Gareth Moore loved music, and he loved, in particular, the music of J. S. Bach. He owned an extensive collection of Bach recordings and could quote from the choral works, especially the chorales, from memory. One year, as I recall, he devoted himself to learning to play the Goldberg Variations on the piano. Gareth and I became acquainted through the Oxford Bach Choir, where our singing together grew into a long friendship whose conversational mainstays were music, theology and philosophy. One of the special joys of our friendship over the years was a series of conversations about the theology and tonal allegory of Bach’s great renderings of Christ’s Passion—the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion.
Bach’s Passions were the subject of several lecture series Gareth had given in his later years, and though at least one of the series of lectures (delivered in French!) was tape-recorded, it is our loss that Gareth did not collect more systematically his many insights into Bach’s musical theology. I was fortunate, however, to participate with Gareth in several colloquia on both Passions, occasions which allowed us both to explore in an intelligent though not strictly academic setting the meditative dynamic of Bach’s work. I am indebted to Gareth for much of what I know about Bach, as for so many other things human and divine. And however deficient my own appreciation of Bach may be, it is the product of a love which Gareth shared so generously in his gentle and penetrating conversation.