{"id":602,"date":"2015-11-30T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T21:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catesings.org\/?p=602"},"modified":"2015-11-30T08:00:35","modified_gmt":"2015-11-29T21:00:35","slug":"advent-calendar-day-2-wachet-betet-j-s-bach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/2015\/11\/30\/advent-calendar-day-2-wachet-betet-j-s-bach\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent Calendar Day 2 \u2013 Wachet! Betet! (J.S. Bach)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am in the midst of a fairly intense obsession with Bach&#8217;s oratorios and cantatas, which is currently manifesting itself in me learning every alto (and sometimes soprano) aria I can get my hands on from any Bach aria (it turns out I can get my hands on quite a bit), and badgering any choir directors I have dealings with to do some Bach.<\/p>\n<p>I thought I was going to get my wish this week, with this lovely (and, admittedly somewhat frenetic) opening movement of Bach&#8217;s Cantata 70 &#8220;Wachet betet, betet wachet&#8221;, which means &#8220;Watch and pray, pray and watch&#8221;.\u00a0 But alas, it was not to be.\u00a0 Since I had already spent some quality time with Youtube and various recordings of this cantata and bonded with it, I wasn&#8217;t going to let go quite so easily&#8230; which is one reason you are getting a musical advent calendar from me this year, as it happens.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"J.S. Bach, Cantata 70: &quot;Wachet betet, betet, wachet&quot;\" width=\"474\" height=\"356\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DSNgiGeviCo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The word &#8216;wachet&#8217; here really means &#8216;watch&#8217; in the sense of &#8216;stay awake&#8217;, and it can also mean &#8216;awaken!&#8217; (see also &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/catesings.org\/2013\/12\/11\/advent-calendar-day-11-wachet-auf-ruft-uns-di-stimme-j-s-bach\/\">Wachet auf<\/a>!&#8217; for a cantata in which it gets this meaning).\u00a0 Listening to the extremely lively pace of this piece, I&#8217;m pretty sure Bach was thinking about this when he wrote it.\u00a0 From a choir perspective, you need to be very wide awake and on the ball to sing this music &#8211; and from the congregation&#8217;s point of view, I&#8217;m pretty sure the trumpet would do a good job of finishing anything the alarm clock left undone.<\/p>\n<p>This piece also continues the theme of waiting that is fitting to this early part of Advent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am in the midst of a fairly intense obsession with Bach&#8217;s oratorios and cantatas, which is currently manifesting itself in me learning every alto (and sometimes soprano) aria I can get my hands on from any Bach aria (it turns out I can get my hands on quite a bit), and badgering any choir [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,14,139,365,759],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advent","tag-advent-calendar","tag-classical-music","tag-johann-sebastien-bach","tag-wachet-betet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}