Bach lived and worked in a part of the world where, as James R. Gaines put it, “Luther was a great deal more compelling than gravity.” Bach’s childhood home was busy and crowded. In addition to seven siblings, there were two orphaned cousins, some of Ambrosius’s apprentices, and other relatives from time to time. The environment was saturated with music. Bach probably studied violin with his father and perhaps got his initial organ training from his uncle Johann Christoph, who was the town and court