Johanna Novom & Geneviève Gilardeau, violins
Yussif Barakat Martínez, violone
Charlotte Nediger, organ and harpsichord
Tafelmusik Chamber Choir
Directed by Ivars Taurins
Performance:
May 15, 2026 at Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre
Program
Dietrich Buxtehude
1637–1707
Befiehl dem Engel, daß er komm
Johann Adam Reincken
1643–1722
Adagio & Allemande, from Hortus Musicus Partita I
Johann Christoph Bach
1642–1703
Fürchte dich nicht
J.A. Reincken
Courante & Sarabande, from Hortus Musicus Partita I
Johann Ludwig Krebs
1713–1780
Jesu, meine Freude
Christoph Graupner
1683–1760
Trotz dem alten Drachen
D. Buxtehude
Weg mit allen Schätzen
Johann Friedrich Doles
1715–1797
Weichet, Sorg und Zagen
Johann Sebastian Bach
1685–1750
Chorale “Jesu, meine Freude,” BWV 753
from Notebook for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Motet “Jesu, meine Freude”
“Der aber die Herzen forschet / Du heilige Brunst”
from Motet “Der Geist hilft”
Program Notes
By Charlotte Nediger
In 1705, the 20-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach set off on foot to travel 400 kilometres from Arnstadt to Lübeck to meet and learn from his idol, Dietrich Buxtehude, then aged 68. Buxtehude’s renown as an organist was widespread, as was his reputation as a musical scholar. Among Buxtehude’s many contributions to the musical life of Lübeck was establishing a series of Abendmusiken: concerts that paired sacred vocal works with solo and chamber instrumental music. The series, which ranged from intimate offerings to grand oratorios, continued well into the 1800s.
We start our own Abendmusik appropriately in Lübeck with a gently imploring motet by Buxtehude featuring two violins and continuo, who then play movements from a partita by Buxtehude’s close friend and colleague, Johann Adam Reincken. Bach transcribed the partita for solo harpsichord, a testament to his time in Lübeck. In addition to the scores he would have gathered and copied while there, Bach had access to a significant collection of music by Buxtehude copied by his father’s cousin and Sebastian’s mentor, Johann Christoph Bach. It may well have been study of this collection that inspired Bach’s Lübeck journey, and so we appropriately make a stop on our journey to perform a motet by Johann Christoph.
We travel back, not to Arnstadt but to Leipzig, where Sebastian Bach settled in 1723, and our guidepost is a hymn written by the poet Johann Franck to a melody that first appeared in a hymnal in 1653: “Jesu, meine Freude” (Jesus, my joy). Among the early settings is one by Buxtehude, followed by countless others, the most famous being the setting by Bach, the longest and most complex of Bach’s motets. Ivars Taurins has assembled a sequence of four verses set by a few of the composers in Bach’s circle, including a verse by Buxtehude. Christoph Graupner and Bach both auditioned for the position of Thomaskantor in Leipzig, awarded to Bach only after Graupner turned it down. Johann Ludwig Krebs and Johann Friedrich Doles studied with Bach in Leipzig, Doles succeeding him as Kantor. Doles regularly performed Bach’s motets, including a famous performance attended by Mozart in 1789.
This leads to our destination, Bach’s full setting of all eleven verses of the hymn. We precede it with a beautiful little keyboard piece based on the hymn tune written by Bach for the lesson book he prepared for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann.*
To complete our Abendmusik, we append the final movements of Bach’s motet “Der Geist hilft,” which culminates with a gentle “Alleluia.”
*The keyboard piece was left unfinished: perhaps Wilhelm was given the homework task of completing it. Charlotte is performing a completion written for her by the young composer and harpsichordist Caleb Carman, a student in her class at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute.
**