The Saturday Evening Post May 14 1960 Page 28/29

The Face of America

Magnificent Music 

Photographs by Larry Fried

Two centuries after his death, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is still acclaimed for his genius as a composer of church music. A modern critic has said, "He could force the most complex polyphony into the service of the profoundest emotional expression." In Bach's view, "The sole purpose of music is to glorify God." His feelings were shared by devout and musical Moravians who, in 1741, founded the city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In 1898 the townspeople organized a Bach Choir which gains prestige with every passing year.

There are 185 choristers now, Bethlehem housewives, students, executives and steel-mill workers, who rehearse nine months in the year. Now, in the second and third weekends of May, they are presenting the fifty-third Bach Festival, backed by a fifty-piece orchestra. Once again devotees swarm over the Lehigh University campus, jamming chapel pews (below). Others, overflowing the lawn, listen through opened windows to cantata, motet, and the immortal Mass in B Minor. Some follow the printed scores, bemused by a splendor of sound, Bach's offering in nomine Jesu.