| Summary: | "Within a decade of taking up his post as Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723, Bach was becoming ever more frustrated with the Saxon city's civic politics. Never one to compromise, he had clashed with the authorities almost from the word go. In August 1730 complaints that he had been neglecting his duties led him to submit a 'brief but highly necessary draft of a well-appointed church music' to the Leipzig council. Inter alia, he pointed out that he did not have sufficient skilled singers and, especially, players at his disposal. Bach's protests fell largely on deaf ears. In October he wrote to an old schoolfriend, Georg Erdmann, asking about the possibility of a post in Danzig, adding that the Leipzig authorities are 'very strange and little interested in music, so that I have to live amid almost constant vexation, envy and persecution'. Bach's official role was as teacher-cum-music director, with duties that included giving Latin instruction to the boys in St Thomas's School. For Bürgermeister Jakob Born and others on the city council, the composer was behaving like a Kapellmeister with attitude, one who had tasted too much renown for his own good. Bach remained in his Leipzig post until the end of his life. But after devoting himself intensively to the production of music for the Lutheran liturgy, his creative focus shifted: to the city's Collegium Musicum-an ensemble of students and professionals which held weekly concerts in Gottfried Zimmermann's fashionable coffee house-and to the world beyond Leipzig. Above all, Bach avidly cultivated his ties with the Dresden court"--Page 3 of booklet.
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| Participant or Performer: | Katherine Watson, soprano ; Helen Charlston, mezzo-soprano ; Iestyn Davies, countertenor ; Gwilym Bowen, tenor ; Neal Davies, bass ; The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge ; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment ; Stephen Layton, conductor. |
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