From February through April, I was reading John Eliot Gardiner's
Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. In Chapter 5: The Mechanics of Faith, Gardiner briefly mentions how Bach inserted crosses via the shape of the notes in his music.
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| From Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven |
In church to-day, I realized that these musical crosses are also in some of the music in the Divine Service, Setting Three (from the
Lutheran Service Book). They may be in some of the other settings and liturgies too, but these are the two I noticed:
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| In the Sanctus |
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| In the Nunc Dimittis |
This might just be a coincidence, but I still think it's really interesting. Especially considering that I've probably sung these pieces dozens if not hundreds of times, and it was only now, after reading Gardiner's book, that I found the sign of the cross in them.
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