Bach’s Wachet auf opens with a call to attention — wake up, something’s happening. The cantata keeps circling back to that urgency, alternating between tenderness and a kind of restless joy, like it's afraid you'll nod off again if it lets up.

Haydn wrote his Mass in Time of War in 1796, as Austria mobilized troops against an advancing Napoleon. You can hear it in the Agnus Dei, where a low timpani roll opens the movement — one contemporary said it sounded like the enemy approaching in the distance — followed by trumpet fanfares are more like a call to arms than anything liturgical. By the final "dona nobis pacem," those same instruments turn from threat into plea. Haydn doesn't resolve the tension so much as run out of mass to write.

We're closing the season with both works in Voxman Concert Hall, full orchestra and chorus. Bach's insistence and Haydn's unease end up talking to each other across two centuries: both composers writing music for people who couldn't look away from what was happening around them, a reminder to our singers and audiences alike.

Ticket prices:
Advance: $22
Day-of-concert: $27