Spiritual meaning of Orchestral Suite No. 3 BWV 1068: Aria Air

This song is about the air that is around you, it is telling you that things are going to be settled. If you ask for a sign and this song played it is about the fact that energy is going to be better, more loved and more focused going forward. It is relaxing, and if you have had unsettled peace around you this song is like a comfort and to let you know that things are going to settle down peacefully going forward.

I’m not going to go too much into the history of this piece of music. Johann Sebastian Bach (the guy that wrote this) was not famous. This is not how we now think of famous. He was a German 1700s church organist. Everything was about the church, it was the center of his life - where people went when they were scared or grieving or needed something more than themselves to hold onto. And Bach would sit inside that every week and make the sound out of pipes and keys.

He had twenty children, which is insane. Then his first wife died and he married again and continued to write music and work and lost people and kept going. There is something in the Air that carries that.  The song was not originally called Air on the G String. That came later when a violinist by the name of August Wilhelmj picked it up and played it all on one string  (the lowest) the G string - it makes it sound like something being said too slowly because time is of the essence.

Bach wrote it as a suite - a set of pieces that go together. He wrote it between 1717 and 1723, nobody knows when exactly. Dates got lost in life. 

Here is the part that interests me personally, from the standpoint of folklore and old spiritual stuff. A concept that appears in virtually every ancient tradition I have read about or practiced alongside is that there was a sound before humans made it. It is called the first sound in many indigenous traditions, the sound the world made when it awoke. According to Hindu tradition it was Om, the vibration that existed first. 

I think of that every time I hear the Air. It does not sound like it was composed. It looks like it was uncovered. Like Bach knowed something. Air operates outside ordinary time that much music does not. Three minutes forty five seconds 3:45 is the length of the son. 

Johann Bach died in 1750. He went blind toward the end. He wrote and dictated to his son-in-law because he couldn't see the page. His last work was a chorale called Before Thy Throne I Now Appear. He never finished it. It remained unfinished on the desk when he died, that is sad really. 

3:45 in Psalms say: Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame" (NIV). It is a powerful reminder that seeking God and fixing your gaze on Him brings joy, peace, and confidence