The motivation for this book was not to write a musicological essay. I never wanted that. Nor a biography of the great Johann Sebastian Bach. After all, his work has been studied with remarkable depth and erudition.

My initial motivation was a fierce and unfulfilled need for comprehensive knowledge, stemming from my youth. I had the deep conviction that Bach's work is indeed carved into the cracks of time, embedded in the history of human thought, yet it does not stand frozen at the ramparts of the past.

I wandered through pathways where I saw history, Platonic cosmology, religion, science intersecting with literature and art from a thousand angles. Perhaps I spent more than a thousand and one nights with brief escapes in time, unearthing unsolved puzzles. And suddenly I saw: A magical world.