Bach Cantata - Audio
May 17, 2016 | by Jeffrey Powell
J.S. Bach Cantata - King of Heaven Welcome
Click on the title above to listen to the complete recording of this wonderful piece of music, live from our worship service on June 5th. The recording includes the prelude and postludes from the service, as well as all three movements of the cantata. Read below for more details...
Choir Recognition Sunday was this past June 5th. We sang a Bach cantata (read the more detailed article on this page) with organ, strings, and recorder. Don’t forget us! In fact, the choir can be recognized every Sunday~we’re the ones in the back of the church, up overhead. You can greet us at the Peace each Sunday; please turn around and wave! After awhile, you will begin to recognize us!
New music every month!
When Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750) worked in Weimar, he was expected to write a cantata every month for the Palace Church (Schlosskirche) where he was the Court Organist. The Schlosskirche began in medieval times as a castle with a moat. About fifty years before Bach was born, the church was added. By the time Bach was composing there the palace housed the dukes of Weimar and was a flourishing cultural center.
The cantata that the choir will offer on June 5th at the 10:30 service is BWV182, “Himmelskönig, sei willkommen” (“King of Heaven, Welcome”—which we will sing in English translation). The German prince Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar had a plan that Bach should write a new cantata once a month, with the goal that in four years all the Sundays would be covered. This cantata was the first of these; it premiered on Palm Sunday, 1714.
The court also had a resident poet, named Salomon Franck. He wrote the text. Historian Pamela Dellal notes that “the poetry derives from the entry into Jerusalem a similar entry into the heart of the believer, who should prepare himself and will be given heavenly joy in return.”
The music is very sunny, because it celebrates the joy that we derive as Christians in knowing Jesus’ Passion, and in the hope that we have that his suffering has made a path to heaven for us.
Come, worship with us on June 5th and enjoy this marvelous work!