This CD marks the recording premiere of four cantatas by Gottfried August Homilius (1715-1785) for Advent and Christmas. Homilius was the number-one composer of Protestant church music during the second half of the eighteenth century and during his lifetime was regarded as “perhaps today’s very best church composer”. After his death the lexicographer Ernst Ludwig Gerber expressed the view that he was “without contradiction our greatest church composer”. Homilius’s music already displays elements of early Classicism and the sensibility of the empfindsamer Stil, his cantata choruses are frequently homophonic and songlike in design, and polyphonic sections are rather rare. His cantatas composed around 1776 prove to be works of individual design and conception and attest to his mastery as a composer. Arias of great tonal beauty, the naturalness of their expression, and the dramatic suspense of the various numbers continue to fascinate listeners even today!