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| Tuesday, December 8
Bach salutes a Queen On today's date in 1733, a goodly number of Leipzig's music lovers must have crowded in Zimmermann's Coffee House for what was billed as an "extra-ordinary" concert of that city's Collegium Musicum. The occasion was the performance of a new festive cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, written to celebrate the 34th birthday of Maria Josepha, the Imperial Electress of Saxony, Queen of Poland, and Archduchess of Austria. In her day, Maria Josepha was famous as a patroness of music and musicians, so undoubtedly a lavish presentation copy of Bach's score would be sent off to Dresden, where she had already accumulated a large library of scores for performance in the lavish Music Salon of her palace. Maria Josepha was also famous, at least among her royal peers, for being a cold, unapproachable and thoroughly unpleasant person. On top of all that, she was cursed, as more than one contemporary put it, with "extraordinary physical ugliness." Oh well, we hope she had the good sense to have her Dresden musicians put on a private performance of Bach's public tribute. Not one to let a good tune go to waste, Bach, for his part, arranged to give this lavish birthday music another airing the following year, when, on December 25, 1734, it resurfaced in church as the opening section of his "Christmas Cantata." We can only speculate if eyebrows were raised when a few Leipzig parishioners recognized the birthday music they heard for the Imperial Electress recycled for the Baby Jesus. |  | Music Played on Today's Program: Additional Information:
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