'Acquainted with Night' is a cycle of six songs for alto and strings harp and timpani. The texts are all concerned with different aspects of night. The first song ‘Lullaby’ to a poem by Beaumont and Fletcher seeks to evokethe ‘care-charming’ powers of sleep. The second a setting of Robert Frost’s ‘Acquainted with the night’ is concerned with the lonely world of a strange city at night and the music is characterised by an insistently repeatedfigure in the accompaniment. The third song contrasts the calmness of the night with the turbulence in a lover’s mind - the poem is by the Earl of Surrey. ‘Out in the dark’ a poem by Edward Thomas is the text of the fourthsong. It is in the form of a scherzo and deals with the mystery and strangeness of night and as the poet puts it the ‘might’ of night. It is as the poet says a hymn to night and the chordal nature of the accompanimentsuggests this quality. This song leads directly into the last which is in fact a reprise of the opening ‘Lullaby’ so completing the cycle.

Version of 1736 (final version)Bach’s St. Matthew Passion passed through several stages in its progress towards its final form stages that today cannot be completely reconstructed. It may be taken as certain that the work was performed on Good Friday 1729 in St. Thomas’s Church Leipzig in a version of which the copy made by Bach’s son-in-law Johann Christoph Altnickol gives us an approximate idea. There is no earlier extant autograph score than that of the later version which may probably be dated 1736 and on which the present edition is based.- Study score format 22.5 x 16.5cm- Urtext of the New Bach Edition-Full score performance material (BA5038) vocal score (BA5038-90) and study score (TP196) available for sale