Bach's Coffee Cantata

Simon Heighes compares recordings of Bach's Coffee Cantata and chooses his favourite.

Among Bach's secular cantatas, perhaps the most famous and frequently recorded is Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht – the Coffee Cantata – BWV 211.

Probably composed in 1734 for a performance at Leipzig's Zimmermann Coffee House with the student group collegium musicum, the comic cantata satirises the Saxon obsession with coffee, depicting a family dispute between father and daughter, Schlendrian and Liesgen, at odds about the benefits of the hot drink.