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Duration: 15 minutes. Almost certainly composed for January 5, 1727, Cantata ... into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.' Following a medieval ...
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PREVIEW NOTES GAMUT BACH ENSEMBLE Wednesday, December 12 – 7:30 PM Church of the Holy Trinity PROGRAM Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid, BWV 58 Johann Sebastian Bach Born: March 31, 1685, in Eisenach, Germany Died: July 28, 1750, Leipzig, Germany Composed: 1727 Duration: 15 minutes Almost certainly composed for January 5, 1727, Cantata BWV 58 survives only in a revised version of 1733 or 1734 with a brand new central aria and three oboes added to reinforce the strings in the outer movements. Like BWV 153 this Cantata takes the Gospel reading as the basis for a description of the beleaguered Christian: the distressed, persecuted soul (soprano) in dialogue with a guardian angel or, by implication, Jesus (bass), who acknowledges that es ist eine böse Zeit (‘these are bad times’). The cantata is symmetrically arranged in five movements, with two extended duets cast as chorale fantasias.

Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56 Johann Sebastian Bach Composed: 1726 Duration: 20 minutes Familiar to modern audiences, BWV 56 Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen is a cantata for solo bass. For this, his third cantata for Trinity 19, Bach takes his lead from the first verse of the Gospel for the day, ‘And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.’ Following a medieval tradition, Bach treats the course of human life allegorically as a sea voyage, a nautical Pilgrim’s Progress. No stranger himself to life’s tribulations, Bach has left us several memorable evocations of adversity, yet none more poignant than this cantata.

Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106 Johann Sebastian Bach Composed: 1707 Duration: 20 minutes Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (Actus Tragicus) may have been written for the funeral of Bach’s uncle. The work alludes to an older generation of compositions. Even the orchestration—two recorders, two violas da gamba, and continuo—gives the work a distinctly ‘ancient’ quality. The cantata is virtually through-composed, rather like a motet, with each line of text signaling a complete musical change of character. The chorale overlay (both instrumental and vocal) and interplay of scripture are of great sophistication throughout.