Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe ('Jesus gathered the Twelve to Himself'), BWV 22, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, written for the last Sunday before Lent. He composed it as an audition piece for the position of director of church music in Leipzig, and he first performed it there in a church service at the Thomaskirche on 7 February 1723. The work begins with a scene from the Gospel in which Jesus predicts his suffering in Jerusalem, and is not understood by his disciples. Bach showed, setting the prescribed text of an unknown poet, that he mastered the composition of a dramatic scene, an expressive aria with obbligato oboe, a recitative with strings, an exuberant dance, and a chorale in the style of Johann Kuhnau, his predecessor in Leipzig. According to the Bach scholar Richard D. P. Jones, several elements of the work such as a "frame of biblical text and chorale around the operatic forms of aria and recitative" became standards for Bach's Leipzig cantatas and even his Passions.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_nahm_zu_sich_die_Zw%C3%B6lfe,_BWV_22
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1900:
A Chinese immigrant in San Francisco fell ill with the bubonic plague in the first epidemic of the disease in the continental United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_plague_of_1900%E2%80%931904
1943:
World War II: Japan successfully withdrew its troops from Guadalcanal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ke
2014:
Researchers announced the discovery of the Happisburgh footprints in Norfolk, England, the oldest known hominid footprints outside Africa at more than 800,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happisburgh_footprints
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
bicultural: 1. A person belonging to two cultures. 2. Adapted to two separate cultures. 3. Having working knowledge of two separate cultures. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bicultural
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it. --Charles Dickens https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens