On 28th March 2026 at 7:00pm in St Martin’s Church, London Road, Worcester. WR5 2ED, the Elgar Chorale of Worcester will give a concert entitled ‘I was Glad’.
This will be a programme tracing the music of the baroque composers from Heinrich Schütz (1585 – 1672) Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) Johann Christoph Bach (1642 – 1703), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) to Georg Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759).
With Purcell’s I Was Glad, Handel’s As Pants the Hart we also sing Bach’s Lobet den Herrn, and such pieces by Johann Christoph Bach’s Unsers Herzens Freude hat ein Enda a 8, and Heinrich Schütz Deutches Magnificat, this concert gives us an idea of what choral music was around in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Heinrich Schütz is the earliest and longest lived of our composers we hear tonight. The musical talent of Heinrich Schütz was noticed when he was 13 and grew into one of Germany’s foremost composers of the time. Together with the Bach family, especially Johann Sebastian, Schütz is considered part of the German musical tradition. While many of his works are now lost, he was a prolific composer with more than 500 works surviving.
Henry Purcell was only just over 36 years old when he died, yet is considered to be one of the greatest of English composers. Born in Westminster he was at times, chorister, copyist while being mentored by the Masters of the Children of the Chapel Royal. The first piece known to have been written by Purcell when he was eleven, was a birthday ode to the King (Charles ll).
Johann Christoph Bach, a close relative of J.S. Bach, was a composer of note himself. He was organist of St George’s church in Eisenach the capital of Saxe-Eisenach and was employed as a member of the Ducal court.
Johann Sebastian Bach is perhaps the German composer that is of the baroque period his Passions, Mass in B minor and Art of Fugue, were and still are considered some of the best music ever written.
Finally, Georg Frideric Handel, had already made a name for himself as a composer in Germany when he came to England in 1710, settled in 1712 and only returned to Germany occasionally. He composed operas including Amadigi di Gaula and Acis and Galatea, but then 1737 transitioned to composing oratorios. For the next twenty years, works such as Saul, Israel in Egypt, Judas Maccabaeus and culminating in his Messiah, a tour de force. Continuing to compose oratorios he is also is known for his Music for the Royal Fireworks, Water Music suites and many more oratorios, operas cantatas and organ concertos.
The programme will include:
Deutches Magnificat. Heinrich Schütz
As Pants the Hart, Frideric Handel
Jehova quam multi sunt hostes mei!, Henry Purcell,
Jesu, Meine Freude, Johann Sebastian Bach
I Was Glad, Henry Purcell
Unsers Herzens Freude hat ein Enda a 8, Johann Christoph Bach
O God Thou art my God, Henry Purcell
Lobet den Herrn, Johann Sebastian Bach
Funeral Sentences, Henry Purcell:
Man that is born,
In the midst of life ,
Thou knowest Lord.
Directed by Piers Maxim
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Programme items and order may be amended.
