Originial exhibition from the Bachhaus Museum in Eisenach, Germany | 18-24 March 2024 | Lobby of the the Three Arches Hotel (International YMCA)ת King David st. 26, Jerusalem | Free entrance!
Exhibitioמ opening event:
Monday 18.3 at 19:00 | Opening remarks, Harpsichord recital presented by Jonathan Berk and refreshments
Since 2016 the Bachhaus Eisenach, Germany, the museum in the city where Bach was born in 1685, has been presenting exhibitions detailling musical highlights from the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestraʼs annual Bach in Jerusalem Festivals. This yearʼs 7th exhibition focusses on Bachʼs secular cantatas and their relationships to his better known church music. Two such secular cantatas, “Tönet ihr Pauken” (Sound all ye trumpets, BWV 214) and “Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten” (Resound, pealing notes of the vigorous trumpets, BWV 207.2), will be performed on 19 March in Rehovot and 20 and 22 March in Jerusalem during this yearʼs festival. The exhibition will be shown in the lobby of the YMCA Three Arches Hotel, King David Street, Jerusalem, from 18 to 24 March 24. The exhibition is again accompanied by the museumʼs director Dr. Joerg Hansen who will gladly explain items to visitors during exhibition times.
During his life Johann Sebastian Bach held various positions both as a church musician in his early years in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, and as a court musician during his middle years in Weimar and Köthen. During his final years in Leipzig Bach was formally employed as a cantor for church music and was composing music for church performances on Sundays and feast days. But in Leipzig Bach also wrote many secular cantatas for weddings, funerals, birthdays and other festive secular occasions. Bach even wrote “Drammae per musica”, small opera pieces to be performed at a coffee house in Leipzig. While more than 200 vocal works for church performances have survived, only about 25 of his secular cantatas have come down to us with both texts and music. However, in many cases the music of seemingly lost Bach works can be reconstructed, as Bach often reused the music of his secular pieces for other works. For instance, Bach reused the music of his secular cantata “Tönet, ihr Pauken”, written in 1733 for the birthday of Queen Maria Josepha of Saxony, for the first part “Jauchzet, frohlocket” of his Christmas Oratorio in the same year. Two years later he composed the cantata “Auf schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten” for the nameday of Polish King August III for which in turn he reused the music from a former cantata for the appointment of a Leipzig university professor that he had performed in 1726. Both cantatas will be performed during this yearʼs festival.
The exhibition at the YMCA explains the relationship between Bachʼs secular works and his church cantatas on six panels. Two small animated films in Hebrew and English explain how church music had evolved in Bachʼs time so that a piece written by Bach about the antique hero Hercules could be reused by him for his Christmas Oratorio, and how this “parody technique” works in detail. On display will be original librettos from 1727 and 1737 for Bachʼs Drammae per musica “Hercules at the Crossroads”, “Aeolus Pacified”, and “The Contest between Phoebus and Pan” which was written for performances at a Leipzig coffee house and which was Bachʼs most popular secular piece during his lifetime.