Johann Ludwig Bach, whose likeness exists in an expert pastel executed by his son, the portraitist Gottlieb Friedrich Bach, has remained something of a mystery figure among the musicians peopling the Bach family apart from his Handelian orchestral Suite in G. Although an orchestra leader by trade, Ludwig Bach's surviving output mostly consists of sacred music, and his 11 motets are among his strongest and most personal creations. Carus Verlag's Johann Ludwig Bach: Das ist meine Freude features 10 of those motets performed ...
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Johann Ludwig Bach, whose likeness exists in an expert pastel executed by his son, the portraitist Gottlieb Friedrich Bach, has remained something of a mystery figure among the musicians peopling the Bach family apart from his Handelian orchestral Suite in G. Although an orchestra leader by trade, Ludwig Bach's surviving output mostly consists of sacred music, and his 11 motets are among his strongest and most personal creations. Carus Verlag's Johann Ludwig Bach: Das ist meine Freude features 10 of those motets performed by Ex Tempore Gent and the Orpheon Consort under Florian Heyerick. These performances are prepared from an edition of Bach's complete motets published in 2003 by Carus Verlag and edited by Uwe Wolf, who also contributes informative -- if rather dry -- liner notes for the CD. All of Bach's motets, save one, are polychoral and largely homophonic in texture, though when Bach begins to spin threads of polyphony out of the center of his harmonic body, such as in "Das ist meine Freude," you...
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