The Marian Consort: Looking Bach

The Marian Consort, “among the best singers in the world” (The Arts Desk, November 2025), explore the rich variety of Renaissance polyphony known to and performed by JS Bach and his choir at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig.

As well as copying out his own edition of Palestrina’s Missa sine nomine, Bach also performed works by sixteenth-century Italian and German composers from the anthology Florilegium portense, singing them so often that the books had to be replaced in 1729 as they had been ‘sung to pieces!’. Alongside these, we hear music by the Italian-influenced Heinrich Schütz, whose seminal Geistliche Chormusik is dedicated to the city of Leipzig and the musicians of the Thomanerchor, and Bach’s own double-choir motet Komm, Jesu, komm.