Page not found

O sadness, O heartache!
Is this not to be lamented?

The page you were looking for is nowhere to be found...

Possibly a bad link or maybe my mistake, in which case I apologise. Please navigate to the home page and explore the site.

"O sadness, O heartache! Is this not to be lamented?" is the English translation of the Choral BWV 404: "O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid! Ist das nicht zu beklagen?", based on a hymn by Johann Rist written in 1641. If you do not know, 404 is the HTTP result code when you ask a website for a page it cannot find... Bach again could not be more appropriate.

Johann Rist's hymns also served as the inspiration for no less than three cantatas:

  • O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60 (Trinitatis XXIV, first performance 7 November 1723, Leipzig period)
  • O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 20 (Trinitatis I, first performance 11 June 1724, Leipzig period)
  • Jesu, der du meine Seele, BWV 78 (Trinitatis XIV, first performance 10 September 1724, Leipzig period)

So Bach has all the ingredients to make a boring thing like a "page not found" result more exciting!

Sometimes, Bach couldn't find what he was looking for either, so don't feel too bad. Image generated by DALL-E 3.