Campus & Community

Masterworks Chorale to perform Bach cantatas

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Concert to honor conductor Allen Lannom

Under the direction of guest conductor Jameson Marvin, the Masterworks Chorale will perform three cantatas by J.S. Bach in Sanders Theatre this Saturday (May 13) at 8 p.m.

As director of choral activities and senior lecturer on music at Harvard, Marvin conducts the Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, and H-R Collegium Musicum, and is responsible for a choral program that numbers six choral ensembles and nearly 400 singers.

Marvin is the final guest conductor for the Masterworks Chorale season. The concert is dedicated to the memory of Allen Lannom, a close friend of Marvin’s who led the chorale for 54 years. Lannom passed away March 20 of this year.

The first of the three cantatas – “Cantata 77, Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben” – was composed in Bach’s first cycle of church cantatas in Leipzig in 1723 and is regarded as one of Bach’s most beautiful works. “Cantata 106, Gottes Zeit, ist die allerbeste Zeit” is a funeral ode written when Bach was only 22 years old. Lastly, “Cantata 131, Aus der Tiefe rufe ich, Herr, zu dir” is Bach’s earliest extant cantata, composed in Muhlhausen in 1707 and is a setting of the complete text of Psalm 130.