Hymns for Mixed Choir

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's 9-movement Magnificat from 1749, his first major Berlin vocal work, is one of the most sonorous and, in the vocal solo parts, also one of the most demanding settings of the...

The autograph contains no reference to the participation of instruments, and there is no doubt that a purely vocal performance would do full justice to the work. On the other hand, there is nothing to...

When we hear the words "Johann Sebastian Bach" and "Magnificat", we immediately think of his famous Magnificat in D major BWV 243 or E flat major BWV 243a. However, during his time as St. Thomas' Cant...

Dieterich Buxtehude composed his greatest oratorical work, the cantata cycle Membra Jesu nostri, for the Passiontide of 1680 and dedicated it to his friend and Swedish court conductor Gustav Düben. In...

At less than 20 years of age, the youngest son of the Leipzig Thomaskantor Johann Sebastian Bach broke away from the Lutheran musical tradition of his family: Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782) went to...

The cantata Nun danket alle Gott cannot be assigned to any of Telemann's known cantata years. Its designation "Tempore Messis" in the title of the only surviving source suggests that it was composed o...

Hosanna to the Son of David opens Telemann's cantata cycle "Musicalisches Lob Gottes in der Gemeine des Herrn" as a cantata for the 1st Advent. The year is based on poems by the Hamburg Jacobi chief p...

The Frankfurt Whitsun cantata from 1717 presents the choir and the four soloists with rewarding tasks and features a virtuoso recorder player in the opening chorus and in two of the three arias.

The Trauer-Actus is probably the earliest work of the Grimma Telemann cantata complex. Its textual and musical structure suggests that the work was composed during Telemann's time as a pupil in Hildes...

Vivaldi's employment at the "Ospedale della Pietà", one of the four orphanages in Venice where young girls received intensive musical training, prompted him to compose sacred works.

The double-choir psalm setting Dixit Dominus (Ps 109) is one of the most important works by the church composer Vivaldi. Here he draws on the old Venetian tradition of polychoral music, whose composit...

Psalm 147 "Lauda Jerusalem" has an important place in the church year, among other things in vespers on Marian feasts. Antonio Vivaldi's only setting of this Vespers Psalm has some peculiarities: the...

By repeating the complete text, the through-composed motet is divided into two parts, preceded by an instrumental prelude and followed by a coda ("Alleluia").

Since the two verifiable autographs of the Offertorium Misericordias Domini have been lost, Robert Münster has for the first time used the copies he has found from the Munich court music for this new...

In this work, one finds Mozart's Salzburg role models with regard to church music. The contrast between solo and tutti and the short imitative sections are reminiscent of Leopold Mozart, Eberlin and M...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Regina coeli" is the first of his three settings of the Marian antiphon for Vespers at Easter.

The autograph was initially lost after the Second World War, but was found again in 1964 and forms the basis for this new critical edition by Christine Martin. Compared to other sources, articulation...

In contrast to the two "Regina coeli" settings K. 74 and 127, which are scored for solo soprano and choir, Mozart uses the solo quartet in K. 276, which, similar to the Salzburg masses, often only dia...

Of the vespers and vesper psalms that Mozart wrote for Salzburg Cathedral, the vesper parts "Dixit et Magnificat" are the earliest. Like the later complete vespers, they belong to the ecclesiastical a...

Mozart's "Sancta Maria" is one of those liturgical chants that are based on the time of the church year or the respective feast of the saints. It was probably sung on a feast of the Virgin Mary follow...

This Litany of the Virgin Mary is the first and simplest of the four litanies that Mozart composed in Salzburg in 1771-76. Due to the simple scoring - the trombone choir which joins the church trio on...

The litany consists of six movements, which are divided into nine differently characterized sections. It is clearly based on the sacramental litanies of his Salzburg predecessors and contemporaries.

contains: Dixit Dominus (Ps 109) in C Confitebor (Ps 110) in e Beatus vir (Ps 111) in B Laudate pueri (Ps 112) in F Laudate Dominum (Ps 116) in A Magnificat in C

It was during Mozart's last years at Salzburg, 1779 and 1780, that he composed the two sets of Vespers, KV 321 and KV 339. The music ot these Vespers gives no indication of Mozart's many grounds for a...