Bach the Erotomaniac

Having lived in the world of music, I have often heard people speak and read about Johann Sebastian Bach. I have therefore frequently found his “spirituality” praised. This kind of praise has always left me rather puzzled.

It is well known that Johann Sebastian fathered twenty children with his two wives: Maria Barbara Bach (his cousin in the second degree) and Anna Magdalena Wilcke. I have heard many times people say that having so many children was common at the time, but that is simply not true. It was common to have three, four, five, six, or even seven … but twenty was an exaggeration, even in the eighteenth century!

What we do not know is how many miscarriages those two poor women had to endure between one birth and the next (considering what medicine was like then, and how there were no proper means of prenatal care).

In short, it seems evident that Johann Sebastian felt an uncontrollable urge to keep his prick constantly active. To believe that such a man was filled with sublime spirituality is therefore hard for me to accept. On the contrary, I would say he was quite an erotomaniac. Of course, that does not mean his music is not truly beautiful; nor does it mean that posterity (that is, us) is wrong to find in his art what his contemporaries did not. Every age projects onto the art of the past a “meaning” that fits its own aesthetic—and not that of previous generations.