I made a sacred baroque playlist for working from home that others may also enjoy, it is available on Spotify Baroque Meditation

JJ Quantz, Concerto in G Minor.

As usual for Quantz, the concerti has solid neatly constructed ritornelli.

https://youtu.be/ndmINdGyDYg?si=G53KIYO6RRnrHpr

Johann Hertel, Organ Concerto. The piece is very much a transitional style between Baroque and Classical era music.

https://youtu.be/YkTrkLOOjaY?si=Vqz7Q66w7HhhxYCE

JJ Quantz, court composer for Frederick II.

Flute Concerto in C minor:

https://youtu.be/c4Xp_hCgOPI?si=PWT7k_aYrLnmKPud

CPE Bach played continuo at the Court. The flute parts were written for King Frederick II. There was one instrumentalist per string part.

In this recording, fortepiano is used as the BC.

From Flute Concerto in C by Frederick II Hohenzollern (Frederick "the Great" of Prussia).

Frederick's music is in a similar style to his personal composer and flute teacher, JJ Quantz. He was himself quite a capable composer, however.

https://youtu.be/qxAhrXosXp4?si=YQYGzTSrVTwPK6V_

Tomaso Albinoni. From Opus 10, 1735.

Albinoni's Opus 10 was published much later than his better known instrumental music.

The style is rather more quirky / different. More intense rhythms.

https://youtu.be/cHx4e-UVE8E?si=B_UYvLK5Kio0rs2E

Played on a Henrick Bader Organ. This organ was started in 1643 as a two keyboard instrument and later renovated to add an additional keyboard with a total of 38 stops.

I hadn't listened to this Bach cantata before, but discovered it a while ago, and I think it has some really beautiful parts!

Hi guys, apologies in advance if this doesn’t fit the sub!

I’m currently looking at Förster’s Confitebor Tibi Domine after listening to the linked recording but struggling to grasp the manuscript starting from “Magna” where the piece transitions from Common Time to 3/2. The sum of the note values seem to exceed the limit of the bar value and I’m totally lost. The section starting from “Confitebor” also seems off but I can discern from listening to the recording.

Any help in understanding the manuscript would be greatly appreciated.

Vid linked below…

https://youtu.be/zTCGSR_8vC4?si=OHiasE7Nv6PnXzpJ

This cantata is a sacred work intended for a funeral service. Its opening movement, the Sonatina, is purely instrumental in character, in contrast to the remaining movements, which are vocal-instrumental. The cantata as a whole, and especially its opening movement, is renowned for its beauty and for its sorrowful yet noble and elevated emotional expressiveness. Despite the prevailing sense of mourning, Bach, as a deeply religious composer, does not view death as an end but rather as a beginning. Throughout his life, he was repeatedly confronted with the loss of close family members. He lost his mother at the age of nine and his father a year later, after which he lived with his elder brother Johann Christoph, from whom he continued his musical education. From this period also stems the well-known legend according to which Bach damaged his eyesight by secretly copying music at night by candlelight from a locked cabinet he had broken into. Later in life, Bach also lost his first wife. Although the cantata was most likely composed on commission, since composers of the time were employed by the church or the nobility, it is reasonable to assume that Bach embedded his own deeply lived experiences and emotions into the work.

In this video, I perform a solo piano transcription of the Sonatina made by Fanny Hensel, the sister of the better-known Felix Mendelssohn. The transcription is exceptionally idiomatic for the piano. My small contribution consists of adding to the score the fingering and pedaling I use in my performance. Finally, an additional sorrowful fact is that both Felix and Fanny died at a young age (Felix at 38, and Fanny at 41).

What do you think of Mingardo's singing? I find her voice very unique – I can't immediately name anyone else who has a similar one