Starts with lunch at 1pm on Friday and ends at 1pm Sunday – optional lunch available

There are certain groups of works - Haydn string quartets and Schubert songs for example - where the standard is so consistently superb that, selecting for one’s desert island, one could say “any one will do”. Bach’s cantatas come into this category; indeed whether there exists a comparable collection of (relatively) unperformed masterpieces is debatable. They were produced routinely for church services at Weimar and Leipzig. Some contain moments that are as profoundly moving as any in the St. Matthew Passion, others are full of supremely happy music - “Fill our mouths with laughter” is the opening line of one - while the secular cantatas (written for ceremonial occasions) provide another fascinating (and even less well known) world to be explored.

During the weekend we shall look at several cantatas in some detail and consider the conditions under which they were written - the forces employed, the social background etc. – as well as glimpsing a few of the multitude of sublime moments in others.