J.S. Bach - Jesus bleibet meine Freude from Cantata BWV 147 | Tölzer Knabenchor

Описание: Recorded
18 October 2025
Himmelfahrtskirche, Munich, Germany

Tölzer Knabenchor
Concerto München
Michael Hofstetter, Conductor

The chorale “Jesus bleibet meine Freude” often mistranslated as “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” is probably JS Bach’s most famous tune. The music appears twice with different texts in Cantata 147 “Herz, und Mund, und Tat und Leben”. Customarily, the chorale is taken at a fairly brisk tempo, but for this performance Conductor Michael Hofstetter defies orthodoxy with a far more solemn, introspective, almost autumnal pace.

Hofstetter explains:
“Chorales composed in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries have always been moments of meditation and spirituality, often described with terms such as ‘gravitas’. Accordingly, cantata chorales were sung at a tempo that we today would consider very slow—roughly equivalent to a metronome marking of around 50 per quarter note. The deliberate solemnity embodied the holiness of liturgical celebration. We find evidence of this in Michael Praetorius’s “Syntagma Musicum” and other historical sources.

Chorales were never intended to be dramatically expressive in an operatic manner. Unfortunately, even most historically informed performance ensembles have adopted a faster, modern tempi for Bach’s chorales that only became standard since the 1920s.”

Prof. Michael Hofstetter, Conductor
Intendant Gluck Festspiele

Video Producer: Christoph Engel (Projekt-Engel)
Audio Engineers: Stefan Gawlick and Gaetan Christian Sauvageau
The BACH ENTWURFF PROJECT

The BACH ENTWURFF PROJECT produces Modern World Premieres of Bach Cantatas Performed to the Exact Specifications of JS Bach’s 1730 Memorandum (“Entwurff”) on the proper performance of his cantatas. Bach asks for a choir of men and boys, three or four on a part. Soprano and alto solos are sung by boys; and all soloists sing as part of the choir ensemble. The Entwurff orchestra consists of at least 18 instrumentalists playing baroque instruments, plus additional members (such as trumpets) as required in the score. Both harpsichord and positive organ share obbligato and continuo duties, though Bach did not describe this feature of his cantata orchestra in his Entwurff. The Bach-Lehman tuning is used in the Entwurff series of performances and recordings.


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