Various - Gottfried Heinrich St�lzel: Ein L�mmlein geht und tr�gt die Schuld, Passion Oratorio

During the more recent past, finds in libraries have made it clear that Johann Sebastian Bach held his Gotha colleague Gottfried Heinrich St�lzel in high regard. But what was it about St�lzel�s music that made Bach and some of his contemporaries so interested in it? As in the text of the famous Brockes-Passion, which was set to music by Telemann and Handel and then later by St�lzel, what is involved here is not a biblical text expanded by arias but a free poetic composition based on the Passion. While the Evangelist, like a live reporter, documents Jesus�s last hours, the 'Faithful Soul' and the 'Christian Church' act from the perspective of knowledge of how events will turn out. The oratorio is divided into twenty-two 'Reflections' concentrating the various perspectives of the three allegorical figures on particular moments in the action. This impressive music beyond doubt will have a very individual effect on each and every hearer � as was also the case with Bach, who some years later once again took the manuscripts from his music library and used the aria of the thirteenth meditation, 'Dein Kreuz, o Br�utigam meiner Seele' as the basis for his own aria 'Bekennen will ich seinen Namen' (BWV 200).