This disc represents one of a number of attempts to fill in the landscape of German music between Schütz and Bach -- a landscape that Albert Schweitzer once famously characterized as filled with hills rather than mountains. The program offered by this excellent agglomeration of Saxon musicians, playing pieces that originated in their own region, doesn't do much to refute Schweitzer's description, but it includes a lot of simple, festive music that anyone can enjoy at Christmastime. All the pieces were apparently labeled as ...
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This disc represents one of a number of attempts to fill in the landscape of German music between Schütz and Bach -- a landscape that Albert Schweitzer once famously characterized as filled with hills rather than mountains. The program offered by this excellent agglomeration of Saxon musicians, playing pieces that originated in their own region, doesn't do much to refute Schweitzer's description, but it includes a lot of simple, festive music that anyone can enjoy at Christmastime. All the pieces were apparently labeled as being for Christmas use, although some, like Christian August Jacobi's Also hat Gott die Welt geliebet (For God so loved the world that he gave his only son...) would seem odd choices for that season. The music here comes from around 1700. What the Bach cantata enthusiast comes away with is a new appreciation for how important the subjective cantata texts of Erdmann Neumeister and his followers were to the artistry of Bach's sacred music: the composers here could write big choruses...
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