- This event has passed.
A Bach Birthday Concert
March 21, 2020 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
FreeClara O’Brien, mezzo soprano
Sandra Miller, flute
John Alexander, organ
Andrew Willis, Stephanie Schmidt, and Robin Morace, keyboards
BACH
Partita in B-flat Major, BWV 825
Aria, “Die Obrigkeit ist Gottes Gabe,” from Cantata 119
Chorale, “Nun komm, der heiden Heiland,” in three settings, BWV 659-661
Aria, “Betörte Welt,” from Cantata 94
Sonata in B minor, BWV 1030
Concerto for Three Claviers in C Major, BWV 1064
This performance is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required.
School of Music faculty Andrew Willis and Clara O’Brien, along with alumni John Alexander, Robin Morace, and Stephanie Schmidt and guest flutist Sandra Miller will perform chamber works of J.S. Bach in celebration of his 335th birthday.
This concert is supported by the Marion Stedman Covington Distinguished Professorship in Music.
Born in the German town of Eisenach, J. S. Bach was a chorister then violinist before taking his first organist post at Arnstadt while still a teenager. It was in Weimar, as court organist from 1708, that Bach began to produce monthly cantatas, and wrote many of his great organ works, as well as organ transcriptions of concertos by Vivaldi.
In 1717 Prince Leopold offered him the position of Kapellmeister at Cöthen, where he wrote the Brandenburg Concertos, the four Orchestral Suites and the violin concertos, and married his second wife Anna Magdalena, who bore 13 children. Bach’s fearsome duties in his final job, as Kantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig from 1723 until his death, involved teaching Latin and Music, choir-training, and writing and directing music for the services.
Nevertheless he managed also to write the Mass in B minor, the six choral Motets, The Art of Fugue, The Musical Offering, and Goldberg Variations during this time. His inventive contrapuntalism became unfashionable soon after his death until the early 19th century, since when his reputation has remained unquestioned.