Friday, May 24 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 25 at 3 p.m.

Bachgrounder 35 minutes before each performance

Directed by Robert Worth and Amanda McFadden

In 1724, a year after he moved to the city of Leipzig, Bach embarked upon the largest project of his long and storied career: The creation of a unified annual cycle of chorale cantatas for the church year. For the1723–24 season, he had cobbled together a cycle of diverse cantatas, mixing some works from his years in Weimar with Anonymous, View of West Side of Thomasschule, Leipzig (1732) new cantatas. The new cycle was to be unified around the chorale cantata, in which each entire piece was built around a single Lutheran chorale. In the event, he composed some 42 of these for the cycle, adding 8 more in later years. We will voyage through this vast trove of fabulous music by performing a series of triptychs, each made up of the bare chorale melody; the grand opening movement; and the final chorale.