Bach Club XVIII
CHORAL WORKSHOP
Saturday 31st October 2026
St Mary's Church, Battersea SW11 3NA
​14:15-17:00 (Registration from 14:00)
Directed by Scott Inglis-Kidger
‘Bach’s music is a world of its own — once entered, we never leave.’ – Gustav Leonhardt
Since launching in 2019, our Bach Club has explored the choruses and chorales of Bach's scared cantatas. The church cantata was central to musical life in eighteenth-century Lutheran Germany. Usually written for a particular Sunday or feast day in the church calendar, a cantata brought together biblical texts, chorales and newly written poetry in a sequence of choruses, recitatives and arias. By Bach’s time, the form had also absorbed elements of contemporary Italian opera, particularly the use of recitative and aria, placing these newer styles alongside the older Lutheran tradition of congregational hymnody. When Bach became Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723, responsibility for music at the city’s principal churches became a major part of his work. During his first years there he embarked on an ambitious programme of composing cantatas for the liturgical year, ultimately leaving a surviving body of more than 200 sacred cantatas. Whether you are a long-standing Bach Club singer or joining us for the first time, good preparation — or strong sight-reading — is essential so you can get the best out of this wonderful music. We have covered a considerable amount of repertoire since 2019, and in 2026 our journey continues.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
BWV 67 Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ
BWV 68 Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt
(Choruses and chorales only)
SCORES
Download and print HERE. Please note we will not be providing hard copies.
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