Bach believed his music dealt with God. For an athiest this is of course not possible objectively. But Spinoza believed that God and the structure of reality were the same thing - by analysing God one was therefore analysing the structure of reality. There is of course no evidence (I know of) that Bach was influenced by Spinoza - although Spinozist concepts became highly influential in late 18th century Germany, particularly via Goethe, and therefore must have been 'in the air' of Germany in this period. Bach's development of the implications of musical elements is simultaneously, in that Spinozist sense, an analysis of the nature of God and of the structure of reality.
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