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Bach, the Universe & Everything: January 2026

London, King's Place

Sunday 25 January 2026, 11:30

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Music includes

CLEMENS Magi videntes stellam
BACH Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit BWV 111 (What my God wills always occurs)
Performers

Sofia Kirwan-Baez soprano
Angharad Rowlands alto
Peter Edge bass
Steven Devine director/organ

with
Hannah Wakeford guest speaker

Price

£21 + fees

We begin the new year with vigorous resolve with 'Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit' (BWV 111), inspired by the story of the faithful centurion.

The cantata was composed in 1725 in Leipzig for the third Sunday after Advent. The chorale upon which it is based is a hymn dating back to pre-Reformation days and is woven into pieces by several composers Bach admired including Lassus and Schutz. Its distinctive melodic shape and harmony elicit great energy in Bach’s writing whilst its central duet for alto and tenor depict two souls drawing close to heaven.

Hannah Wakeford from the University of Bristol (and co-author of Bang!! The Complete History of the Universe with Chris Lintott and Brian May) will take us on a journey to explore how measuring the atmosphere of exoplanets in galaxies far, far away using telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb to understand their climate and environments offer a window onto our own solar system.

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.

Hannah Wakeford and Lili Alderson explain how the John Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has transformed what we will be able to discover about exoplanets in the coming years.

Jacobus Clemens

This month’s motet by Jacobus Clemens (c. 1510 – 1556) is Magi videntes stellam, a contemplation of the ‘wise men’s’ joy at sighting the Star of Bethlehem. 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’!

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: January 2026

London, King's Place

Sunday 25 January 2026, 11:30

Event detail

We begin the new year with vigorous resolve with 'Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit' (BWV 111), inspired by the story of the faithful centurion.

Celestial Inventions and Divine Music

"The first time we saw this data coming through from JWST I cried..."

Jacobus Clemens

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