‘Collegium Vocale Gent’

No Bach without Luther! What incredible luck that Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, a small town in Thuringia where, 200 years earlier, the renowned religious reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) had attended Latin School. Bach had been immersed in Luther’s thinking since childhood and nowhere is this more apparent than in the many chorales that he included in his cantatas. This programme – part of events to mark the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation – combines the festive cantata Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79 and the Lutheran Missa brevis, BWV 234 with one of Bach’s most famous cantatas, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, described by the poet Heinrich Heine as the ‘Marseillaise of the Reformation’.

On the occasion of the Bach Heritage festiva, BOZAR LITERATURE has asked a number of poets to write a poet on Bach for the publication of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at J.S. Bach".