Kellner: Sacred Cantatas

Johann Peter Kellner is an outstanding example of the Central German countryside’s flourishing music culture. A rich music culture existed not only in Thuringia’s residence towns but also in the country, and it attained a considerable level during the eighteenth century. The structure of Kellner’s cantatas is uniform: introductory chorus- recitative- aria- chorale. The wedding cantata contains a second recitative prior to the concluding chorus. Influences from Johann Sebastian Bach and Gottfried Heinrich Stolzel and increasingly from CPE Bach are eminent in the composition of these works. They arose during the transition in musical styles between the Baroque and the use of empfindsam or gallant stylistic means. These cantatas from the generation of Bach’s pupils have once again been rendered audible after some 250 years and are now being made available to a broader public on the present recording produced at a historic stie with the use of the restored Kellner-Weise organ in the organo obligato duets.