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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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The Early Music Show

Music: Classical: Early Music

Performance and news from the world of early music.

An exploration of early music, looking at early developments in musical performance and composition in Britain and abroad. UK only: please note that not all episodes are podcast.

The Early Music Show: Mariane von Ziegler

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Factual: History

Mariane von Ziegler

05/06/2010

BBC Radio 3 - The Early Music Show, Mariane von Ziegler

Catherine Bott examines Bach's cantata collaboration with author Mariane von Ziegler.

Catherine Bott examines Bach's cantata collaboration with author Mariane von Ziegler - a unique relationship which brought a woman's voice into the male-dominated Lutheran church.

Catherine Bott examines JS Bach's cantata collaboration with authoress Mariane von Ziegler - a unique relationship which, as Mark A Peters in his new book about the poetess argues, brought a "woman's voice to Baroque Music".  

In establishing his Protestant Church, Martin Luther had been very specific about the role of women - there wasn't one. It is all the more extraordinary then, that JS Bach, a devout Lutheran, and Cantor at one of the church's most prestigious institutions, St Thomas's in Leipzig, should have undertaken a collaboration with a local authoress for a series of weekly cantatas for use in the liturgy, bringing a woman's interpretation of the biblical texts into the heart of the church service.

Mariane von Ziegler was a local poet who felt passionately for the intellectual rights of women. She would eventually emerge as Germany's first female Poet Laureate. Her cantata texts arguably inspired Bach to a different pattern of cantata writing. Together, in 1725, they created a sequence of nine new cantatas for St Thomas's. 

In this programme Catherine Bott, looks back on the life and career of Mariane, considering her achievement alongside a rich selection of music drawn from the Bach/von Ziegler collaboration.

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