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Johann Sebastian Bach : The Trivium Of Liberal Arts Education

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The goal of a liberal arts education is to create a well rounded individual who is able to deal with complexity, diversity and change. It is supposed to present students with a wider view of the world and gain intellectual ability rather than technical or professional skills. When the liberal arts education was created, it consisted of a quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy as well as a trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic. Johann Sebastian Bach quickly learned how to deal with diversity and change. Even at a young age he was suffering losses of family members as well as moving from place to place. A pattern that would unfortunately continue throughout his life. The trivium of liberal arts are the foundations for the upper division of the quadrivium, Bach Learned the trivium while attending school. Later on in life, he acquired and utilized and incorporated the earthly sciences in his pieces and arrangements that would later become legendary. Bach is the epitome of liberal arts education because he was able to deal with the complexities of change in his life, and incorporate the quadrivium into his musical pieces to innovate the musical world.

Bach face an immense amount of changes and challenges starting at an alarmingly early age. Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. Eisenach was famous for being the place where Martin Luther studied latin and later on translated the New Testament from Greek to German while hidden away in the Wartburg castle. This was

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