Christian feast day: Johann Sebastian Bach, Heinrich Schütz, George Frederick Handel (Lutheran commemoration)

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the cello suites and sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival, he has been widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

Heinrich Schütz was a German early Baroque composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and one of the most important composers of the 17th century. He is credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany and continuing its evolution from the Renaissance into the early Baroque. Most of his surviving music was written for the Lutheran church, primarily for the Electoral Chapel in Dresden. He wrote what is traditionally considered the first German opera, Dafne, performed at Torgau in 1627, the music of which has since been lost, along with nearly all of his ceremonial and theatrical scores. Schütz was a prolific composer, with more than 500 surviving works.

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concerti.

The Lutheran Church has, from the time of the Reformation, continued the remembrance of saints. The theological basis for this remembrance is understood as being connected to the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews 12:1. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession states that the remembrance of the saints has three parts: thanksgiving to God, the strengthening our faith, and the imitation of the saints' holy living.