A dead pet canary got its own funeral cantata in 1737. Perth just staged it next to Bach's ode to coffee addiction

In 1737, Georg Philipp Telemann's pet canary died -- reportedly killed by a cat -- and he responded the way an 18th-century composer with a sense of humor responds: he wrote it a full funeral cantata, "Trauer-Musik eines kunsterfahrenen Canarienvogels" ("Funeral Music for an Artistically Skilled Canary"), complete with mourners, a sermon-like recitative, and mock-solemn arias grieving a bird that could apparently sing better than most people. It is, genuinely, a real piece in Telemann's catalogue, not a novelty invented for this review. This month the ensemble Australian Baroque staged it in Perth, with mezzo-soprano Brigitte Heuser leading the mourning, alongside a running joke about the offending cat's containment policy.

They paired it with a piece far more people have actually heard of without knowing what it is: Bach's "Coffee Cantata" (BWV 211), a miniature comic opera about a young woman, Lieschen, whose father can't get her to quit her coffee habit. Bach wrote it for his own Collegium Musicum, a voluntary ensemble he directed from 1729 that performed weekly not in a church but in Zimmermann's coffee house in Leipzig -- the actual target audience for a joke about a coffee addict, drinking coffee, while the joke played.

Put next to each other, the two pieces make a point that's easy to lose under the reputation Baroque music has for being devotional and formal: the cantata was an extremely flexible container. Telemann and Bach used the same tools -- recitative, da capo aria, chorale -- to eulogize a bird and mock a caffeine habit as readily as to set scripture. The joke was the point, and the audience was in on it from the first bar.