Cantus Cölln . Konrad Junghänel

Johann Sebastian Bach's great oeuvre was not separate from the musical life of Germany at the time, but was in fact embedded in the local tradition. The fact that the Bachs were an exceptionally outstanding musical family undoubtedly played a crucial part in this. By the end of the seventeenth century the family could already look back on several generations of good to very good musicians, in both composition and performance. The fact that the majority of this musical legacy has been preserved is largely due to Johann Sebastian's mania for collecting. For more than fifty years after the Second World War, no trace was found of his collection, commonly known as the 'Altbachisches Archiv'. It was only a few years ago that the Bach family's musical memory was rediscovered in the state archives in Kiev and was then returned to Berlin. Since then, Cantus Cölln has proved itself to be the champion of this intriguing and extremely varied repertoire, which illuminates more than one aspect of the background from which Bach's genius was able to emerge.