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Baroque ensemble on period instruments Francis Colpron, artistic director |
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Seasons > 2005-06 Season > Concerts > A Musical OfferingTuesday November 29, 2005, 5:30 pm Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours400, rue Saint-Paul Est [métro Champ-de-Mars], Vieux-Montréal, Québec Johann Sebastian Bach’s masterpiece. In collaboration with the Montreal Bach Festival In 1747, at the invitation of Frederick II, “Old Bach” visited Berlin and Potsdam. At Sans-Souci, the flutist king tested the Cantor’s extraordinary talents by proposing a theme and challenging Bach to improvise fugues on it, first in three voices, and then in six voices. Bach declined the latter challenge, stating that the theme was inappropriate. But after returning to Leipzig he composed A Musical Offering for Frederick in which he explored all the contrapuntal possibilities of the royal theme and included, as the king had requested, a fugue in six voices, one of the most beautiful ever written. |