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>
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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>
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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>
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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>