Bach: To the Future (1)

Well...there's no time like the present, right? So this morning I popped open my long neglected Complete Bach Boxed Set, took out the first CD, and popped it into the music machine. I was intending to listen to my previously asserted 15 minutes (-ish...it's not like I was going to eject the thing in mid-song), but it was so enormously delightful that I listened to the whole 40:53 of it. And I think I'm just going to leave it in the cd player and give it another spin or two. I do wish that there were a way to listen to the pieces in compositional order, though. Well, obviously there is, but it would be one hell of a lot of work. I just checked with Wikipedia to see if someone had at least done the written part of that work, and was not surprised that someone had--but that there was a caveat to go with it: "Listing Bach's works according to their time of composition can't be done comprehensively: for many works the period in which they were composed is a very wide range. For Bach's larger vocal works (cantatas, Passions,...) research has led to some more or less generally accepted chronologies, covering most of these works: a catalogue in this sense is Philippe (and Gérard) Zwang's list giving a chronological number to the cantatas BWV 1–215 and 248–249.[16] This list was published in 1982 as Guide pratique des cantates de Bach in Paris, ISBN 2-221-00749-2. A revised edition was published in 2005 (ISBN 2747598888)."1  So there you have it. 

At any rate...there were some miraculously lovely pieces on this cd, for sure. The Brandenburg Concertos 2 --the first three of them, anyway, though I have no doubt that the other three will be equally mesmerizing--really kick some ass. Please, sir, I want some more. And a big thanks to Mr. David Stern for pointing me back in this direction 3, as I don't know that I'd have gotten to this if not for his comments ref. Bach.

1  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Johann_Sebastian_Bach#By_opus  

_ number,_and_chronological_lists

2  Original title: Six Concerts Several Instruments. 

3  Once upon a time I borrowed my little sister's Complete Mozart boxed set and worked my way through all 170 (or was it 180?) cds, and she was so impressed with that (and so wanting to feed my enormous hunger) that she bought be the Bach Box. I started in on it...but for some reason pooped out shortly thereafter. Might have been The Divorce Years, when my ability to function beyond the roles of teacher and father were non-existent. I spent my "off" hours trying not to kill myself, not listening to spiritually enervating music. Though if I had done the former, perhaps I would not have struggled so mightily with the latter.