On Wednesday May 7 at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, a unique celebration will take place marking 300 years since the composition and first performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's 1725 Ascension Day Cantata Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein, BWV 128.
This momentous occasion also marks the arrival of Bach’s rare original manuscript of the cantata, bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, one of only four of the composer’s manuscripts in the UK. This colourful cantata for orchestra, chorus, and soloists was written for its first performance on Ascension Day in May 1725. Three hundred years later, it is the centre-piece of a celebratory concert exploring Bach’s compositions from this post-Easter period in 1725, alongside a newly commissioned piece by British composer Judith Weir inspired by Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein, BWV 128 (On Christ’s ascension into heaven alone).
Upwards is a five-minute work for baroque orchestra. Weir comments:
“Upwards has been written as an overture to Bach's Cantata 128, Auf Christi Himmelfahrt Allein (BWV 128) to celebrate the acquisition of Bach's manuscript score by the Bodleian Library in 2024. The Bach Cantata's opening movement presents the seven lines of the chorale "Auf Christi Himmelfahrt" sung by the choir; their melody is slow, widely spaced and level in contour. Meanwhile the orchestral figures surrounding them (including high leaping horns) are always surging energetically, as befits music which expresses the joy of Ascension Day. I have borrowed these contrasting musical styles in my five-minute overture, which features two high horns in G, an even higher trumpet in D, a chunky trio of historical oboes and a small string orchestra. Later in the piece, a bassoon and double bass begin to assert the chorale melody unobtrusively in a low register, while the higher instruments climb ever upwards.”
John Butt will conduct the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the premiere of this new work.
