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Bach, the Universe & Everything: Photographing the Galaxy

London, King's Place

Sunday 30 November 2025, 11:30

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Music

BÖHM Prelude ‘Auf meinen lieben Gott’
CLEMENS Ego flos campi
BACH Nur jedem das Seine BWV 163 (To each his own!)
BLOW The Graces’ Dance and Gavatt from Venus and Adonis
Performers

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

with
Chris Baker guest speaker

Price

£21 + fees

A cantata composed in late 1715 for the court in Weimar and the inside track on how astrophotographers capture amazing images from our galaxy.

Nur jedem das Seine (BWV 163) is the first of two cantatas composed in late 1715 for the court in Weimar, where Bach compiled the Brandenburg Concertos. (We will hear the second, Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn! (BWV 132), in December’s event.) At the time he was about a year into his employment there and the Court was just emerging from a period of mourning for Prince Johann Ernst, a keen and skilled musician. Speaking to the concerns of the court, the cantata takes as its inspiration the story of the Pharisees laying a trap for Jesus by questioning him about the legality of paying tax to Caesar.

We often see glorious images from deep space at Bach, the Universe and Everything… but how are they created? Astrophotographer Chris Baker will talk to us about how his work capturing these images and turning them into art.

Jacobus Clemens

We continue our focus on the music of the Flemish composer Jacobus Clemens (c. 1510 – 1556) with the seven-part motet Ego flos campi (I am the rose of Sharon). 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’!

An insight into how Chris Baker's passion for space and astrophotography started

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: Photographing the Galaxy

London, King's Place

Sunday 30 November 2025, 11:30

Event detail

A cantata composed in late 1715 for the court in Weimar and the inside track on how astrophotographers capture amazing images from our galaxy.

Jacobus Clemens

"I didn't want to do something that was ordinary, I wanted to do something that was really special"

Celestial Inventions and Divine Music

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