J.S. Bach’s motets were seen as the pinnacle of virtuosic and expressive choral writing even in the late eighteenth century – a time when most of the composer’s output was entirely forgotten. Mozart famously enthused about ‘Singet dem Herrn’ and avidly studied its vocal parts, on a visit to Leipzig in 1789. Bach himself seems to have taken particular pride in the genre, distinguished by its use of singers on every line of music, with texts exclusively from the Bible or the Lutheran