There were no precedents, no earlier attempts to perform all Bach’s surviving church cantatas on the appointed feast day and all within a single year, for us to draw on or to guide us. ‘When we embarked on the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage in Weimar on Christmas Day 1999 we had no real sense of how the project would turn out. Most of the concerts were recorded by the ensemble’s record label, Soli Deo Gloria, which was specifically created for that purpose and later released 27 volumes of live recordings from that year. As both musical and spiritual pilgrims we became participants in a living process, a journey of discovery both physically and emotionally.

It was a remarkable and rewarding experience for all who took part, as well as for the audiences who came to hear us in thirteen European countries and in New York. The cantatas were performed on the liturgical feasts for which they were composed, in a year-long musical pilgrimage encompassing some of the most beautiful churches throughout Europe (including many where Bach himself performed) and culminating in three concerts in New York over the Christmas festivities at the end of the millennial year. On Christmas Day 1999 a unique celebration of the new Millennium began in the Herderkiche in Weimar, Germany: the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner set out to perform all of Johann Sebastian Bach’s surviving church cantatas in the course of the year 2000, the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death.

Bach cantata pilgrimage