Purchase tickets HERE or at the door. 

The All Saints Choir presents Dieterich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri as a fundraiser for the Donald Teeters Memorial Music Fund.

Published in 1680 with the subtitle “sung whole-heartedly in the humblest devotion” , this cycle of seven cantatas contemplates different parts of Christ’s crucified body—feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face—reflecting both medieval devotional traditions and the seventeenth-century pietist movement.

Membra Jesu nostri remains one of the most profound Passion meditations of the Baroque era. Each cantata follows a simple structure: an instrumental opening, a choral movement setting biblical text, three intimate solo arias based on Arnulf von Löwen’s thirteenth-century poem Salve mundi salutare, and a return to the opening chorus.

Within this consistent framework, Buxtehude presents seven unique musical portraits rendered through various textures and strategic instrumental choices. While most of the cantatas feature two violins, violone, and continuo, the sixth cantata, Ad cor (To the heart), introduces a consort of five viols as a distinctly rich sonority at the heart of the cycle.