A Woman’s Voice in Baroque Music: Mariane Von Ziegler and J. S. Bach

At the end of his second year in Leipzig, J.S. Bach composed nine sacred cantatas to texts by Leipzig poet Mariana von Ziegler (1695-1760). Despite the fact that these cantatas are Bach’s only compositions to texts by a female poet, the works have been largely ignored in the Bach literature. Dr Mark Peters presents the first comprehensive account of this repertory, providing a significant new perspective on both Ziegler as poet and cantata librettist and Bach as cantata composer.

Dr Mark A. Peters is Associate Professor of Music at Trinity Christian College, USA. His publications include articles in BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute and the monograph Claude Debussy As I Knew Him and Other Writings of Arthur Hartmann (2003), with Samuel Hsu and Sidney Grolnic. In 2006, Peters received the William H. Scheide prize from the American Bach Society for his article, A Reconsideration of Bach’s Role as Text Redactor in the Ziegler Cantatas (BACH, 2005).