On April 8, 1786, a memorable charity concert for the benefit of the medizinische Armeninstitut was held in Hamburg. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, aged 72, music director of the five main churches of Hamburg and choirmaster of the Johanneum high school, compared important works by his father Johann Sebastian and his contemporary Georg Friedrich Händel (1st part) with some -some of his own compositions (2nd part).
This concert can be considered the quintessence of his musical life. This was the first time, as far as we know, that the “Credo” from the Mass in B minor (BWV 232) by Johann Sebastian Bach was officially heard, the handwritten score of which was in his musical library. son. As this credo began without a prelude by the choir, Carl Philipp composed on this occasion a slow instrumental introduction for strings, sober but expressive; and closed this first part with two extracts (the aria “Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebt” and the “Hallelujah”) from Handel’s already famous Messiah . The only uncertainty hangs over the fact of knowing which symphony opened the second part of the concert. However, it is obvious that it was one of the four so-called “Hamburg” symphonies Wq. 183.
At the center of the program, Carl Philipp then performed his Magnificat (Wq. 215): his first major work for choir, composed in 1749 and reworked around 1779. In line with his father's mass, this solemn piece underlines the magnificence and the joy of the Virgin’s song, and the “universality” of the announced birth of Christ.
Finally, the conclusion was marked by the Heilig Wq. 217 with double choir, which the composer himself counted among his most successful creations and about which a critic had written in 1779: "And even if our Bach had composed nothing other than this Heilig, its name would have, from this single fact, enjoyed later posterity among music experts. »
