J. S. Bach: The Arnstadt Connection

Gramophone Award–winners Vox Luminis made a splash in their BEMF début at the 2015 Festival and return alongside instrumentalists from Quicksilver with another illuminating study of the musical legacy of the Bach family. In the autumn of 1705, the 20-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach walked 250 miles to the city of Lübeck to meet the famous organist Dieterich Buxtehude. His journey began in Arnstadt, hometown of his father’s cousins, Johann Michael Bach and Johann Christoph Bach and their father Heinrich, all composers in their own right. Director Lionel Meunier leads an exploration of the cantatas of all five of these great composers, culminating in J. S. Bach’s Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4, believed to have been written when the young master was employed in Arnstadt.

Join us at 7pm for a Pre-Concert Talk, entitled The Arnstadt Bach Clan, with Harvard Professor Emeritus Christoph Wolff.