Bach: Welt, gute Nacht

Album review

Johann Christoph Bach, not to be confused with Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, was Johann Sebastian Bach's first cousin once removed. An organist and ducal employee at Eisenach, he died in 1703 and was thus a good deal older than J.S. Bach. He may well have been among the great man's influences; the works recorded here have a certain combination of intense expressivity and careful structure that brings the younger composer to mind. They do not outwardly sound like J.S. Bach, however; they come from a generation before him and show a different kind of influence from Italian music. Especially as performed here by the English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner, with one voice per part in all the music, they sound a bit like Buxtehude's small religious vocal pieces. The motets might be performed by a choir, but the basically declamatory nature of the language works reasonably well in this kind of setting, and the intensely text-centered, reverent approach cultivated by Gardiner presents this music at its best; the atmosphere in most of these works is prayerful and quite intense. Most of the music is based on biblical texts and reflects the fervent, somber brand of Lutheranism associated with the younger Bach cousin, but the finale, Meine Freundin, du bist schön, was apparently a sort of secular wedding cantata. At least it seems to be; not that much is known of this Bach's music, and it's possible that the piece is one of those works in which Eros is used to allegorize the relationship between the soul and Christ. But if so, it's one of the most involved metaphors on record. At the very least, it makes a charming conclusion to a quietly meditative and altogether lovely recording. Any suspicion that Gardiner was trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel after the conclusion of his successful Bach cantata series has proved unjustified; this is a recording that succeeds on its own terms.
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