J. S. Bach - Das Kantatenwerk is a classical music recording project initiated by the record label of

Telefunken Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the ''Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ('General electricity company'). The name "Telefunken" app ...

in 1971 (first recordings had been made in December 1970) to record all 193 sacred

Bach cantata The cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, known as Bach cantatas ( German: ), are a body of work consisting of over 200 surviving independent works, and at least several dozen that are considered lost. As far as known, Bach's earliest ca ...

s. The project was entrusted to

Nikolaus Harnoncourt Johann Nikolaus Harnoncourt or historically Johann Nikolaus Graf de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt-Unverzagt; () (6 December 1929 – 5 March 2016) was an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music ...

and Gustav Leonhardt. Each conductor had his own instrumental ensemble, based in Austria and the Netherlands respectively. The project was the first attempt at a complete recording of the sacred cantatas, but Harnoncourt and Leonhardt were still working on the cantatas when a project which started later, led by

Helmuth Rilling Helmuth Rilling (born 29 May 1933) is a German choral conductor and an academic teacher. He is the founder of the Gächinger Kantorei (1954), the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart (1965), the Oregon Bach Festival (1970), the Internationale Bachakademi ...

, Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart completed a recording of the sacred cantatas and oratorios on Bach's 300th birthday, 21 March 1985. Since Rilling recorded on modern instruments the Telefunken (then Teldec) project could at least claim, when the project completed in 1990, to be the first recording using historical instruments, with boys' choirs and boy soloists for most soprano and some alto parts. Adult soloists included the tenors Kurt Equiluz and

Marius van Altena Marius van Altena, born Marius Hendrikus Schweppe (10 October 1938) is a Dutch tenor. He was one of the pioneers of historically informed performance of Baroque and Renaissance music. He has also sung Baroque opera, worked as conductor and as an a ...

.Text and Act : Essays on Music and Performance: Essays on Music p307 Berkeley

Richard Taruskin Richard Filler Taruskin (April 2, 1945 – July 1, 2022) was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as ...

Professor of Music University of California - 1995 "The Teldec Bach Cantatas Teldec's series of Bach church cantatas, begun in 1971, when the German label was still called Telefunken, is now ... The one singer associated with the project from first release to last was the tenor Kurt Equiluz. An exception to the use of male voices was made for cantatas nos. 51 and

199 Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 ''Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since the ...

, which were intended for a female soprano voice. Harnoncourt conducted his Concentus Musicus Wien with either the Wiener Sängerknaben or the

Tölzer Knabenchor The Tölzer Knabenchor (Tölz Boys' Choir) is a German boys' choir named after the Upper Bavarian city of Bad Tölz and since 1971 based in Munich. The choir is ranked among the most versatile and sought-after boys' choirs in the world. Hist ...

. Leonhardt's instrumental ensemble was the

Leonhardt-Consort Leonhardt-Consort, also known as the Leonhardt Baroque Ensemble, was a group of instrumentalists which its director, the keyboard player Gustav Leonhardt founded in 1955 to play baroque music. The Consort was active until around 1990, although some ...

. Leonardt's usual choirs were the boys of the Tölzer Knabenchor and Knabenchor Hannover (Holland does not have a strong tradition of boy sopranos),Koopman, T. (1996). Recording Bach's Early Cantatas. ''Early Music'', 24(4), 605-621. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3128058 (subscription required) and the adult

Collegium Vocale Gent Collegium Vocale Gent is a Belgian musical ensemble of vocalists and supporting instrumentalists, founded by Philippe Herreweghe. The group is dedicated to historically informed performance. Founding and program Collegium Vocale Gent was founde ...

, while he featured the

choir of King's College, Cambridge The Choir of King's College, Cambridge is an English Anglican choir. It is considered one of today's most accomplished and renowned representatives of the great English choral tradition. It was created by King Henry VI, who founded King's Col ...

in the first volume. Shortly before the project finished Telefunken sold the Teldec label to Warner in 1988.

Format

The initial releases were LPs. The first CD edition was a direct reissue of the LP edition, where each original 2-LP album was printed on a single or double CD.Complete Cantata Cycle on Teldec
bach-cantatas.com The collection is available as a boxed set of 60 CDs in the Warner Classics ''

Das Alte Werk Teldec (Telefunken-Decca Schallplatten GmbH) is a German record label in Hamburg, Germany. Today the label is a property of Warner Music Group. History Teldec was a producer of (first) shellac and (later) vinyl records. The Teldec manufacturing ...

'' series. In 2000 it was included in a complete edition of Bach's works.

References

{{Church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach 1970s classical albums 1980s classical albums Recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach *

Format

See also

References