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Alex Potter, Anne-Kathryn Olsen, Arp Schnittger Organ, Bach, BWV 1053, BWV 169, BWV 35, BWV 96, cantatas, Christelle Monney, Gli Angeli Genève, Grauhof, Il Gardellino, Leo van Doeselaar, Mühlhausen, Stephan MacLeod, Treutmann organ
Over the summer and fall of 1726, Bach wrote several solo cantatas with the organ as “duet partner” for the vocal soloist. Cantata 169 Gott soll allein mein Herze haben, written for this 18th Sunday after Trinity, is one of these. Until 2023, I had always heard and seen these solo cantatas performed the way you can see in this video, with the organist playing on a small “portative” organ, on the same stage as the other members of the orchestra.
When in February 2023, ensemble Il Gardellino released a CD featuring two of these solo cantatas with countertenor Alex Potter, I at first merely started listening to it because I was excited to hear one of my favorite soloists perform together with one of my favorite ensembles. The album cover doesn’t reveal more than those two names, and neither did the social media posts that alerted me about the release at the time.
But as I heard the first few notes I started smiling: instead of a portative organ I heard a large church organ! And oh, what an incredibly gorgeous instrument! Turns out this album was recorded at the Stiftskirche St. Georg (collegiate church of St. George) in Grauhof (Goslar), Germany, using that church’s famous Treutmann organ from 1737 (pictured above), played by Dutch organist Leo van Doeselaar. Bach wrote the organ part of these solo cantatas clearly with a large church organ in mind. However, because of challenges of tuning pitch, space, and place, playing these cantatas on large church organs can often not be achieved in concerts. So we’re lucky to have recordings like these!
I’ve listened to this album many times since, because I appreciate Alex Potter’s sensitivity to the text, but also because I love how the rainbow of colors in Alex Potter’s voice is perfectly matched by the organ’s sound, thanks to Van Doeselaar’s fabulous registration.*
Find this recording on YouTube or on Spotify. Cantata 169 is the second cantata on this album. Please consider purchasing the recording to support the artists, for example on Amazon if you are in the USA or directly from the record label if you are in Europe.
Please find the score for Cantata 169 Gott soll allein mein Herze haben here, and the German texts with English translations here.
Coming back to Van Doeselaar’s registration, when you listen to this album, don’t miss the organ piece between the two cantatas, the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564. Van Doeselaar uses the “Glockenspiel” stop in the first measures of the Toccata. The stop was added during a recent renovation of the organ. When I asked Van Doeselaar about using it here, he said that he knows Bach appreciated a Glockenspiel stop since it is listed in his 1708 specification for the new organ in Mühlhausen**, and that he just had to let that shine through in the Toccata, he couldn’t help himself, “it was too much fun!”
This cantata’s text is based on a passage from the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Matthew 22:34–46, in which Jesus formulates the “double commandment”: “Love God with all your heart” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Only the recitative (movement 6) addresses the “Love your neighbor as yourself”; the preceding movements focus on “Gottesliebe” (love for or from God), in its two meanings: humankind’s subjective love for God, which implies a rejection of worldly pleasures (movements 2,3, and 5); and God’s objective love for people, which comes to people as a gift (movement 4).
If the music reminds you of something, you’re right! For the first two movements of his harpsichord concerto BWV 1053 in E major Bach arranged movement 1 and 5 from this cantata.*** However, the cantata movements are not the original pieces of music either, but rather arrangements of a lost concerto. For a long time it was assumed that this was a concerto composed in Köthen for a woodwind instrument or a viola, and there are many recordings of this piece as an oboe concerto. Only in 2005 Christoph Wolff suggested that it may have been an organ concerto performed in 1725 at the Sophienkirche in Dresden.
There is, hooray, one more cantata for this Sunday featuring Alex Potter’s gorgeous singing: Cantata 96 Herr Christ, der einge Gottessohn from Gli Angeli Genève’s Chorale Cantata Box I spotlighted last week. Please find this recording here on Youtube and here on Spotify. Exceptionally, in this cantata Bach gives the cantus firmus in the opening chorus to the altos. And on Gli Angeli Genève’s recording, the a capella chorale preceding the cantata is sung by two altos and one soprano: Alex Potter, Christelle Monney, and Anne-Kathryn Olsen. Read my post from 2017 to learn why Bach brings the Christmas story into a Trinity cantata, and find a video by the J.S. Bach Foundation’s in my post from 2020.
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© Wieneke Gorter, October 4, 2026.
*When talking about an organ, “registration” means the organist’s decision regarding which sound registers, called “stops,” to use when playing a piece of music. If you would like to know more about this art, please watch this video by the Netherlands Bach Society, in which Van Doeselaar explains his approach and compares it to the work of a chef. The organ in this video is the Arp Schnittger organ in Groningen I mentioned and pictured in my previous post.
**As organist of the Blasiuskirche in Mühlhausen, from 1707 to 1708, Bach initiated a complete renovation of the organ by local builder Johann Friedrich Wender. He however already left Mühlhausen before the instrument would be finished in 1709. The organ was reconstructed in the 1950s at the instigation of Albert Schweitzer based on Bach’s specification drawn up in 1708.
***The music of the third movement is the same as the opening chorus of Cantata 49, which is part of that same group of solo cantatas with organ from 1726.
