Bach, the Universe and Everything

A very special season finale of Bach, the Universe and Everything features one of Bach’s most monumental cantatas and marks the 250th anniversary of the death of one of Britain’s most phenomenal Enlightenment minds.

Bach creates one of his greatest cantatas with In allen meinen Taten. Shaped as a baroque suite opening with a grand French-style overture, its five arias traverse from the low bass to high soprano, creating opportunities along the way for exhilarating rhythmic interplay and stunning virtuosity from several of the instrumentalists.

Our survey of the music of the Flemish composer Jacobus Clemens (c. 1510 – 1556) concludes with the motet Ecce quam bonum upon which the composer based the mass heard in the first concert of the season.

Emily Akkermans, Curator of Time at Royal Museums Greenwich (including the Royal Observatory), introduces us to the life and work of John Harrison. In the week that marks the 250th anniversary of his death on 24 March 1776, we will get an insight into the story of Harrison’s remarkable quest over several decades to solve the problem of telling the time at sea, considered the most important scientific challenge of the 18th Century. Harrison’s work was the subject of Dava Sobel’s best-selling novel Longitude (also adapted as a BBC TV series) and his stunning sea clocks (on display at the Royal Observatory) were the inspiration for Harrison Birtwistle’s Harrison’s Clocks for piano.