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Bach, the Universe & Everything: The Unexplained Universe

London, King's Place

Sunday 14 December 2025, 11:30

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Music

PACHELBEL Prelude ‘Herr Christ, der einig Gott’s Sohn’ (extract)
CLEMENS Ave Maria
BACH Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn! BWV 132 (Prepare the paths, prepare the road!)
DANIEL PURCELL Overture from Wellcome Glorious Day
Performers

Jessica Cale soprano
Angharad Rowlands alto
Nicholas Mulroy tenor
William Gaunt bass
Steven Devine director/organ

with
Dhara Patel guest speaker

Price

£21 + fees

We return to Weimar in December 1715 where, praise be, music was allowed during advent unlike Leipzig.

The sentiments expressed in the soprano’s opening aria – “Prepare the paths… Messiah approaches!”- will be quite familiar to British audiences in the Christmas period as it draws from the same biblical passage as the opening numbers of Handel’s Messiah. Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn! is a beautifully reflective piece designed to ready the faithful for the seasonal celebrations.

Over the last three years the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest launched into space, has allowed astronomers to peer back to a time shortly after the Big Bang. One surprise discovery has been the number of large and mature galaxies observed in the early Universe that can’t be explained by current models of galaxy formation. Dhara Patel from the National Space Centre will put forward some alternative ideas that could help explain the presence of galaxies that should not exist!

Jacobus Clemens

The season’s focus on the music of the Flemish composer Jacobus Clemens (c. 1510 – 1556) continues with a setting of the well-known prayer to the mother of Jesus, Ave Maria. 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’!

Dhara Patel talks about how she moved from teaching to her role communicating the latest developments in astronomy to visitors to the National Space Centre and beyond...

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 James 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: The Unexplained Universe

London, King's Place

Sunday 14 December 2025, 11:30

Event detail

We return to Weimar in December 1715 where, praise be, music was allowed during advent unlike Leipzig.

Jacobus Clemens

And now, the latest space news...

Celestial Inventions and Divine Music

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