Obscure composer of the week:

Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703). A cousin of JSB, his music is startlingly original with a real gift for colourful word setting and unusual harmonic twists. I’ve done a couple of motets by him in the last few months and heard a cantata for alto and strings sung by a brilliant young countertenor Iestyn Davies. In some ways this music reminds me of a German refraction of Purcell (a contemporary of Johann Christoph Bach), where it continues to sound surprising even after one becomes better acquainted with it.

I’ve also gained a new appreciation for Schutz (kind of the beginning of this wonderful era in German composition that culminated with Bach) as a result of my wall-to-wall-German Baroque week in Cambridge. We had the opportunity to perform the Schutz ‘Seven Last Words of Christ’ in the final concert over the weekend. It is a stunning, beautifully dark work for 5 vocal soloists (four of who share the role of the Evangelist with a low tenor/high baritone as Jesus). The instrumentation is appropriately sombre: 3 violas, 2 cellos and continuo. Schutz manages to look back to the colourfully expressive consort writing of the Renaissance as well as employing Caccini’s method of somewhat speech-like monody. We had a cracking group of soloists and the band played sensitively for the singers. I look forward to singing this work again some Lent in a dark church somewhere...

I'm officially sick of Baroque music for at least a little while.