Soli Deo Gloria

When I look at this scene, with that glorious cross of golden light projected by the rising sun, I cannot avoid a sense of awe, and the adventure of post-processing could only confirm and deepen that feeling. One could think that I could express some pride for such a work, but it would be inappropriate. Nature is the author of this wonder, and I am only an humble means to tidy it up a bit and offer its beauty to everyone would take the time to have a look. And it makes me wonder about how God sometimes reveals Himself in special moments - and we are sometimes lucky enough to be able to capture them with a camera.

At last I realized that I had this lesson by a great mentor, and I decided to tell it to those who, intrigued by the Latin title of the photo, will decide to continue reading.

 

"Soli Deo Gloria" is a Lutheran Latin motto meaning "Glory to God alone". Johann Sebastian Bach was a very proud man when dealing with wordly powers, but he used to put this motto at the end of his works, humbing himself in front of God. One day someone asked him how could he produce such an awful lot of great music - a provocative question, since Bach's work was on the old-fashioned side of the music of the time, to which Bach provocatively answered: "By working a lot". So he was stubborn and proud, but he was also aware that all his genius and hard work was not for his own glorification, but rather a way to induce people to perceive God, to sincerely glorifying Him. Bach made it all crystal clear in the Musical Offering BWV 1079 (1747), one of his last works and one of his very few published ones. The Musical Offering is definitely not a sacred music work, nonetheless it is a treatise about the real status of the supposed worldly glory of Man. It is formally dedicated to Frederick II the Great and is, basically, the devastating response to a humiliation that Bach had suffered at the hands of Frederick some months before. It was not simply a challenge between two quite different musical worlds, but a clash of two mutually incompatible worldviews. The Musical Offering is full of provocations and ironic remarks to the king - who, at our knowledge, was fully unresponsive to the challenge. The typical procedure is as this: while apparently celebrating the glory and greatness of the king through Latin mottoes like "Ascendenteque Modulatione ascendat Gloria Regis" (as the modulation rises, so may the King's glory), the actual music tells a vastly different story (the rising modulation, through subtle artifices, is actually perceived as descending). So, even if Frederick did not care a bit of Bach's powerful response (maybe he did not even open the luxury dedicatory copy Bach sent to him), we are left with a deep reflection about the glory and power of this world. A lesson still to be learned by the posterity.

 

I have obtained this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-1.3/0/+1.3 EV] by luminosity masks in the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot), then I added some final touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4. RAW files processed with Darktable 3

Done