ily, one of the leading aristocratic families of the German
lands, who lived at Schloss Weesenstein near Pirna in
Eric Cross
The Austro-German Baroque
During the 17th century, several of the Habsburg emperors,
including Ferdinand III, Leopold I and Joseph I, were keen
musicians and indeed practising composers themselves. It
is not therefore surprising that their court at Vienna
attracted many leading musicians, particularly from Italy.
While the most celebrated and lavish examples of their
activity are operas such as Cesti’s Il pomo d’oro for Leopold
I’s wedding festivities in 1668, this selection of CDs reminds
us of the wealth of sacred vocal and instrumental music
from this fertile period of Austria’s musical history.
Musik am Hofe derer von Bünau II (Raumklang rk
9902, rec 2005, 61⬘) charts the influence of the Bünau fam-
Saxony. In 1574 Rudolf III had an organ built in the castle’s
chapel and created an endowment to ensure that music
played an important role in both secular and sacred activ-
ities at his court. This recording brings together works by
various musicians connected with Weesenstein, including
Thomas Avenarius, who was appointed Kapellmeister in
1617 and whose music was performed by Schütz at Dresden
during the same year. His collection Convivium musicale
of 1630 contains 38 dance movements in four or five parts;
two of them appear here, including the Phantasia
ridiculosa which contains strange unison passages. Stephan
Otto was Kantor at Weesenstein for several years from
1633, while Daniel Selich became Kapellmeister there
in 1616 before succeeding Michael Praetorius at the
Wolfenbüttel court in 1621. The latter’s two works from
the Opus novum of 1624 exhibit an attractive interplay
between the groups of voices and instruments which often
brings to mind both Schütz and Praetorius, as do the works
on this disc by Samuel Seidel. Seidel did not actually work
at the Bünau’s castle but spent his life at nearby Glashütte
as organist and Kantor. His Wie lieblich sind auf den Bergen
contains answering phrases between the choirs with rapid
syllabic declamation in the manner of Schütz’s psalm
settings, while two other works from the same 1657 collection
of Geistliches Ehren-Kräntzlein present less extrovert but
nonetheless highly effective settings. Seidel was strongly
influenced by the prolific Andreas Hammerschmidt, who
spent just a year at Weesenstein before eventually settling
at the Johanniskirche in Zittau, where he remained as
organist for well over thirty years. The four instrumental
works performed here display his clear contrapuntal gifts,
as does the one vocal piece, Das ist je gewisslich wahr,
whose imaginative word-setting fully justifies its inclu-
sion. The longest work in the collection, however, is by a
lesser-known figure, Esajas Hickmann, and although
again there is no established link with the Bünau family,
the inclusion of his fine O tempus amatum is certainly
welcome. All the works receive stylish performances, with
clean, sensitive singing and excellent instrumental playing
from the Ensemble Alte Musik Dresden under the direc-
tion of Norbert Schuster. My only minor complaint is
that the sung texts are given only in German, with
German translations where the originals are in Latin, even
though the rest of the notes are translated into both
English and French.
When Ferdinand III died in April 1657 there was no
elected successor, so the electors from the German states,
or their representatives, travelled as demanded by tradition
early music november 2007 655
to Frankfurt to decide on a new emperor. Some of their
musical establishments (the English liner notes’ transla-
tion of ‘Kapelle’ as ‘orchestra’ here is slightly misleading)
travelled with them. Leopold arrived from Prague in
March 1658, but it took the electors some months to
choose him as their new emperor, and the coronation did
not take place until 1 August. Although Johann Mattheson
has suggested that the music for Leopold’s Coronation
Mass was written by Johann Caspar Kerll, there is no
evidence that he was part of the Bavarian delegation to
Frankfurt, whereas it seems that Johann Heinrich Schmelzer
was there as Leopold’s director of instrumental music.
Schmelzer was the leading Austrian instrumental com-
poser before Biber, having been officially appointed vio-
linist to the Viennese court after many years of service,
and he eventually became Vice-Kapellmeister in 1671, two
years after the death of the Kapellmeister Antonio Bertali.
Bertali wrote numerous works for the Viennese court,
including a 20-part Te Deum laudamus Novi Cesaris which
may have been intended for the 1658 coronation. Although
unfortunately this setting has been lost, Arno Paduch,
who directs the Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble in Coro-
nation 1658 (Christophorus chr 77283, rec 2006, 74⬘), has
assembled a series of vocal works by Bertali built around
his Missa Sancti Spiritus, whose scoring closely matches
that of the missing Te Deum, along with appropriate sec-
tions of chant and instrumental works by Schmelzer.
Bertali’s Mass betrays its composer’s north Italian origins,
being rooted in the concertato style of Monteverdi and
Cavalli with colourful instrumental writing, although some
aspects of his word-setting, such as the trumpet flourishes
for ‘Et incarnatus est’ and ‘Agnus Dei’, and the somewhat
unemotional opening of the ‘Crucifixus’, may seem sur-
prising. However, having pieced together a plausible
sequence of mid-17th-century works, Paduch has decided
to solve the problem of the missing Bertali Te Deum by
substituting a work by Antonio Caldara. There is evidence
that this work was performed for the coronation of Franz
I in 1745, and while it is certainly in a suitably celebratory
style with fanfares for trumpets and timpani, the inclusion
of a work written over 50 years after Leopold’s coronation
is stylistically inappropriate. Nevertheless it is performed
well enough, and throughout the disc there is strong
instrumental playing, especially from Paduch and his fel-
low cornettists (Paduch also provides the informative liner
notes); some of the singing is less impressive, however,
with some suspect intonation on occasions, especially in
some of the sopranos and in the plainsong.
Schmelzer’s successor in the field of instrumental
music was Heinrich Biber, whose most famous composi-
656 early music november 2007
tions are his set of Biber: Mystery sonatas (Maya
mcd0603, rec 2006, 128⬘), probably dating from around
1676 and dedicated to his patron the Archbishop of
Salzburg. They form a series of meditations on the Sacred
Mysteries around the life of Jesus and the Virgin Mary,
and were written to accompany the rosary devotions
favoured by the archbishop. According to Charles Burney
writing in 1789, ‘of all the violin players of the last century,
Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the
most difficult and most fanciful of any music I have seen
of the same period’. The 15 Sonatas and closing Passacaglia
in G minor for unaccompanied violin ‘The Guardian
Angel’, which uses the opening falling tetrachord from
the contemporary hymn ‘Einen Engel Gott mir geben’,
make great use of scordatura, the retuning of the violin’s
strings. Only the opening sonata has normal tuning, the
rest using 15 different variants, perhaps one reason why
violinist Maya Homburger uses six different instruments
for this recording. The most extreme is found in no.11,
‘The Resurrection’, in which the middle two strings are
crossed at the top and bottom, thereby creating a visual
symbol of the cross as well as facilitating, through their
retuning, the performance of the theme in octaves.
According to Homburger, while the sonatas are
meditations in the traditional sense of Catholic mysti-
cism, today they also ‘reach yet another level of spiritual-
ity since in performance the magical communication
with the audience adds an extra degree of insight into the
emotional and religious depths of these pieces’. She also
points out that the very technique of scordatura transports
the performer into another world, as the lack of connection
between the notes on the page and the actual sounds pro-
duced by the instrument contradicts all the expectations
built up through years of experience. There is no doubt
that one of the strengths of these performances lies in
their understanding of the special spiritual nature of the
music and a commitment to communicating its other-
worldliness, from the ecstatic figuration at the end of the
third movement of the first sonata ‘The Annunciation’,
through the anguished scales of the first movement of
‘The carrying of the Cross’ and the aggressive chords at
the opening of ‘The Crucifixion’, to the cold, numbed feel
of the repeated-note variation in the second movement of
‘The scourging at the pillar’. In this last example, the
mood is enhanced by the gap between the violin and the
double bass, with no filling-in of the harmonies, and cer-
tainly the use of the substantial and varied continuo team
of Camerata Kilkenny, with harp, harpsichord, organ,
theorbo and viola da gamba as well as double bass, allows
for a great variety of colour. This is advantageous if
listening to a number of sonatas at one sitting, although
it makes for a very different approach from that of Andrew
Manze and Richard Egarr in their recent Harmoni Mundi
recording, for whom a large continuo group is inappro-
priate ‘to accompany prayer and provoke meditation’.
Barry Guy has an unrivalled reputation as a bassist in
contemporary music as well as extensive experience as a
period instrumentalist, and his long partnership with
Maya Homburger shows in their sensitive interpretations
of some of the music’s more intimate sections, as well as
occasionally in more extrovert moments such as the
opening of ‘The Ascension’ where they imitate trumpet
and timpani fanfares. Guy’s flair for improvisation often
provides a sense of spontaneity, but at times this approach
can tip over the edge. There is a lot of pizzicato from both
bass and gamba, and this is at its most bizarre in the jazzy
passage from the second movement of ‘The Crucifixion’,
which sounds more like ‘Biber meets Jacques Loussier’!
Nevertheless, although this kind of freedom will alarm
purists, there is no doubting that Homburger’s intelligent
use of rubato and colour throughout these two discs
enhances the descriptive nature of Biber’s music.
Works by Schmelzer and Biber also appear on the set
Vienna 1700: Baroque music from Austria (cpo 999
919–2, rec 2002, 108⬘), alongside Johann Kaspar Kerll’s
colourful Battalia and several works by Johann Joseph
Fux. Schmelzer’s aria for soprano, strings and continuo
Gegrüsst seist Du has a strophic structure and long ritor-
nello which makes the most of its attractive melody, and it
is nicely sung, although the notes do not indicate by which
of the two sopranos, Mieke van der Sluis and Barbara
Fink, one of whom sounds at times uncannily like a
young Emma Kirkby. Schmelzer’s Polnische Sackpfeiffen
exhibits the kinds of programmatic elements that are
even more important in Biber’s Battalia, a work dating
from his earlier Salzburg years in 1673 which includes
such effects as col legno drum imitations, cannon shots,
trumpet calls and folk elements, as well as ‘The loose
company of all sorts of humours’ in which eight different
melodies are played simultaneously. Equally picturesque
is Biber’s Die Pauernkirchfahrt, where the peasants’ church
trip is portrayed with folk-like repetitive phrases as the
precentor is answered by his ‘congregation’ in unison.
The lion’s share of these two discs, however, is given over
to Fux. Appointed court composer by Leopold I in 1698,
he eventually replaced Marc’Antonio Ziani as Kapellmeister
in 1715 and continued in post until his death in 1741. The
Te Deum, k 271 dates from 1704; it is richly scored with
four trumpets and timpani as well as cornetts and trom-
bones in addition to the strings and continuo, and it
receives a suitably extrovert performance from the
Domkantorei Graz, the Grazer Choralschola and Armonico
Tributo Austria directed by Lorenz Duftschmid. Given
Fux’s reputation as a contrapuntal theorist, it is not sur-
prising that the most extended movements are often
fugal, such as the closing ‘In te Domine’, or the sombre
‘Fac me cruce’ from the more restrained Stabat Mater,
k268. The remaining two works, the Litaniae Sancta
Maria, k121, and the Magnificat, k98, are both largely cel-
ebratory; the former has numerous passages for trum-
pets and timpani as well as a few for trombones,
perhaps reflecting its original open-air performance,
while the latter, the most extended of Fux’s several
Magnificat settings, offers contrasting styles, from the
more operatic ‘Sicut locutus est’ for alto with trumpet
obbligato to the closing ‘Amen’ fugal chorus full of
bouncy syncopations.
While ‘Vienna 1700’ makes a persuasive case for Fux’s
vocal music, Fux: La Grandezza della Musica Imperiale
(Carus 83.308, rec 2006, 64⬘) performs a similar function
for his instrumental works, with four world première
recordings. The Ouverture in D minor, n4 opens with
a fully fledged French overture, allowing the Freiburger
Baroque Orchestra under the direction of violinist Gottfried
von der Goltz to shine immediately with their crisp
articulation and the colourful playing which characterizes
this disc. Interestingly, Fux ignores the obvious pictorial
opportunities of three movements entitled respectively
‘For the nightingale’, ‘For the quail’ and ‘For the cuckoo’.
Unfortunately, however, this provides an excuse on this
recording for extra improvised parts for recorders and
percussion; while the recorders are reasonably innocuous,
the tambourines are obtrusive and by the third move-
ment thoroughly irritating. Fortunately the other three
works do not suffer this indignity. The D minor Concerto
‘The gentleness and bitterness of the night’, e112, is an
interesting programmatic piece. It opens with mysterious
unison writing for the nightwatchman, and soon the
oboes enter with phrases of his song treated as a cantus
firmus, giving the whole movement the feel of a chorale
fantasia. A ‘Fantasie notturne’ provides a bizarre juxtapo-
sition between atmospheric sections with mysterious
tremolo figuration and lively gigue-like passages with
jaunty chromaticisms and virtuoso scale flourishes. This
is followed by a movement marked ‘Ronfatore’, whose
solo phrases for double bass with glissandos imitate the
snores to which the movement’s title refers. After this, the
remaining works seem tame by comparison, but the Suite
in C major, n83, has plenty of colour from its trumpet
and drum flourishes, while the Intrada in C major, e62,
early music november 2007 65 7
provides a concerto-style solo part for violino piccolo
which van der Goltz relishes.
A looser collection of compositions focused around
the Catholic Latin lamentatio and the Protestant vernacu-
lar sacred song, with 26 short works by seven different
composers from Johann Rosenmüller to J. S. Bach, appears
on In Lamentatione Jubilatio Dei (Raumklang rk 2504,
rec 2005, 80⬘). This is an interesting selection of works for
baritone and continuo sung by Gotthold Schwarz with
Siegfried Pank (viola da gamba) and Hans Christoph
Becker-Foss (organ and harpsichord), interspersed with
the occasional keyboard solo. Rosenmüller lived in
Venice from 1658 to 1682, and his settings of the Lamentations
of Jeremiah show signs of the Italian monodic style, albeit
in a restrained fashion with short melismas setting the
Hebrew letters from the text that are a world away from
the more familiar elaborations of composers like Tallis or
François Couperin, while a setting by Jan Dismas Zelenka
is a gentle elaboration of plainchant figures. Georg Böhm’s
twelve short songs are unpretentious and often attractive
with their declamatory style or lilting melodies as in the
strophic Nu will ich mich zu Bette legen, while the most
substantial works on the disc are both by Telemann: his
cantata Entzückende Lust and an E minor gamba sonata.
Bach is represented by three songs from Georg Christian
Schemelli’s collection Musicalisches Gesangbuch of 1736
and the version of the opening recitative and aria from
bwv82 for voice and continuo found in Anna Magdalena
Bach’s second Notenbüchlein, a scoring which lacks the
serenity of the orchestral version. All the works are per-
formed with strong commitment, though the odd passage
lies slightly too low in the voice for comfort, and there is
nothing on the disc that makes an immediate claim for
major rehabilitation. Again the texts are only given with
German translations, and indeed their layout with the
track details is not particularly clear.
In contrast to all this anthologizing, the final two discs
each focus on a single composer. Fischer: Musica sacra
(Carus 83.172, rec 2006, 65⬘) presents five vocal works,
four of which are recorded for the first time. Johann
Caspar Ferdinand Fischer was musical director at the court
of the Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm of Baden at Rastatt
from 1715 until his death in 1746 and published various
instrumental and vocal works. He is perhaps best known
for his set of 20 preludes and fugues in different keys, Ari-
adne musica, which influenced Bach to the extent that he
borrowed the theme from Fischer’s E major fugue for his
own work in that key in Book 2 of The well-tempered cla-
vier. There are passages of affective word-setting such as
the ‘O beatissima’ section of the Concertus de Sancta
658 early music november 2007
Cruce, which gives the director of the Rastatter Hofkapelle,
Jürgen Ochs, a chance to shine as an expressive tenor
soloist (he also provides the informative liner notes which
helpfully detail precisely which singers are used in which
sections). Fischer provides vivid writing at ‘Ira fremunt
inferi’ (Hell grumbles angrily), though the word-painting
for the underworld on ‘tartari’ plumbs the depths a bit
further than the bass solo can comfortably manage. Nev-
ertheless both singing and instrumental playing, in a
resonant acoustic, are generally of a high standard, and
the group of eight soloists provides spirited choral move-
ments too, matching the vocal forces of the Rastatter
Hofkapelle that Fischer would have had at his disposal
(although the original 19 instrumentalists, alongside four
trumpeters and timpanist, considerably outnumber the
one-to-a-part modern forces). Like Fux, Fischer was an
expert contrapuntalist, and it is often the fugal passages
that stand out, both in quality (as in the ‘Et in saecula
saeculorum’ of the Laudate pueri) and in length (for
example, the Gloria of the Missa Sancti Dominici ends
with an extensive fugal ‘Amen’ that is almost as long as
the rest of the movement). The brevity of all the move-
ments means that Fischer never outstays his welcome,
and indeed one is often left with the feeling that his musi-
cal invention could take a broader canvas.
Carl Heinrich Graun trained as a singer in Dresden
and built a career as a singer and opera composer before
joining his brother Johann Gottlieb as court composer
to Frederick the Great in Berlin. Here he continued to
write numerous operas as well as his famous passion
oratorio Der Tod Jesu. Of the three motets, probably
composed in the early 1720s, recorded on Graun: Te
Deum (cpo 777 158–2, rec 2005, 59⬘), the first, Herr, ich
habe lieb die Stätte, is simple and restrained, while Lasset
uns freuen is more extrovert; the third, the eight-part
Machet die Tore weit, is much longer and exploits two
antiphonal groups in the manner of Bach’s double-choir
motets. The performance by the Basler Madrigalisten
under Fritz Näf is rather restrained, and indeed the
choir would benefit from a bit more exuberance in the
main work on this disc, the Te Deum commissioned ‘on
the highest orders’ (possibly by Frederick himself) and
first performed on 15 May 1757 to celebrate the Prussian
victory at Prague in the Seven Years’ War. It is a colourful
work, though Graun prefers horns to more extrovert
trumpets, and the ensemble L’arpa festante makes the
most of the instrumental opportunities. The operatic
solo sections are also well taken in most cases by a strong
group of soloists including soprano Monika Mauch,
whose attractive second aria with two flutes is stylishly
sung, and bass Klaus Mertens, who brings his customary
control and sensitivity to the ‘Salvum fac’. The closing
chorus is a lively double fugue, rounding off this signifi-
cant work in a suitably celebratory mood and reminding
us, as do several of the other discs reviewed here, of
the richness of this often unfamiliar Austro-German
Baroque repertory.

Websites
Carus www.carus-verlag.com
Christophorus www.christophorus-records.de
CPO www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/home
Maya www.maya-recordings.com
Raumklang www.raumklang.de

doi:10.1093/em/cam075

early music november 2007 659

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