We open a new season of Bach, the Universe and Everything with a cantata premiered almost exactly 300 years ago. ‘Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit’ (Make yourself ready, my spirit, BWV 115) carries a timelessly relevant message for the citizenry to be alert to malicious intentions.

We begin our survey of works by Orlando Gibbons with what Edmund Fellowes, a leading editor of the Tudor music revival, described as ‘one of the most perfect penitential anthems’.

Our guest speaker for this event will be announced shortly.

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 performance will last approximately 1 hour, without an 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