If you enjoy Johann Sebastian Bach, we also have a Bach concert series available:
Scholar and performer Kenneth Slowik examines Bach’s life and the glorious vocal and instrumental masterpieces he produced. The seminar concludes with a live performance of the Goldberg Variations, BWV 988.
10 to 11 a.m. From Eisenach to Cothen
Bach’s life and music from his childhood through the early Muhlhausen and Weimar cantatas (with an in-depth discussion of Cantata 106, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit) to the Brandenburg Concerti.
11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Leipzig: the Choral Music
After Bach left the employ of Prince Leopold of Anhalt- Cothen, he was appointed kantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig in 1723, a post he occupied for the rest of his life. The yearly cantata cycles and large-scale works: the St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, and the Christmas Oratorio.
12:30 to 1:45 p.m. Lunch
Participants provide their own lunch.
1:45 to 2:45 p.m. The Collegium Musicum, the B Minor Mass, and the Late Speculative Works
He spent considerable energy working with the collegium musicum (student musical society), which had been established decades earlier by Georg Philipp Telemann, and in the composition of compendiumlike masterpieces that demonstrated his contrapuntal sovereignty: the B Minor Mass, the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2; the Clavier-Ubung (containing the Goldberg Variations), the Musical Offering, and the Art of Fugue.
3 to 4:30 p.m. Performance: The Goldberg Variations
Slowik concludes the seminar with a traversal of the monumental 30 variations.