Beloved and Beautiful

"This album uses the biblical book "Song of Songs" as its basis; four composers setting parts of the biblical ode with specific variants according to usage. Georg Bohm (1661-1733) most likely was a student of Pachelbel and an appointed organist in the city of Luneberg where JS Bach was to show up two years later. We do know that CPE Bach referred to Bohm as his father's "teacher", and several manuscripts indicate some organ music of Bach was written in the house of Bohm. Only a few of Bohm's cantatas have survived, this impressive effort being one of them. The Netherlands Bach Society proves their mettle time and time again and so once more here. Though I am usually rigorously opposed to such small ensembles, like the use of a string quartet here, the soundness of the performance and particulars of the playing win me over." (AudAud.com ****)

Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, a collection of love songs grew up. Under the title of the "Most beautiful of songs", they found a home in the Old Testament-it was Martin Luther who first gave them the name of "Song of songs"-and since that time they have inspired and fascinated a vast number of theologians, mystics, philosophers, poets, painters, and, last but not least, composers. Particularly during the Baroque period, these poetic, sensual, vividly descriptive texts were set over and over again to music, and they inspired librettists to expand on the original texts. Some of the most beautiful settings of the Song of Songs were produced in Germany. One classic example is the motet for double chorus, Steh auf, meine Freundin (Arise, my beloved) (SWV 498) by Heinrich Schütz. It is among the few of his surviving compositions which have not been printed. We still know little of the background for this lively work; it has been dated approximately 1650.