The December edition of our series features one of Bach’s advent cantatas, the sublime Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht (Do not be confounded, o soul), BWV 186a, first performed in Weimar in December 1716. Although Bach expanded it (as BWV 186) after his move to Leipzig (to be performed earlier in the year as music was not allowed in Leipzig during Advent), the ‘original’ still gloriously contains no less than four arias.
Bach, the Universe and Everything is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s concert series with a difference. Guided by the work of JS Bach, composer and intergalactic genius, our mission is to explore the human desire to better understand our place in the cosmos through his 200 cantatas. Each concert is built around a Bach cantata and a talk from a guest scientific speaker, alongside choral and instrumental music by other baroque and renaissance composers.
