When Lloyd Carr resigned as UM's football coach, the UM Athletic Department looked for a replacement.  Louisiana State's Les Miles was asked, but he declined.  So did Rutger's Greg Schiano.  So, their third choice was Richard Rodriguez of West Virginia, and he accepted.  If UM's third choice was as good as Leipzig's third choice, UM will have a very successful football program.....

    You see, Leipzig's Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church) had a fine Music Director (Kantor), Johann Kuhnau who passed away.  There were six applicants for the vacancy.  First choice Georg Philipp Telemann, a very well-known composer, was eagerly courted, but he declined.  Second choice was Christoph Graupner, but he wasn't allowed to resign his position ("his team wouldn't release him"), and so the Thomaskirche had to settle for a third choice.  Fellow by the name of Johann Sebastian Bach, who had had some success in the lesser league, but Leipzig was Big Time, and his appointment, when he accepted, was hardly a cause for great enthusiasm. 

    As I related in Part 9 of my "Messiah Musings," Bach wasn't nearly as glamorous or popular as his contemporary G. F. Handel.  No one really sought him out.  A drudge, a journeyman, a hard worker, nothing more.  St. Thomas Church settled on him grudgingly: "since we can't get the best, we'll try to make do with a lesser man."  It was 1723.  For a meager salary, he was required to teach Latin and music, play the organ, train the choir composed of many boys who were little better than juvenile delinquents and not very talented, and he was responsible for hiring extra singers and instrumentalists.  And, by the way, he had to compose a cantata or motet, or whatever, for each and every Sunday service, to be sung by that choir.  Is it any wonder he developed a reputation of irritability and bad temper?  But he stayed on until his death in 1750.

   Again, as I related in my "Messiah Musings", when Handel died, he was interred with great ceremony in Westminster Abbey, complete with statue.  When Bach died, he was buried in an unmarked grave.  Decades later, he was given a proper burial.  So it was with his music.  If it hadn't been for the brilliant young Felix Mendelssohn, who, as a teenager, came upon a score of the St. Matthew Passion and then led a performance of it, the greatness of Bach's genius might have been lost to posterity.  Mendelssohn opened that door, and we are forever grateful to him. 

    All applicants for the position of Kantor were required to submit a new compostion.  Bach's composition was (are you ready for this?) The Passion According to St. John.  And that's what the Fort Street Chorale is about to tackle (yes, I just had to bring up football again!).  I'd hate to think what those dreadful boys did with those challenging choruses.  Fort Steeters, let's strap 'em up and win this one for good ol' J.S.B.!!!