Concert Royal Köln - Jauchzt, ihr frohen Christenscharen (2020)

The Thuringian composer Christoph Förster was born on 30 November 1693 in Bibra. He received his first musical education with the organist Pitzler. From 1710 he studied with Johann David Heinichen in Weißenfels and then with Georg Friedrich Kaufmann in Merseburg, where he soon became concertmaster in the Hofkapelle. Trips to Leipzig and Dresden are documented for the year 1719. In 1723 Förster travelled from Bohemia to Prague for the coronation of Charles VII and met important musical personalities such as Johann Joseph Fux, Antonio Caldara, Francesco Conti and others.

After the death of the Duke of Saxony-Merseburg, he applied in 1743 for the office of the Vice-Kapellmeister in Rudolstadt - but in the absence of a vacancy without remuneration - which he held until his imminent death on 6 December 1745. According to a list from 1743, the Rudolstädter Hofkapelle was quite large with about 25 musicians and had flutes, oboes, bassoons, trumpets, timpani and French horns as well as chorale boys in addition to strings and keyboard instruments. His compositional oeuvre includes numerous church cantatas, psalm and Sanctus settings, a mass and abundant instrumental music, including orchestral works such as overtures and symphonies, instrumental concertos and small chamber music.

Gerber describes his church cantatas as: "...perhaps the most pleasant and pleasing church pieces one had around the middle of the century" Förster's instrumental compositions already strongly follow the gallant and sensitive style and point the way between late Baroque and early Classical. The change in style can be clearly seen in the individual works.

His works were well known during his lifetime and recognized by the musical world; Marpurg, in his legend of some music saints (1786), put him among the first finer melodists of his time: "..." Förster was a subscriber to Georg Philipp Telemann's Tafelmusik and his Paris quartets in 1730. It was also Telemann who published Förster's Sei Duetti op. 1 in Paris in 1737.