Bach, the Universe and Everything: Just as the Snow Falls

The cantata Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel draws a comparison between the life-sustaining power of the rain on the Earth to provide food with the importance of God’s word in giving support to faith. A powerful, concise work it is notable for the ‘masterpiece’ of its central litany and its dark string scoring (with no violins).

Our speaker, Dr Helena Bates is a member of the Planetary Materials Group at the Natural History Museum in London. She is working on unravelling the history of an unusual group of meteorites, including the ‘Winchcombe Meteorite’ which fell to Earth in a Gloucestershire village in February 2021… among the intriguing findings of their investigations is the possibility that water on Earth had extra-terrestrial origins.

***

Bach, the Universe and Everything is a concert series with a difference. Guided by the work of JS Bach, composer and intergalactic genius, our mission is to explore the human desire to better understand our place in the cosmos through his 200 cantatas.

Each concert is built around a Bach cantata and a talk from a guest speaker, alongside choral and instrumental music by other baroque and renaissance composers. The concert lasts approximately one hour.

In 2022-23 we look to the stars as six eminent scientists, writers and broadcasters explore why humans started looking beyond our planet in the first place, space exploration and what lessons we can learn for life on Earth from future discoveries.