Almost 270 (July 28) years after his death, Bach’s music is still relevant. It moves us with its spiritual and emotional rhetoric. I would like to quote John Eliot Gardiner from his book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven.
“Many people remember that when in 1977 the Voyager spacecraft was launched, opinions were canvassed as to what artefacts would be most appropriate to leave in outer space as a signal of man’s cultural achievements on earth. The American astronomer Carl Sagan proposed that ‘if we are to convey something of what humans are about then music has to be a part of it.’ To Sagan’s request for suggestions, the eminent biologist Lewis Thomas answered, ‘I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.’ After a pause, he added, ‘But that would be boasting.”