The idea is God’s. The leading role is Christ’s. The supporting cast is all of humanity. The text is Martin Luther’s. The music is Bach’s. The epistle is 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is […]
Individual Cantatas
J.S. Bach: Cantata 182, at Palm Sunday – Hope Returns to Rejoice
Cantata 182, composed in 1713, is for Palm Sunday, which is the first day of Holy Week and the Sunday before Easter, and commemorates Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As the day is associated in several ecclesiastical rites with the blessing and procession of palms, processional characteristics feature strongly in the music. The Gospel for […]
Caravaggio’s Dagger VI:VII:2
Cantata Text Booklet for the Holy Days 2 Hidden by Sight In paradise the late winter snows fallAs silences behind sacred chorales, theologyBreaking away, wanting self-containment,Wanting more than incomplete enclosure.It is the sound unheard that compels most constantly:Can be divined but not quite understood: can be sung but notQuite said. It dwells in the human […]
Caravaggio’s Dagger VI:VII:1
Cantata Text Booklet for the Holy Days 1 Parallel Chaconne sei jetzt doch, o Gott, mein Hort be now yet, O God, my sure retreat — Johann Rist, in J.S. Bach, Cantata 78 The hard bargain, its shrewd handshake In the marketplace; the passacaglia mysticism, Layers above and amongst: simultaneous Dichotomy and […]
J.S. Bach, Cantata 70, at Trinity XXVI – The Rewards of Good and Evil
The epistle (2 Peter 3:3-13) describes the second coming of Christ, who, after resurrection from crucifixion, creates the second coming of a new world, the first having been lost in the great flood; and the coming of the new world will be in the fire of the day of judgment in which the unrepentant and […]
J.S. Bach, Cantata 90, at Trinity XXV – Desolation of the Last Judgment
The gospel is Matthew 24:15-28. Destruction and tribulation will arrive at the end of time, and when they and it are at your doorstep, get out of town, especially Jerusalem, with what’s on your back, head for the mountains, and once you’re sure this isn’t the usual distress from war-mongering, and you’re certain the big […]
J.S. Bach, Cantata 194, at Trinity Sunday
This is an excerpt from the first of the six volumes of the Bach cantatas series. Trinity Sunday, which falls on June 4 in 2023, is the feast of the Trinitarian actuality: the three persons co-eternal, co-equal, and consubstantial, who are one, uncreated being. The triadic doctrine is intimated in the Scriptures but largely evolved and […]
J.S. Bach, Cantata 1 – Feast of the Annunciation of Mary
March 25th is the feast of the annunciation of Mary, for which Bach composed his cantata BWV 1. I am reminded of a moment in August several years ago when I was riding the bus along Jasper Avenue in Edmonton. The middle-aged man in the last seat by the window, holding his prayer beads in […]
Dante: Paradiso 1 – Congruence of the One and the Many
The stated theme of Paradiso is the coevality of unity and multiplicity. This theme and its many variants appear frequently in Biblical scripture, frequently as the Trinitarian formulation and as the concept of the indivisibility of the mortal and the divine, which congruence contains the absolute interrelationship of the bond of fate in its manifestation […]
J.S. Bach, Cantata 54, Oculi (Lent 3), Satan and Sin
From On the Cantatas of J.S. Bach: Epiphany to Lent. Lent is the penitential preparation for Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on the night before Easter Sunday. Lent lasts forty days, hence it is also known as Quadragesima (meaning ‘fortieth’), from which originate the terms Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, and Septuagesima for the preceding Sundays. […]