The World of the Bach Cantatas: Early Selected Cantatas

In The World of the Bach Cantatas, leading Bach scholars place the works in their historical and biographical context, guiding us through their literary, musical, aesthetic, and theological features. The essays are designed to accompany a project by Ton Koopman, the renowned Dutch conductor, to record the complete set of cantatas on the Erato label. Early Sacred Cantatas covers the works Bach wrote during the first twenty-eight years of his life, before his move to Leipzig in 1723. Another volume will deal with Bach's secular cantatas, and a third with his cantatas dating from 1723 to 1750, his years at the Thomasschule in Leipzig.