Hendrik Slegtenhorst

On the Cantatas of J.S. Bach Hendrik Slegtenhorst

Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer of Western music, explored in his cantatas the manifestations of the human condition. The relationship of oneself to others, and of money to morality, are only a few of these manifestations which are considered in the cantatas for Trinity I-VII, the subject matter of the first book of the series on all the cantatas. Buy the book today to read more. Bach practices adherence, but a pragmatic one, to his employers, the Lutheran church and the municipal and aristocratic authorities. He is also a realist and a sensualist, revelling in the pleasures that life offers, yet suffering the crushing losses that life always brings. My commentaries are not religious, but social. They concentrate on the aspects of Bach's spiritual illumination and their application to everyday affairs. Bach liberates actuality from the suffocation of theology, and his church cantatas are the most extensive presentation of this freedom of thought. I bring to this my own experience in government, education, heritage, and cultural and community development. My commentaries do not emulate, but recognize their debt to, the great studies of Bach by writers such as Schweitzer, Wolff, and Gardiner. Many years ago I read in an essay whose author and title I do not recall that a person could not call himself cultured without knowing the cantatas of Bach. That is what set me on my way through the cantatas, and in 1997 I set about it in earnest. This is, then, a personal journey through the cantatas of Bach. It does not pretend to scholarship. I am aware that the concept that knowledge and awareness of Bach's cantatas constituting an essential element of culture is European concept, and does not apply to other cultures. But I am European by birth and upbringing, and Canadian by good fortune and the foresight of my parents. Like any other human being I cannot claim universality. The commentaries represent my own perspective, and do not claim more than that.