We caught up with director, Tom Hammond-Davies recently to learn more about the next exciting event from the Oxford Bach Soloists on 5 June, and we’ve discovered an interesting theme running through the music…
Haydn’s setting of The Heavens are Telling from his 1799 epic ‘The Creation’ is probably the most famous use of these words from Psalm 19, but he was no means the first – or the last to set these uplifting words to music.
One of J.S. Bach’s predecessors, Heinrich Schütz was one of the earliest composers to bring these words alive through music in the early 17th century. Two hundred years later it was Mendelssohn’s turn.
Karen Clark Sheard
And it’s not confined to the classical world either – multiple Grammy and Stellar award winning U.S. gospel singer Karen Clark Sheard, released her album The Heavens are Telling in 2003.
But when Bach’s wrote his version in the form of a cantata: The Heavens are telling the glory of god (Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes) he had just taken up his new post as Thomaskantor in the summer of 1723 – a rather demanding job requiring a fresh new Cantata ever week! So the performance of his piece in June of that year must have been one of the first occasions when Bach had the opportunity to show off his work to his new congregations in Leipzig.
With its celebratory festive opening the congregation must have sat up in their pews when they heard the energy and dynamic forward momentum of this new music.
There’s a lovely duet to listen out for in the middle between a viola da gamba – literally a ‘viol for the leg’ because it was played upright like a cello rather than on the arm like a violin and an oboe d’amore – the ‘oboe of love’. These two wonderful instruments fell out of fashion after Bach’s day despite their beautiful sound and appearance.
By contrast, Bach’s other Cantata for this same week Oh God, Look down from Heaven (Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein) dates from the following year. This cantata is an adaptation of Martin Luther’s German hymn and depicts a rather shocked view from heaven looking down on earth and deploring how easily man has been led astray by his own heresy.
Martin Luther
Watch out for ‘törichte Vernunft’ (foolish reason) in the middle which is a rather vicious denunciation of man’s futile attempts to base his salvation on his own puny efforts:
‘they are like the graves of the dead which, though fine from the outside, contain only rottenness and stench and display nothing but filth’.
The Oxford Bach Soloists will be performing these two great cantatas alongside a work with a rather different background based on the the Lutheran translation of The Spirit helps us in our weakness (Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf). This motet was written in 1729 for a memorial service for the rather veteran (and by all accounts not very effective) headmaster of the Thomasschule in Leipzig under whom Bach served as a rather reluctant schoolmaster alongside all his other jobs.
Thomasschule
