Par BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN. All of Bach ’s six authenticated motets were written between 1723 and 1727 for St Thomas’ Church, Leipzig, where Bach was appointed as director of music in 1723. During this period, Bach composed most of his cantatas, and it seems likely that for ordinary Sunday services he used existing motets from the seventeenth century tradition, reserving his own motet compositions …

from Schmelli's Hymnal for Voice and Guitar BWV 439-507. Johann Sebastian Bach?s arrangements of the ?69 Sacred Songs? from the Musical Hymnal by Georg Christian Schemelli (Leipzig, 1736) have long been part of the German language vocal concert repertoire and a mainstay in vocal pedagogy. Originally, only these 69 of the 954 hymns in the collection were published with a single bass line as the acc…

Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden BWV 230 - Motet for four-part mixed choir.
In Bach’s voluminous output of music the motets form a small group of modest proportions, particularly as compared to the200 or so surviving cantatas. In historical perspective, however, the corpus of motets is especially distinguished, being the only part of Bach’s vocal œuvre whose post-1750 tradition has remained…