Philosophy

The Encyclopedic Bach

The emphasis on programming will be on the encyclopedic Bach—presenting full cycles of works in a single concert, such as all French Suites for keyboard, all violin partitas, all cello suites, all organ trio sonatas. In this way, audience members and performers will see Bach’s extraordinary musical intellect expressed in a single genre, charting how he developed his musical language and solved musical problems within each set of related works. We will program choral cantatas by the church calendar in seasonal groupings—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity Sundays—allowing us to see Bach the musical theologian at work, using musical imagery to elucidate biblical texts.

The eleven-year project will include all of Bach’s original works, generally presenting only one version if a work was later revised by Bach. We will exclude works of doubtful provenance, and include Bach’s own arrangements of other composers’ works. We might present another composer’s version, such as a Busoni piano arrangement of a Bach original: after all, for generations, that was the way in which some of Bach’s music survived. We will present contemporary ‘takes’ on Bach’s music as well, in performances of jazz versions, for example. We will also showcase some works with dancers or actors, or with a multi-media presentation, to experience his music through a new prism, while also appealing to a wider audience.