Today’s date in the year 1724, a cantata of Johann Sebastian Bach was performed in Leipzig. February 20th fell on a Sunday that year, and, as part of his first annual cycle of sacred cantatas as the Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Bach’s cantata No. 22 was heard as part of the Sunday service.

Meanwhile, on February 20 th that same year, London audiences at the King’s Theater in the Haymarket heard the premiere performance of a new Italian opera seria by George Frideric Handel, “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” or, in English, “Julius Caesar in Egypt.”

How revealing, and typical, to find Bach in church and Handel in the theater, on the very same date—but NOT, is it turns out, on the same DAY.

In 1724, Bach’s Germany kept track of dates under the Gregorian calendar we use today, but in Handel’s England, the older Julian calendar was still use, and in that reckoning of time, February 20 fell on a Thursday. In fact, Handel’s February 20th premiere would have occurred on a day Bach would have known as March 2nd. It wasn’t until 1752 and close to the end of Handel’s creative life that England adopted the same calendar that Bach used then and we use now.

In the 18th century, it seems, you didn’t need an Albert Einstein to remind you that time is a very RELATIVE concept!