The Most Perfect Music Ever Written

My counterpoint teacher was a small, frail man who doted on his elderly mother and lived in the suburbs with a half dozen cats. He taught composition at Temple University in northern Philly. By the time I studied with him in the mid-‘70s he looked almost too much like what you would expect from a teacher of 17th century composition: a very gentle man, mostly bald and sporting overlarge glasses. But you could also see how much he loved the music he taught.

As a young man he had served in the Army during WWII. By the end of the war he was stationed in Berlin and on the day that fighting ended in Europe, he suddenly disappeared. He was AWOL for several days. After he re-emerged he explained that he had traveled behind what would be called the iron curtain to visit the grave of Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig. My professor had said that the choral refrain from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion ‘Wahrlich, dieser ist Gottes Sohn gewesen.’ or ‘Truly this was the son of God.’ was the most perfect music ever written.

And I think he was right.