Early in 1789 Mozart embarked on a tour of northern Germany in the company of his pupil, Prince Karl Lichnowsky. They travelled by way of Prague and Dresden to Leipzig, where he was entertained at St Thomas’s Church, and then on to Potsdam and Berlin. In part, the aim of the trip seems to have been to experience J S Bach’s music at first hand. Mozart had come into contact with keyboard music by members of the Bach family in the early 1780s at the house of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, but it was not until 1789 that he was able to hear some of the older composer’s major choral works, such as the eight-part motet Singet dem Herrn.