Given the close links between Bach's sacred music and the specific requirements of his vocation as a church musician, it's a bit odd that recordings specifically exploring Bach's musical thinking about the liturgical year are so rare, especially since, as annotator Lucie Renaud points out, Bach himself told one of his organ students that he should play chorales "with the sentiment conveyed by the words." This group of Canadian and American musicians deserves kudos for its single-disc attempt to interest listeners in this ...
Read More
Given the close links between Bach's sacred music and the specific requirements of his vocation as a church musician, it's a bit odd that recordings specifically exploring Bach's musical thinking about the liturgical year are so rare, especially since, as annotator Lucie Renaud points out, Bach himself told one of his organ students that he should play chorales "with the sentiment conveyed by the words." This group of Canadian and American musicians deserves kudos for its single-disc attempt to interest listeners in this aspect of Bach's musical personality. They don't plunge wholesale into one of the yearly cantata cycles Bach wrote in Leipzig, and they counterpoint organ chorales, which were as time-specific as their vocal counterparts, with cantatas. The general impression conveyed is that the correspondence between the mood of a specific work and the nature of the service for which it was written is intermittent but is certainly present. Bach, after all, was notorious for recycling all kinds of...
Read Less
Portions of content provided by Rovi Corporation. © 2024 Rovi Corporation.