NEW recording!
Aart Bergwerff, Organ Professor at the Rotterdam Conservatory and cantor-organist of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in The Hague, Holland, plays music of Bach at Christ Church, New Brunswick, NJ.
Concerning speech
In the 15th century, at the end of which the New World was discovered, a Franciscan monk called Johannes Brugman was travelling ’round the Netherlands preaching. He met with much opposition that he overcame with his linguistic superiority, which has become proverbial.
It is a fact that the relationship between oratory and music was very strong in the 17th century and at the beginning of the 18th century. For a composer, writing music was like writing a speech. Performing the music was like the recitation of the words. Not only vocal music was based on text, but also instrumental music leaned heavily on text, the need to be clearly understandable weighing heavily… text from the CD
