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Bach, the Universe & Everything: March 2026

London, King's Place

Sunday 22 March 2026, 11:30

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Music includes

CLEMENS Ecce quo bonum
BACH In allen meinen Taten BWV 97 (In all my actions)
Performers

Jessica Cale soprano
Angharad Rowlands alto
Hugo Brady tenor
Peter Edge bass
Steven Devine director/organ

with
Emily Akkermans guest speaker

Price

£21 + fees

A very special season finale marks the 250th anniversary of the death of one of Britain's most phenomenal Enlightenment minds.

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.

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.

Jacobus Clemens

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. He was a prolific composer of sacred music and was greatly admired by many of his contemporaries including Orlando Lassus. Curiously, he came to be known as Clemens non Papa, that is Clemens-but-Not-the-Pope – thought to be a reference to Pope Clement VII – there is very little evidence this distinction was necessary leading to speculation it may have been an ‘in joke’!

Watch a short video created by the Royal Museums Greenwich for New Scientist magazine about Harrison's sea clocks and other time devices on display there which have defined our understanding of time and the universe.

Harrison’s stunning sea clocks are part of the collection at the Royal Observatory. They were were the inspiration for Harrison Birtwistle’s Harrison’s Clocks for piano, whilst Harrison’s life was the subject of Dava Sobel’s best-selling novel Longitude (also adapted as a BBC TV series).

Celestial Inventions and Divine Music

Inspired by the music of JS Bach, composer and intergalactic genius, Bach, the Universe and Everything is a concert season with a difference that places his cantatas in the context of the amazing cosmic discoveries of the last 350 years.

Exploring the “Final Frontier” has drawn the most extraordinary ingenuity and inventions from humans in that time. This season we’ll cover topics from how the John Webb Space Telescope has enabled us to see back to the beginning of time to how the sea clocks of John Harrison solved the greatest scientific problem of his time.

Bach wrote over 200 church cantatas. In them we find Bach putting the full range of his creative flair to work to illuminate his faith for the congregation. In seeking to go beyond the frontier of the heavens to reach for the divine he also gifted us music that is intensely devotional yet also shines with brilliant musicianship. In the first few years after his move to Leipzig in 1723, Bach composed a cantata nearly every week for performance at services on Sundays – but this season we will also hear cantatas from earlier in his career in Weimar and later years in Leipzig.

Violinist Julia Kuhn and bass player Cecelia Bryggemyer playing in the playground at Acland burghley School

Japanese conductor Masaaki Suzuki conducts the OAE with singer Florian Stortz

OAE musicians run a workshop in a school classroom

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Bach, the Universe & Everything: March 2026

London, King's Place

Sunday 22 March 2026, 11:30

Event detail

A very special season finale marks the 250th anniversary of the death of one of Britain's most phenomenal Enlightenment minds.

Jacobus Clemens

Discover John Harrison's world changing clocks...

Celestial Inventions and Divine Music

Did you know you can support the OAE?

Hear it first

Sign up to our newsletter

A very special season finale marks the 250th anniversary of the death of one of Britain's most phenomenal Enlightenment minds.

Jacobus Clemens

Celestial Inventions and Divine Music

Did you know you can support the OAE?

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