PÄRT / BACH

Bath Bach Choir’s spring concert brings together two composers separated by centuries yet united in faith and shaped by traditions that value music not as an ornament but as a proclamation. Heard together, these works reveal contrasting responses to the same impulse: to let music serve the word of God. 

Johann Sebastian Bach harnessed music to articulate his own passionate beliefs. Arvo Part, an Orthodox Christian who turned 90 last year, strove to create a musical genre that would, in its simplicity, bring the sacred texts to the forefront. This programme offers not so much a clash of styles as a rare chance to hear how belief, discipline and listening can shape music across centuries – and still ask us to listen differently.

Bach’s Jesu, meine Freude stands at the heart of Lutheran musical culture, where theology, text and sound are inseparable. Written for a funeral in Leipzig in 1723, this much-loved motet interweaves chorales by Johann Franck with verses from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, using symmetrical design and contrapuntal craft to explore core Lutheran concerns: the struggle between flesh and spirit, death and consolation, fear and faith. 

Pärt’s Passio emerges from a very different world, yet one equally shaped by faith and structure. Written in 1982, the work sets St John’s Passion in Latin, using the composer’s austere, bell-like tintinnabuli style to allow the text to speak. It requires particular purity of singing and playing that elicits a glorious spiritual stillness in the listener.

Joining Bath Bach Choir under Christ Church’s magnificently domed chancel will be The Facade Ensemble, a chamber group that specialises in bringing 20th century music to the forefront of today’s listening experiences.  

Bath Bach Choir
The Facade Ensemble
Marcus Sealy Organ
Benedict Collins Rice conductor