This concert is part of Thomas Bowes’s countrywide Bach Pilgrimage 2013.
For more details visit
Tom writes,
“Welcome to this concert. The idea of doing something like this has nagged away at the back of my mind for many years now. The concept of a pilgrimage has always appealed to me;the setting aside of some time away from the ordinary details of life and travelling away from home to pay homage and perhaps even gain enlightenment. And it is ideally suited to the violinist - all who play this most portable of instruments answer the call of the wanderer, the gypsy, in some way.
I have played these six works of Bach on and off since I was a teenager and always felt I could go further with them if only I had the chance to dedicate some special time to them. I have wandered many a time into a church and thought to myself, 'how wonderful it would be to play some Bach in here.'
So, thanks to you I have this opportunity to travel and to play this soulful music in these special places and be supported by the kindness of those hosting me along the way.
Of the details available to us about the life of Johann Sebastian Bach perhaps none is more touching than the story of his journey to Carlsbad with his then employer, the enlightenedPrince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen.
The year is 1720 and the composer is 35; he is the father of four children and the husband of a woman who he loves and is devoted to, Maria Barbara.
Johann Sebastian feels understood and appreciated by the Prince, later calling him"a man who not only loved but knew music", and feels that with this appointment he can put down roots and be free of many of the petty disputes that seem always to have dogged his previous posts. Freed of the obligations of writing religious music owing to the Prince's adherence to a strict Lutheran sect, he has already written a great deal of purely instrumental music to the delight of his employer, his court and the musicians alike.
The obligations of the journey to Carlsbad are done but the Prince decides to tarry a while - perhaps to further enjoy the pleasures of the waters there before the journey home. Finally they set off and reach Cöthen in July; but for Johann Sebastian this is not to be the warm and reassuring family homecoming he must have been looking forward to as the coach bumped along. As he reaches the threshold of his house he is approached by a court servant and told shattering news; his beloved wife and mother of his children has very suddenly sickened and died; she is already buried. No word could be got to him before now.
To be sure the family has had traumas enough before this. Of the seven children born to Maria Barbara three have already died young or at birth, not an unusual statistic for any family of 18th century Europe, but surely nothing can have prepared Johann Sebastian for this sudden sledgehammer blow.
And yet this man manages to pick up his life; within eighteen months he remarries the extraordinary Anna Magdalena, a remarkable woman, also a musician, who will become his companion to the end of his days. It is she who will make so many copies of the music of Johann Sebastian, and by her hand alone in many cases has his work come down to us. If there is a pause in the creative flow of music from his pen it is undetectable from the distance of nearly three hundred years, and perhaps it is even possible that this shattering event may have been the reason for the extraordinary music for unaccompanied violin and cello that follows immediately after these events. (Of the violin solos we have the fair copy in Johann Sebastian's own hand, of the latter, alas, this is presumed lost; but in both cases we have Anna Magdalena's copy.)
Did in fact these works spring from this sudden and cruel blow of fate? Are they, to put it in our language, a coming to terms with loss? We can't really know for sure.
It is quite possible these pieces were being worked on for years previously, but that the events of 1720 have no bearing on the words "Sei Solo" and "senza accompangnato" written with such clarity and firmness on the title page of Johann Sebastian’s fair copy cannot be in doubt; seeing them now we must be looking at the pen strokes of a man suffering greatly in bereavement.
There are scholars who have more thoroughly and tellingly investigated these ideas and perhaps I am straying dangerously towards sentimentality, but that when we hear this music we are listening to a lone soul facing his God with his innermost thoughts, prayers, doubts and hopes, there is no doubt.”
Thomas Bowes
8thMarch 2013