Bach: Secular Music

In this program featuring excerpts from secular works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Nikolaus Harnoncourt strives to reveal something of the mystery and fascination of Bach's compositional art in the domain of non-sacred music. With his Concentus musicus Wien and the vocal soloists Janet Perry and Robert Holl, Harnoncourt interprets passages and movements from Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3, the Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 5, Bach's arrangement of Benedetto Marcello's Oboe Concerto and parts of the "Coffee Cantata". "In my view, Bach is a total musician. No matter in what musical domain he lands, he immediately deploys his full resources and creates the greatest music that is imaginable in his time in this respective domain. [...] I feel that sacred and secular music are of equal value in the lives of all significant composers, because an important composer of that time was a believer, and he didn't make any distinction between the spiritual and the secular. In his secular life, he is just as pious as in his spiritual one, and when he eats and drinks, when he lives and loves, he is as much of a Christian as when he goes to church to pray on Sunday. He considers life as a whole, and he will write a symphony or a dance for the greater glory of God to the same extent that he would a Passion. [...] German musicians... repeatedly attempted to combine the dance-like, short-winded style of French music with the eruptive, spontaneous and passionate, wild style of the Italians. The result was a well-pondered, 'composed' music - the Germans of that time called it 'worked out' - and when one hears these expressions, and knows who the greatest master of this music was, namely Bach, then one can say: this music is 'worked out' music. But in reality it is fulfilled music, music which comes from the innermost and the highest of man." (Nikolaus Harnoncourt)

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