From Bach’s Bm mass. Posted only because it is the pinnacle of the musically sublime.
I think Karl Richter’s interpretation of Bach’s choral and orchestral works is the best of the best; I know some think that contemporary, supposedly more authentic, versions are better – but I really don’t care. I don’t suppose Karl Richter does either, since he is dead.
A crab canon—also known by the Latin form of the name, canon cancrizans—is an arrangement of two musical lines that are complementary and backward, similar to a palindrome. Originally it is a musical term for a kind of canon in which one line is reversed in time from the other (e.g. FABACEAE <=> EAECABAF). A famous example is found in J. S. Bach’s The Musical Offering, which also contains a canon (“Quaerendo invenietis”) combining retrogression with inversion, i.e., the music is turned upside down by one player – also known as a table canon.
What is remarkable about this is that Bach makes something so intricately complex sound so sublime.
A very Merry and blessed Christmas to all my readers and their families.
Here is J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV 248. It’s over two hours long but the whole thing is well worth listening to. I am firmly convinced that Bach’s music is one of the pinnacles of Western civilisation – the very best that Christendom has to offer.
Who better, then, to celebrate the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, God among us: the most significant event in human history.
The first part of Cantata BWV 147: Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life. For Advent 4.
The first part of Cantata BWV 186 Do not be confounded, O soul. For Advent 3.
The first part of Cantata BWV 70, “Watch! Pray! Pray! Watch!” for Advent 2.
The aria from cantata BWV 36 “Soar joyfully aloft” for the first Sunday of Advent. Soprano: Nuria Rial
