Bach: Coffee and Cantata

Only a small proportion of Bach's surviving body of work is routinely heard these days. The vast majority of his surviving music--his ~200 sacred cantatas--is rarely listened to, and even less frequently performed. For several years in the early 1720s, Bach wrote one cantata almost every week, to be performed during the Sunday Lutheran service as a spiritual and musical commentary on the day's readings.

Bach's cantatas contain some of his most affecting music--truly astonishing in view of the fact that the majority of them had to be written (not to mention copied, rehearsed and performed) under hurried and definitely less-than-ideal circumstances. They display an amazing array of styles, techniques, and emotions that we explore in this meetup. One Sunday morning a month, we will listen to the cantata(s) that Bach wrote for that specific Sunday in the Lutheran liturgical calendar.  In other words, we will let the date select the works we will listen to--not the other way around.

So join us online as we explore, with good Java and great company, some of music history's most underrated yet most consistently satisfying body of work. Religious affiliation or technical knowledge not necessary.