Peasant Cantata
Tim Crawford's other recent work has involved an examination of the musical sources for J.S. Bach's so-called 'Peasant Cantata' BWV212. This research, which was presented at a King's College IAMS (Institute of Advanced Musical Study) Colloquium in March 1996, will form the basis of an extended article in due course.
A number of the tunes used by Bach, yet unknown to Bach scholarship, in the cantata have been discovered. Many of these are in tablature manuscripts for the lute or other plucked-string instruments of the time, and many are in the 'Polish' style, which may have had a pastoral connotation for the composer and his patron, Carl Heinrich von Dieskau, who is known to have been a connoiseur of lute music.