Overview
There are over 1,000 Bach compositions that we know of, and that number doesn’t include the manuscripts that may have been lost after his death. (Reports of his compositions being used to wrap cheese, or as insect-repelling wrappers on trees, or indeed as kindling, are almost certainly apocryphal.) Like Mozart, Bach’s output was so prodigious that, ironically, he’s known best for relatively few of them. Once pieces become part of an established repertoire they tend to get re-programmed frequently. (If I have to sit through one more performance of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Natchmusik I think I’ll lose my mind.)
My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver area, programmed a concert with three fairly well-known but not overdone works in a concert centered around the theme of “Hope’s Journey.”1 Although I have no idea what the thinking process was for the artistic committee’s choices, we’re doing a piece from a cantata, an oratorio, and a full-blown mass. I’ll take up the definition of each as I discuss the piece.