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The Cantata Cycle 1716-1717 (also known as the Concertante Cycle) is a series of cantatas written by Georg Philipp Telemann while he was Frankfurt's Director of Municipal Music. In addition to composing music for civic occasions, he conducted and composed for several churches in the city, including the Katharinenkirche and the Barfüßerkirche where he was Kapellmeister. During his time in Frankfurt (1712–1721), he composed five new year-long cycles of sacred music for the Sundays and holy days of the ecclesiastical calendar. He also completed several cycles which he had begun earlier in Eisenach where he had been the leader of the court singers. After taking up his post in Hamburg in 1721, he continued to supply Frankfurt with cantata cycles — one complete cycle every three years, as part of an arrangement to maintain his citizenship of that city.
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Scores
Between 1712 and Telemann’s death in 1767 copyists in Frankfurt produced a large collection of performance materials for his religious cantatas, which are currently preserved in Frankfurt's Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek (City and University Library). There are relatively few of these scores available in modern editions. However, the Frankfurt Telemann Society has begun a project in conjunction with Habsburger Verlag to publish modern editions of the scores, particularly the early Frankfurt cantata cycles. These appear in the Frankfurter Telemann-Ausgaben series.
Recording
The cantata for the Second Sunday in Lent from this cycle, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis TWV 1:843 can be heard on:
Set to a poem by Erdmann Neumeister, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis tells a story from the Gospel of St.Mark in which a woman asks Jesus to heal her daughter who is possessed by the devil.