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Con Brio! “Church and Stadt: No Separation”
October 12, 2023 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
$16 – $50
In the spring of 1723, several carts carried the possessions of Johann Sebastian Bach and his family from his prior residence in Cothen to his new apartment in Leipzig. Earlier that year, Bach had been appointed Director of Music for the principal churches in the city of Leipzig, and it was the beginning of one of the most productive periods of his musical life. Over the next few years he composed two (now) famous cycles of chorale cantatas followed by a set of cantatas that featured organ obbligato, which showed off the composer’s virtuosity at the keyboard. At the same time, he was producing orchestral music for various entities within the city of Leipzig, culminating in his directorship of the Collegium Musicum that had been founded by his friend, Georg Telemann.
In this concert, Con Brio! will look at how Bach used the same ideas in both the music he wrote for the church and the music he wrote for the city. In particular, we will focus on the Sinfonias that he wrote for that third cycle of cantatas, which evolved into the harpsichord concertos of the mid 1730s. We will pair this with the famous second Orchestral Suite, written about from about the same time as the harpsichord concertos to show how Bach used the same musical ideas for both church and “Stadt” (city).
