Dear reader,

Today I saw a stack of music paper layer on my stairs – I printed out the score of Bach’s Cantate 36. There is a beautiful soprano aria in it, and I wanted to follow it along (I’ll post a fantastic recording of this aria below). I printed out the whole 47 pages of this cantata, and I only needed 7 or so – the soprano solo, so I had losts of ‘waste’ paper with musical notation.

I usually find music notes in collages a bit ‘kitch’. Don’t know why – maybe because it’s too ‘realistic’ for my abstract-art-loving eye. Probably not a very good reason. Anyway: when I looked again, I thought: what a fantastic material for collage. Rhythm in the notation, lines, dots. Even meaning:

Willkommen, werter Schatz!
Die Lieb und Glaube machet Platz
Vor dich in meinem Herzen rein,
Zieh bei mir ein!

Welcome, worthy treasure!
Love and faith make room
for You in my purified heart,
draw near to me!

Okay, enough Johann Sebastian Bach for today! I hope he didn’t mind his writings ended up in my collage. Have a beautiful day!

Simone

PS: below the collage I post a fantastic recording of the soprano aria from this Cantata 36. The name of the outstanding soprano is Nuria Rial. And the meaning of the text is this:

Auch mit gedämpften, schwachen Stimmen
Wird Gottes Majestät verehrt.
Denn schallet nur der Geist darbei,
So ist ihm solches ein Geschrei,
Das er im Himmel selber hört.

Also with muted, weak voices
is God’s majesty honored.
For if the Spirit only resounds with it,
it becomes such an outcry,
that is is heard in heaven itself.

You see, I love Bach ;-)