Michael Maul (born 1978) is a German musicologist noted for his work on Johann Sebastian Bach. Maul was born in Leipzig, and is still based in the city, although his work at the Bach Archive has involved travel to archives and libraries across Germany in search of new sources relating to Bach. He is also artistic director of Leipzig's annual Bach festival. [1]
Maul was awarded a PhD by the University of Freiburg for a dissertation on Baroque opera. It formed the basis of his book Barockoper in Leipzig (1693-1720).
Maul's work attracted international attention with a discovery he made in 2005 in Weimar's Duchess Anna Amalia Library. This was a hitherto overlooked manuscript containing Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn, BWV 1127, the first previously unknown vocal work by Bach to be found in 70 years. [2] [3]
Further research in Weimar identified other previously unknown manuscripts in Bach's hand, this time of music by other composers, throwing light on his musical education. [4]
Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?, BWV 8, is a church cantata for the 16th Sunday after Trinity by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is a chorale cantata, part of Bach's second cantata cycle. Bach performed it for the first time on 24 September 1724 in St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig. The cantata is scored for SATB singers, four wind instruments, strings and continuo.
In 1724 Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10, as part of his second cantata cycle. Taken from Martin Luther's German translation of the Magnificat canticle, the title translates as "My soul magnifies the Lord". Also known as Bach's German Magnificat, the work follows his chorale cantata format.
The New Bach Edition (NBE), is the second complete edition of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, published by Bärenreiter. The name is short for Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): New Edition of the Complete Works. It is a historical-critical edition of Bach's complete works by the Johann Sebastian Bach Institute (Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut) in Göttingen and the Bach Archive (Bach-Archiv) in Leipzig,
"Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn", BWV 1127, is Johann Sebastian Bach's October 1713 setting of a poem in 12 stanzas by Johann Anton Mylius, Superintendent of Buttstädt, a town in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. The poem is an acrostic dedicated to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, on his birthday. Bach, at the time employed as court organist by the Duke, set Mylius's ode as an aria in strophic form, that is a melody for soprano accompanied by continuo for the stanzas, alternated with a ritornello for strings and continuo. When all stanzas are sung, a performance of the work takes around 45 to 50 minutes.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80, is a chorale cantata for Reformation Day by Johann Sebastian Bach. He reworked it from one of his Weimar cantatas, Alles, was von Gott geboren, BWV 80a. The first Leipzig version of the church cantata, BWV 80b, may have been composed as early as 1723, some five months after Bach had moved to Leipzig. Some years later he reworked the cantata one more time, writing an extended chorale fantasia as its opening movement. The text of the BWV 80a version was written by Salomon Franck and contained one stanza of Martin Luther's hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott"; for his chorale cantata versions, BWV 80b and 80, Bach added the complete text of this Lutheran hymn.
Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar was a German prince, son by his second marriage of Johann Ernst III, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. Despite his early death he is remembered as a collector and commissioner of music and as a composer, some of whose concertos were arranged for harpsichord or organ by Johann Sebastian Bach, who was court organist in Weimar at the time.
Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191, is a church cantata written by the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and the only one of his church cantatas set to a Latin text. He composed the Christmas cantata in Leipzig probably in 1742, for a celebration by the university of Leipzig. The composition's three movements all derive from the Gloria of Bach's 1733 Kyrie–Gloria Mass, which the composer would later use as the Gloria of his Mass in B minor.
Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten!, BWV 172, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, composed in Weimar for Pentecost Sunday in 1714. Bach led the first performance on 20 May 1714 in the Schlosskirche, the court chapel in the ducal Schloss. Erschallet, ihr Lieder is an early work in a genre to which he later contributed complete cantata cycles for all occasions of the liturgical year.
Jesus Christus ist um unsrer Missetat willen verwundet is a St Mark Passion which originated in the early 18th century and is most often attributed to Reinhard Keiser. It may also have been composed by his father Gottfried or by Friedrich Nicolaus Bruhns. Johann Sebastian Bach produced three performance versions of the Passion, the last of which is a pasticcio with arias from George Frideric Handel's Brockes Passion. There are two other extant 18th-century versions of the Passion, both of them independent of Bach's versions. The Passion was performed in at least three cities in the first half of the 18th century: in Hamburg in 1707 and 1711, in Weimar around 1712, and in Leipzig in 1726 and around 1747.
The Bachfest Leipzig is a music festival which takes place annually, in the month of June, in the city of Leipzig, where J. S. Bach worked as the Thomaskantor from 1723 until his death in 1750. The current artistic director is Professor Michael Maul.
The Kyrie–Gloria Mass for double choir, BWV Anh. 167, is a mass composition in G major by an unknown composer. The work was likely composed in the last quarter of the 17th century. The composition has two sections, a Kyrie and a Gloria, each subdivided in three movements. It has twenty-two parts for performers: twelve parts for singers, and ten for instrumentalists, including strings, wind instruments and organ. Johann Sebastian Bach may have encountered the work around 1710, when he was employed in Weimar. In the 1730s he produced a manuscript copy of the Mass.
Johann Sebastian Bach worked at the ducal court in Weimar from 1708 to 1717. The composition of cantatas for the Schlosskirche on a regular monthly basis started with his promotion to Konzertmeister in March 1714.
Bach Digital, developed by the Bach Archive in Leipzig, is an online database which gives access to information on compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and members of his family. Early manuscripts of such compositions are a major focus of the website, which provides access to high-resolution digitized versions of many of these. Scholarship on manuscripts and versions of compositions is summarized on separate pages, with references to scholarly sources and editions. The database portal has been online since 2010.
The concerto transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach date from his second period at the court in Weimar (1708–1717). Bach transcribed for organ and harpsichord a number of Italian and Italianate concertos, mainly by Antonio Vivaldi, but with others by Alessandro Marcello, Benedetto Marcello, Georg Philipp Telemann and the musically talented Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. It is thought that most of the transcriptions were probably made in 1713–1714. Their publication by C.F. Peters in the 1850s and by Breitkopf & Härtel in the 1890s played a decisive role in the Vivaldi revival of the twentieth century.
"An Wasserflüssen Babylon" is a Lutheran hymn by Wolfgang Dachstein, which was first published in Strasbourg in 1525. The text of the hymn is a paraphrase of Psalm 137. Its singing tune, which is the best known part of the hymn and Dachstein's best known melody, was popularised as chorale tune of Paul Gerhardt's 17th-century Passion hymn "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld". With this hymn text, Dachstein's tune is included in the Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch.
An Wasserflüssen Babylon is a chorale fantasia for organ by Johann Adam Reincken, based on "An Wasserflüssen Babylon", a 16th-century Lutheran hymn by Wolfgang Dachstein. Reincken likely composed the fantasia in 1663, partly as a tribute to Heinrich Scheidemann, his tutor and predecessor as organist at St. Catherine's Church, Hamburg. With its 327 bars, it is the most extended repertoire piece of this kind. Reincken's setting is a significant representative of the north German style of organ music.
Pietro Torri's Magnificat in C major for double choir and orchestra likely dates from the 1690s. The work is scored for two SATB choirs, two trumpets, bassoon, strings and basso continuo. Its music opens with an instrumental introduction (sinfonia). Most of the composition's movements are either choral movements, in which all singers and instruments participate, or duets for two singers and a more limited instrumental accompaniment.
Peter Wollny is a German musicologist, a Bach scholar who has served the Bach Archive Leipzig beginning in 1993, and as its director from 2014. Wollny has contributed to the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, and has been an editor of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works. He has been professor at the University of Leipzig, and teaching internationally. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala.
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