I had reasonable suspicion this class would emphasize Bach and Luther’s musical ideology. Once completed, I will have made three podcasts that all relate to Bach’s own music either directly or indirectly.

Within the organ community, we tend to worship Johann Sebastian Bach as some theologians worship Martin Luther. Of course, this is only because we’re fascinated by by his skills as a composer and church musician. In this course, I was excited to be able to take time in a course to study Bach’s work in a more intensive context. In my own personal study for my papers, I was challenged by the research process.The podcast medium has been frustrating when things have gone wrong, but rewarding and exciting when things have gone right. The biggest challenge this week will be refining my third paper topic since I’ve been talking about Bach related works this entire semester.

I enjoyed the in-class discussions we had, especially the one concerning the election. I wasn’t expecting this course to end up feeling like an open forum, and that was really fun to observe and be a part of.

I think it would have been fascinating to spend a few more days focusing on other religions’ relationships with music. I understand that this class looked forward to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, but once we got into a rhythm, it seemed to mature into a class where we mainly focused on music we already felt comfortable with. Of course, this is not to detract from the meaningful topics we did cover. There’s only so much one could fit in a semester.

All in all, I really appreciated the open research possibilities this class gave. This class has been incredibly challenging, and being able to choose my own topics that interested me made the challenge that much more meaningful. I’m a 19 year old organ performance major, so I’ll be there first to say that I’m not a profound musicologist; however, this class gave me practice time to creatively dive into the research process and explore the topics that I care about.