Johann Christoph Bach, not to be confused with Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, was Johann Sebastian Bach's first cousin once removed. An organist and ducal employee at Eisenach, he died in 1703 and was thus a good deal older than J.S. Bach. He may well have been among the great man's influences; the works recorded here have a certain combination of intense expressivity and careful structure that brings the younger composer to mind. They do not outwardly sound like J.S. Bach, however; they come from a generation before him ...
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Johann Christoph Bach, not to be confused with Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, was Johann Sebastian Bach's first cousin once removed. An organist and ducal employee at Eisenach, he died in 1703 and was thus a good deal older than J.S. Bach. He may well have been among the great man's influences; the works recorded here have a certain combination of intense expressivity and careful structure that brings the younger composer to mind. They do not outwardly sound like J.S. Bach, however; they come from a generation before him and show a different kind of influence from Italian music. Especially as performed here by the English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner, with one voice per part in all the music, they sound a bit like Buxtehude's small religious vocal pieces. The motets might be performed by a choir, but the basically declamatory nature of the language works reasonably well in this kind of setting, and the intensely text-centered, reverent approach cultivated by Gardiner presents this music...
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