O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad (O holy bath of Spirit and water), BWV 165, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Weimar for Trinity Sunday and led the first performance on 16 June 1715. It was one in a series of cantatas he had been writing since his promotion to concertmaster at the Weimar court in the ducal palace, one cantata each month over the previous year. The libretto by the court poet Salomo Franck is based on the day's prescribed gospel reading about the meeting of Jesus and Nicodemus (pictured in a contemporary painting). Close in content to the gospel, the text connects the concept of the Trinity to baptism. The music is structured in six movements, alternating arias and recitatives, and scored for a small ensemble of four vocal parts, strings and continuo. The closing chorale is the fifth stanza of a hymn by Ludwig Helmbold which mentions scripture, baptism and the Eucharist. The text, full of Baroque imagery, reads like a sermon set to music, especially in the two recitatives for the bass voice, which are rich in musical contrasts. Bach probably led a second performance on the Trinity Sunday concluding his first year as Cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig on 4 June 1724.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_heilges_Geist-_und_Wasserbad,_BWV_165

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1223:

Mongol invasions: Mongol forces defeated a combined army of Kiev, Galich, and the Cumans at the Kalchik River in present-day Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Kalka_River

1669:

Citing poor eyesight, English naval administrator and Member of Parliament Samuel Pepys recorded his last entry in his diary, one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys

1935:

A 7.7 Mw earthquake struck Balochistan in the British Raj, now part of Pakistan, killing anywhere between 30,000 and 60,000 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Balochistan_earthquake

1981:

An organized mob of police and government-sponsored paramilitias began burning the public library in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, destroying over 97,000 items in one of the most violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Jaffna_library

2005:

An article in the magazine Vanity Fair revealed that the secret informant known as "Deep Throat", who provided information about the Watergate scandal, was former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt (pictured). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

omnishambles: (UK, chiefly politics) A situation that is bad or mismanaged in every way. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/omnishambles

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The words of the true poems give you more than poems, They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every thing else, They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes, They do not seek beauty, they are sought, Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick. They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset, They bring none to his or her terminus or to be content and full, Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings, To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again.   --Song of the Answerer https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass#Song_of_the_Answerer_.281855.3B_1856.3B_1881.29