Imagine if we had access to over a hundred Shakespeare plays in which the Bard was at or near the top of his game – but we didn’t bother to watch them and couldn’t even remember their names.
Bach has as good a claim as any composer to be the Shakespeare of music, yet a vast proportion of his work is little known even by music-lovers. He left us more than 200 sacred cantatas (many more are missing), most of which are miraculously inspired. So, why their neglect? Is it their supposedly dour and frightening Lutheran theology?
The latest Holy Smoke podcast suggests that, if we take the plunge, the music and texts of the cantatas help us address the central questions of existence – even if we’re not Christians.
My guest is Thelma Lovell, the author of a book about the worldview of the cantatas that is one of the masterpieces of Bach scholarship – yet even more neglected than the music itself.
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