Further Signs of the End

Mark For Everyone

MARK 13.14–27
Further Signs of the End...

...When Albert Schweitzer, the great medical missionary, theologian and musician of the early twentieth century, was a young man, he studied the organ in Paris under Charles Marie Widor. One day in 1899 Widor confessed to Schweitzer that he couldn’t understand Bach’s chorale preludes. The mood of the music kept shifting unpredictably.

‘Naturally,’ replied the young Schweitzer, ‘many things in the chorales must seem obscure to you, because they can only be explained by the texts that go with them.’

Schweitzer was right. Widor hadn’t known that the chorale preludes were designed to go with particular Lutheran hymns. Once you understood the texts behind the music, the music itself became clear...

Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright