Thomanerchor, Leipzig

[Schenkerian]

They have to sit still for long periods!! Imagine that!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-luIhQt5Fak

[Peter]

Very interesting documentary. I think Bach would be well pleased!

[Schenkerian]

There's this, too, from Covid times!! And it's so 21st century. I note with this chorale, from a comparatively early cantata, that the famous organ introduction remains an ostinato which never takes up the melody line:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-dnD77HkZc

Having been into that revered church and stood beside Bach's grave I can tell you it's a profoundly moving experience.

[Peter]

There's this, too, from Covid times!! And it's so 21st century. I note with this chorale, from a comparatively early cantata, that the famous organ introduction remains an ostinato which never takes up the melody line:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-dnD77HkZc

Having been into that revered church and stood beside Bach's grave I can tell you it's a profoundly moving experience.

Thanks for that - it must have been very hard for the choir adapting to Covid, but ingenious how technology enables the music to continue. Isn't there some doubt as to the actual grave site of Bach?

[Schenkerian]

Thanks for that - it must have been very hard for the choir adapting to Covid, but ingenious how technology enables the music to continue. Isn't there some doubt as to the actual grave site of Bach?

Not according to Thomaskirche; his remains were elsewhere (another church) and interred in Thomaskirche after the war. But any German contributors here might know more.

[Peter]

Not according to Thomaskirche; his remains were elsewhere (another church) and interred in Thomaskirche after the war. But any German contributors here might know more.

Well I'd be a little suspicious of that - Vienna passes off the Eroicahaus and the Pasqualati apartment as genuine Beethoven abodes to the tourist.

[Schenkerian]

Bach was a famous man when he died. Record-keeping in Germany is generally excellent. If you watch "Who Do you Think You Are?" on TV you'd be absolutely amazed at the most obscure details about anonymous families which are regularly unearthed. I have faith in local German officials having recorded not only the details of Bach's date of death but also the whereabouts of his remains. He was originally buried under another church not far from Thomaskirche, which was bombed during WW2 and they removed the coffin to Thomaskirche afterwards. It says that in the blurb given to tourists, which I still have. It just seems to me odd that a family in search of ancestry on TV can find obscure details about the fate of far distant relatives in Germany, including subsequent generations, where they lived and died and that Bach's relics still remain contentious. For some. There's one very quick way of sorting it out for good; DNA testing of the type used to identify Richard the Third.

Whatever the Viennese people claim about Beethoven there are also irrefutable facts based on documentary evidence. He did live in that Pasqualati house but not in the apartment designated, as that is currently privately owned.