New in Bach digital

We have recently made available in Bach digital the English translations of the libretti of all of J. S. Bach's vocal works. These translations were made by Zuell Philip Ambrose and first appeared in 1983 in the booklets accompanying Helmut Rilling's recordings of the sacred cantatas. They are based primarily on Werner Neumann, "Sämtliche von Johann Sebastian Bach vertonte Texte" (Leipzig, 1974). In the following years he completed the translations of all of Bach's other vocal works (i.e., the secular cantatas, the oratorios, the motets, and the Magnificat) and published them in two volumes in 2006 ("J. S. Bach: The Vocal Texts in English Translation with Commentary," Philadelphia 2006). Ambrose's translations are characterized by extraordinary care, as evidenced, among other things, by his success in retaining the meter and word order of the original German texts. Ambrose (b. 1936) is professor emeritus of classical languages and literature at the University of Vermont, where he taught Greek and Latin from 1962 until his retirement. His research focuses predominantly on Greek drama and Latin epic, but also includes studies of classical rhetoric and mythic topoi in the libretti of Bach's lyric poets.