Friday, March 6, 7:30 pm | Church of the Gesu, Philadelphia

Saturday, March 7, 3pm | Market Street Music

Following their acclaimed collaboration in 2023, Philadelphia chamber ensembles Variant 6 and Filament will again join forces, in March 2026, to present Dietrich Buxtehude’s magnum opus, Membra Jesu Nostri. This hour-long “devotione decantata,” or “sung devotion,” is a cycle of seven cantatas, each an ode to a different part of the crucified Christ’s body, set to the intensely personal, sensual poetry of the 13th-century ascetic Arnulf von Leeuwen. Buxtehude’s music, simultaneously visceral and transcendent, guides the listener through a meditation on Christ’s embodied humanity — feet (Ad Pedes), knees (Ad Genua), hands (Ad Manus), sides (Ad Latus) breast (Ad Pectus), heart (Ad Cor), and face (Ad Faciem) — and this meditative act of dismemberment serves ultimately to synthesize the human and the divine.