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Will you join us for Actus Tragicus?
Coming up on Sunday 6 August is the next concert from the Oxford Bach Soloists – Actus Tragicus – a fascinating concert exploring the music by some of the greatest composers of the baroque age.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantata: Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106 (Actus Tragicus)
The cantata “Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit” (“God’s time is best”), dates from 1707 when Bach was, for a short while, organist of the Blasiuskirche at Mühlhausen.
Dietrich Buxtehude: Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, BuxWV 76
One of the very few of Buxtehude’s compositions to be published in his own lifetime, Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin is a set of two works, both funeral music, and the second of which was written in memory of his father – the organist of St Olaf’s, Helsingør, in Denmark – who died in 1674.
Georg Philipp Telemann: Concerto for recorder, viola da gamba and strings, TWV 52:a1
Stylistic eclecticism was a distinctive feature of instrumental music by German composers of the mid to late Baroque. Telemann, though professing difficulty in writing concertos, preferring the orchestral suite form for which he was greatly admired by Quantz and others, nevertheless produced over one hundred of them, in which variety of tonal colour and idiomatic instrumental writing are conspicuous features.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Sonata for Viola da gamba and Harpsichord in D, BWV 1028
Bach’s three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord were long thought to be products of his years at Cöthen when he was Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold.
Bach in Mühlhausen
In 1707, the 22-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach began his position as the organist at the Lutheran church of St. Blasius in Mühlhausen. His arrival was just months after a devastating fire which destroyed a quarter of the historic town.
Heinrich Schütz: Aus der Tiefe rufe ich, Herr, zu dir (SWV 25)
Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) is generally regarded as Germany’s most important composer before JS Bach.
Performer Focus: Sam Mitchell
Australian countertenor, Sam Mitchell has been involved with the Oxford Bach Soloists since 2016 and is performing the role of some Haute-contre solos in the forthcoming performance of Charpentier’s De profundis on 16 July. We hear more about his musical career…
Setting the text
In 1524 Martin Luther paraphrased Psalm 130 Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (Out of the depths, I have cried out to you) into a text which was to become the inspiration for many composers to write some great pieces of music in the Baroque age and afterwards including Bach, Mendelssohn and Reger.