprising dissonance. As the music intensifies, the chorus slices through the wall of sound – “HERR!” Bach chose to begin with the first verse of Psalm 8, “Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” Arias and recitatives focus on smaller details of the Passion narrative; Christ’s fragile body, the crowd’s powerful anger, the bitterness of tears. But Bach wanted to capture the cosmic scope of John’s Gospel; Divinity stretched out over the chaos and terror of Golgotha like bright sunlight piercing through darkening storm clouds. Music historian and New Yorker writer Alex Ross reports that the congregation at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig did not seem to appreciate his theological vision (too quirky!) Bach removed “Her, unser Herrscher" from the score after the work’s premiere, adding it back in only near the end of his life. 

Bach was a jumble of contradictions and surprises. While other musicians traveled the continent, Bach never ventured farther than 200 miles from his hometown. He was a devoted family man and famously prickly and difficult. He picked liturgical fights and clashed repeatedly with his superiors. He was also a devoted teacher, and not just of music; in his role as Cantor at the Thomasschule, Bach was responsible for teaching Catechism. In his well-worn and heavily annotated study bible, he made extensive notes and markings in the passages that dealt with vocation, including this one: “As far as your person is concerned, you must not get angry with anyone...But, where your vocation requires it, there you must get angry.” 

Conductor and Bach biographer John Eliot Gardiner writes that “Bach the musician is an unfathomable genius; Bach the man is all too obviously flawed, disappointingly ordinary and in many ways still invisible to us.” Flawed, ordinary, and faithful–Bach makes an excellent Lenten companion. Ross writes that “Bach does not console; he commiserates.” “Herr, unser Herrscher” concludes with just that spirit of companionship: Show us through your passion, that you the true son of God, at all times, even in the most lowly state, are glorified.

— Eva Suarez

Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker, the theologian who established the Anglican approach to governance, doctrine, and theology, lived in England in the late 16th century. He is best known for the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity—which he planned to be an 8 volume work, but died after completing only 5 volumes.

He wrote the books as his contribution to what is known as the Admonition Controversy. Two Puritans, in 1572, had printed a pamphlet which admonished Elizabeth I to “restore the purity of New Testament worship within the realm.’ Clerics of various stripes responded with their own pamphlets, sermons, and books, in the Renaissance version of an extremely slow Twitter war, and Hooker decided to join the fray with 8 entire books.

He is described by his biographer (Izack Walton) as being an old soul: “His Complexion (if we may guess by him at the age of Forty) was Sanguine, with a mixture of Choler; and yet his Motion was slow even in his Youth, and so was his Speech, never expressing an Earnestness in either of them, but an humble Gravity suitable to the Aged.”

Hooker’s benefactor while in London was the family of John Churchman, the owner of the house where he lived. According to Walton, Hooker arrived in London the evening before his first Sunday of preaching, sniffling and sneezing, bedraggled and soaked to the skin, having walked for two days in the rain. Only the kind ministrations of Mrs. Churchman and her most excellent soup render him able to preach his first dazzling sermon.

That first sermon that Richard Hooker gave at the Temple in London was one where he argued strenuously that, if God saved us entirely through grace, and not our own merit or worthiness, then should not God also save Roman Catholics too, if God so desired? “Surely I must confess, that if it be an Error to think that God may be merciful to save men even when they err; my greatest comfort is my error: were it not for the love I bear to this error: I would never wish to speak or to live.”

Scholars have wondered why Hooker, after his success as Master of the Temple and with the early volumes of Lawes, did not seek an episcopate, but it seems that Richard loved the quiet life of reading and study more than he did the glare of the spotlight. Several times, he wrote his bishop asking for a quieter placement, where he could study as he did in college. “I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place; and indeed, God and Nature did not intend me for Contentions, but for Study and quietness.”

He died peacefully at his vicarage at Borne, in 1600.

— Megan Castellan

Richard Hooker by Alfred Drury, R.A. (1889-1926). 19076.