Piano Excerpts

For soli (SATB), choir (SATB) 2 oboes, 3 trumpets, timpani, 2 violins, viola and basso continuo. Bach's chorale cantata 'Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren' BWV 137, has long been, thanks...

For soli (SATB), choir (SATB) 2 oboes d'amore, 2 violins, viola and basso continuo. The text of Bach's cantata 'Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort' was published in 1715, that is during Bach's Weimar period, in...

Bach's cantata 'My God alone this heart possesses' BWV 169 is from his third annual cantata cycle in Leipzig; it was first performed on 20 October 1726 for the 18th Sunday after Trinity. As recent res...

Bring the festive radiance of the Baroque Christmas tradition to your choir with the four famous insertion movements to Johann Sebastian Bach's Magnificat, BWV 243a. These artful movements ("Vom Himme...

The Ascension Cantata 'Du Lebensfürst, Herr Jesu Christ' BuxWV 22 by Dieterich Buxtehude is based on five verses of the hymn of thanksgiving of the same name by Johann Rist (1641), and in formal terms...

As with many of Homilius' cantatas, the unusual formal structure of the cantata "Kommt, frohe Völker, herzu" for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany, with two choral movements in a cantata of only three mov...

Special scorings inspired Telemann's imagination. In the cantata "Herr, lehre uns bedenken" from 1720, he combined the opening chorus and the two arias with concertante parts for a viola d'amore. Howe...

Georg Philipp Telemann has long been perceived as a composer of sacred music, and particularly of the German-language church cantata. However, in the course of his long life he also composed church wo...

Two things are essentially new: the involvement of the congregation through communal singing and, secondly, the frequent use of the main organ - both in the accompaniment of the congregational chorale...

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart returned to Salzburg from his trip to Paris in January 1779, the only work of church music he had in his luggage was an unfinished Kyrie in E flat major (K. 296a) together...

Michael Haydn composed three of his masses in honor of the holy archangels - St Michael, St Gabriel, and the Raphaelismesse in honor of St Raphael now published. By avoiding the use of vocal soloists,...

Handel composed his only oratorio in German between 1716 and 1717 basing it on the then popular Passion text by Barthold Heinrich Brockes entitled 'Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende...

Das Passionsoratorium "Der Tod Jesu" entstand 1754/55, etwa zur gleichen Zeit wie das vielbeachtete gleichnamige Werk Carl Heinrich Grauns. Als Vorlage beider Kompositionen dient das gleiche Libretto...

Max Bruch succeeded in composing an impressive setting of the well known Advent text, 'O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf' (O Saviour, tear open the heavens). Compositionally it is extremely sophisticated...

Brahms' elegy Nänie op. 82, based on the poem by Friedrich von Schiller, was composed in 1880/81 following the death of the painter Anselm Feuerbach, whom Brahms greatly admired. In contrast with the...

Today best known for his comic operas such as Zar und Zimmermann and Der Waffenschmied, Albert Lortzing was also a composer of sacred music. In 1822, inspired by the performances of great choral symph...

Carus-Verlag is now publishing this early work by Camille Saint-Saëns in a critical new edition. Among the sacred works by Saint-Saëns there are just two settings of the mass: the 'Messe de Requiem''...

Unter den gut 20 großen Messen von Jan Dismas Zelenka kommt der Missa Sancti Josephi eine Schlüsselstellung zu. In der vermutlich 1732 für ein Heiligenfest (deshalb ohne Credo) komponierten Messe grei...

Shining rays stream from the 'Messe de sainte Cécile'. At first people were dazzled, then bewitched, then overcome.' This is how the composer Camille Saint-Saëns described the impression made on him b...

In 1892 Dvorák received a prestigious commission from New York to write a festive cantata to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbuss discovery of America. In response he wrote an im...

During his most productive period as an opera composer, Camille Saint-Saëns also wrote sacred works, among which his Oratorio de Noël has enjoyed great worldwide popularity. The colorful and opulently...

Composed in 1727 for a 'eulogy and funeral oration' for Electress Christiane Eberhardine in the Leipzig University church, the music for the funeral ode is well-known today above all through reconstru...

Every era hears and interprets Bach anew, and every era also evaluates the sources afresh and with new eyes. 40 years after the publication of the St. Matthew Passion in the New Bach Edition, Klaus Ho...

Every era hears and interprets Bach anew, and every era also evaluates the sources afresh and with new eyes. 40 years after the publication of the St. Matthew Passion in the New Bach Edition, Klaus Ho...

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach scored a real hit with his "Passion Cantata". The work was already so popular during Bach's lifetime that there were public calls for an annual performance. Bach himself is s...