Bücher veröffentlicht von Enlora Press

In his more than 200 cantatas Bach interprets the human condition through musical assertion and examination of the relevance of the gospels and epistles of the Christian Bible. Every cantata is discussed in my six book series On the Cantatas of J.S. Bach. The epistle, which is essentially didactic, is from the Apostolic letters retained in Scripture. The gospel, which is concerned with the life and teachings of Christ, is effectively an exposition of His adherence to principles and the application of action. Guided by this context, Bach consistently propounds surpassing interpretations of the nature and spirit of life. Though the over-reaching principles are philosophical and ethical, how they apply is determined, ultimately, by the individual. Book Five of this series examines the 40 surviving cantatas for the Sundays and feast days from Epiphany to Lent, and includes three sacred and two secular wedding cantatas, a cantata for the installation of a town council, and three secular congratulatory cantatas. The religious cantatas are grouped into the period for Epiphany (fourteen cantatas), Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (four cantatas), the ten cantatas for the pre-Lenten Sundays (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima), Annunciation (one cantata), and Lent (two cantatas). Bach, in these, affirms and explains such fundamental aspects as mortal death and immortal re-birth, the manifestation of divinity in human form, and self-assessment and penitential preparation. It is a personal exploration, both his and mine.

This sixth book in the Bach Cantatas series is concerned with the thirty-nine sacred cantatas for Easter to Pentecost, plus one secular cantata. They are grouped into the period for Easter proper (including the Easter Oratorio), the five Sundays after Easter, Ascension (including the Ascension Oratorio), Exaudi, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. Easter proper begins after the Passion, with Christ dead in the tomb, through to His resurrection and the events that proceed from it. Ascension concerns Christ's depar-ture from the world. Exaudi centres on the promise of the arrival of the Holy Ghost to the church of Christ, and Pentecost is its realization. Trinity Sunday is then the feast of the Trinitarian actuality, and the completes the liturgical, and Bach's, cycles.

Within the music of Bach flows an intense awareness of our human condition, of our heart as the sibling of the soul. These commentaries are concerned with Bach's enabling artistry, its elemental contemplations, and the persistence of their relevance. It is a personal exploration. It is written for those who seek the same. In the cantatas for Trinity I through VII, the five aspects of the human condition that Bach dwells upon are first, the relationship of money to morality; second, the linkage between compassion and individual salvation; third, the influence of condemnation upon the sense of redemption; fourth, the correlation of identity and the need to understand otherness; and fifth, how the sacred is invested in the secular and are, thus, identical.