Jeremy ’s Reviews > Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven > Status Update

Backtracking in the book since I’m in Munich now for the last day, as was just in Leipzig. Chapter 8: Cantatas or Coffee. Opening quote: Res severa est verum gaudium: True pleasure is a serious matter. Seneca’s motto was adopted thirty years after Bach’s death by Leipzig’s famous orchestra and emblazoned on the walls of their Gewandhaus Concert Hall 1781. I was there in 2026!

An example of his schedule for his Leipzig post.

His Leipzig cantatas were a new style he set out to make and 105 and 46 are the result.
Of 105, musicologist Alfred Durr says it is one of “the most sublime descriptions of the soul in the baroque and Christian art.
First performed July 25 1723 at Thomaskirche on Leipzig.

Cantata BWV 75: first debut after taking the position at Thomaskirche in Leipzig.
5/30/1723.
14 mvmts. 7 before and 7 after the sermon.

Bach regularly directed a music ensemble based at Zimmermann’s coffee house called a collegium musicum (of elite musicians), founded by Telemann in 1702.

Res severa est verum gaudium
True pleasure is a serious matter.
This motto is on the wall of the Gewandhaus Concert Hall, opened in 1781 and still there.
Noted! :)

Family members and students often helped copy out box parts for rehearsals and performances that were often imminent. And his choirs weren’t always amazing and yet Bach wrote on master of this craft.

I think I need a hard copy of this book and read it again flipping to the notes at the end of each chapter. Packed full they are and hard to do on a kindle.

His constant practice in the working out of polyphonic pieces had given his eye such facility that even in the larger scores he could take in all the simultaneously sounding parts at a glance. His hearing was so fine that he was able to detect the slightest error, even in the largest ensembles.

….. although he is executing the most difficult parts himself, noticing at once whenever a mistake occurs, holding everyone together, and repairing any unsteadiness, full of rhythm in every part of his body – this one man taking in all these harmonies with his keen ear and emitting with his voice alone, the tone of all the voices