About Bach, the Universe and Everything:

This is a concert series with a difference. Across six Sunday morning events, we explore the human desire to understand our place in the cosmos, guided by the work of JS Bach – composer and intergalactic genius – through his 200 cantatas. As NASA shares images from the very first moments of time, we invite you to join us on a cosmic journey: each event is built around a Bach cantata and a talk from a guest scientist, writer or broadcaster, alongside choral and instrumental music.

This month our Sunday cantata series explores faith and gifts from the sky and the heavens.

Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel draws a comparison between the life-sustaining power of the rain on the Earth to provide food with the importance of God’s word in giving support to faith. A powerful, concise work it is notable for the ‘masterpiece’ of its central litany and its dark string scoring (with no violins).

Our speaker, Dr Helena Bates is a member of the Planetary Materials Group at the Natural History Museum in London. She is working on unravelling the history of an unusual group of meteorites, including the ‘Winchcombe Meteorite’ which fell to Earth in a Gloucestershire village in February 2021… among the intriguing findings of their investigations is the possibility that water on Earth had extra-terrestrial origins.

Duration: approx. 1hr with no interval

‘He was wrong to think he could now forget that the big, hard, oily, dirty, rainbow-hung Earth on which he lived was a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot lost in the unimaginable infinity of the Universe.’

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy