In the penultimate edition of Bach, the Universe and Everything, guest speaker Sam Illingworth explores the numerous occasions in history where poets and creative minds have somehow been ahead of scientific discovery in their predictions.

Bach’s cantata Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn (BWV 92) implores its listener to put aside doubts and questions ‘to give over to God’s heart and mind’. In it Bach displays his remarkable inventiveness handling chorales (with no less than five different settings!) whilst the tenor, bass and soprano soloists take us on a stormy journey to heaven.

Our guest speaker, Sam Illingworth, is an Associate Professor at Edinburgh Napier University whose research involves using poetry and games to engender meaningful dialogue between scientists and non-scientists.

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