1 LP - 1C 063-30 937 Q - (p) 1977

1 CD - 8 26505 2 - (c) 2000

VIRTUOSE DEUTSCHE VIOLINMUSIK DES 17. JAHRHUNDERTS




Johann Rosenmüller (1916-1684)


- Sinfonia D-dur - für 2 Violinen und B.c. 3' 49"
Charles Rosier (1640-1725)


- Sonate (Suite) e-moll - für 2 Violinen und B.c. 3' 33"
Johann Caspar Kerll (1627-1693)

- Sonate F-dur - für 2 Violinen und B.c. 6' 10"
David Pohle (1624-1695)

- Sonata A-dur "Nun danket alle Gott" - für 2 skordierte Violinen und B.c. 5' 02"
Clamor Heinrich Abel (2. Hälfte des 17. Jahrh.)

- Bataille D-dur - für 2 Violinen und B.c. 4' 40"



Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1623-1680)

- Lamento sopra la morte Ferdinandi III - für 2 Violinen, Viola da Gamba und B.c. 7' 34"
- Polnische Sackpfeiffen - für 2 Violinen und B.c. 6' 38"
Johann Michael Nicolai (1629-1685)

- Sonatenfragment B-dur - für Violine, Viola I und II und B.c. 5' 13"



 
MUSICA ANTIQUA KÖLN
Reinhard Goebel, Barockvioline
- Violine "sub disciplina Nicolai Amati", ca. 1670 - (Titel 1-3 und 5-8)
- Violine anonym, Deutschland, frühes 18. Jahrhundert - (Titel 4)

Hajo Baß, Barockvioline
- Violine von Fedele Barnia, Venedig, 1771 - (Titel 1-3 und 5-7)
- Violine von Carlo Tononi, Venedig, 1724 - (Titel 4)

Eva Bartos, Viola da gamba
- Viola da gamba nach englischem Modell des 17. Jahrhunderts, Muthesius, 1971 - (Titel 1-8)
Jonathan Cable, Viola da gamba
- Viola da gamba von Georg Amann, Augsburg, 1712 - (Titel 6 und 8)
- Violone nach Linarolo, Padua, 1585 · Krenn 1952 - (Titel 7)

 Henk Bouman, Cembalo
- Cembalo nach Pisauriensis, Italien, fruhes 17. Jahrhundert · von Kroesbergen, Utrecht, 1976 - (Titel 1-8)
 






Luogo e data di registrazione
St. Aposteln, Aachen (Germania) - 7-10 marzo 1977

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer / Engineer
Gerd Berg / Johann-Nikolaus Matthes

Prima Edizione LP
EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 937 Q - (1 lp) - durata 42' 39" - (p) 1977 - Analogico (Quadraphonic)

Prima Edizione CD
EMI "Classics" - 8 26505 2 - (1 cd) - durata 42' 39" - (c) 2000 - ADD

Note
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Reinhard GoebelThe German violin music of the 17th century was considered to be a first stage in the development towards J. S. Bach's violin works. Not only the great representatives of the South and Central German school - Biber, Schmelzer, Westhoff and J. J. Walther - were thought to have to been Bach’s ancestors; studying the standard works on the history of violin literature, we will also find that each double stop, each diminution “double”, even each piece for violin solo “ refers to Bach in reality”. A careful examination of the material - especially including the manuscript copies so far neglected - will bring a different result. The German violin music of the 17th century is the continuation of early Italian violin music, represented as early as in the twenties of the century in the North of the Alps - by Marini in Neuburg, Düsseldorf and Antvverp, by Farina and Castelli in Dresden and Turini in Prague. In the second half of the 17th century, this music gradually diverged from the Italian prototype and took up “German” features: Specific bowings were developed (ondeggiando,
harpeggiato), the technique of positions, double stops and scordatura were cultivated in an unexpected way - sometimes just for the fun of it. But in the long run, German violin music did not survive a new changing of form starting from Italy and beginning about the middle of the 17th century. The quest for new forms and intellectual content occasionally resulted in a distinct decline in duality and quantity of Italian violin compositions. In 1681 were published Biber’s eight great violin sonatas, making a peak in the history of German violin music, and Corelli’s trio sonatas Op. 1, in which the new formal compositional and violinistic ideal, which was to exercise a considerable influence on the violin music of the 18th century, manifested itself for the first time.
During this period of reorganization in Italy, we find an increasing demand for music in Germany - due to the revolution in courtly, civil and clerical life after the Thirty Years’ War. Impossible to resort to the music of the pre-war period, because baroque mentality had made its appearance also in Germany.
So German violin music received its form from the Italian music of the first half of the century: from the canzona consisting of many parts, from Dario Castello‘s sonata concertata with its virtuoso inner solos, from the Venetian sinfonia with its sharp contrasts, from the early forms of the sonata da chiesa with a string of movements, and, last but not least, from the sonata da camera.
The technical demands made upon the performer were incomparably greater than they had ever been in Italian violin music. The idea of imitating human singing on an instrument was a good way off, it was for the most part virtuoso music with all its good and bad qualities of the genre. Position had been developed up to the sixth; as to the bowing, it was next to impossible to meet the requirements: shifting over one or two strings, in rhythmically and technically complicated phrases would hardly result in tuneful playing. This music was calculated for effect - which is typical of any virtuosity.
The works this recording presents are taken from the Rost anthology, made between 1658 and 1680 by Franz Frost, cantor at the Baden-Baden collegiate church, and containing 160 sonatas, essentially for two violins and basso continuo. To all appearances, he started on this collection during the election of the emperor Leopold I at Frankfurt in 1658, and the fact is that Schmelzer and Kerll were present on this accasion. Rost may have been in the suite of his sovereign, Margrave Wilhelm of Baden-Baden. Striking, at any rate, that numerous sonatas by Schmelzer and the sonata by Kerll are found among the first twenty numbers of the anthology, and he surely took them from the composers’ manuscripts himself.
Other compositions were taken from contemporary printings - his copies showing the same mistakes - but thanks to the good relations of the margraves in Baden-Baden with the imperial family in Vienna, he had access to compositions by the late imperial chapel-masters Valentini and Bertali, but also Schmelzer’s sonatas, to complete his anthology. Concerning the history of German violin music. Rost's collection is beyond all price, since nearly all important printings and manuscript copies of the 17th century - the titles and number of which we know from lexicographical data and inventories - were destroyed during periods of war, secularization or various transformations of style and form. The compositions in Rost's collection are separate pieces, nearly without exception and so it can be compared with Düben‘s anthology, which, however, is concerned vvith the violin playing of Northern Germany.
Johann Rosemüller's sinfonia is taken from the five-part sonata da camera, composed in 1670. The two viol parts and the part of the basso obligato, resulting from diminutions of the thorough bass, are missing in Rost‘s transcription. This method of reducing polyphonic sonatas to the minimum instrumentation of the trio comes up to the standard of baroque music making. Georg Muffat noted in the preface to the five-part sonatas Armonico tributo (1682): “They can be performed only a tre, and you can use the two violins and a violoncino or a viola da gamba for the ground bass". Rost's collection contains several examples of these trio reductions.
The sonata by Charles Rosier, born at Liège, is a suite with a free, introductory piece in the Italian style, an allemande, courante and sarabande in the way of the French lutenists.
Kerll’s sonata with its two great solo parts in the stylo phantastico shows the influence of Dario Castello`s sonata concertata. The elaborateness of these solo parts results from the identity of both violin parts, so concertizing one after the other and against each other. The work consists of four thematically different short pieces in the style of the canzona, which are twice repeated, and final cadences full of fervour, linking and rounding off the greater parts. Abel's pataille shows an approach to sonata-form with its several individual ‘movements`. The first two sections are loosely connected, following the tradition of the German suite. - The scordatura, i.e. alteration of the fifths between the strings of the violin in thirds, fourths etc., is considered to be a specifically South German technique. The scordatura alters the resonance and sound of the violin and enables the inclusion of double stops, unplayable in mormal tuning. Rost's collection contains only few scordatura sonatas, unlike the more curious work by Schutz’s pupil David Pohle; the violins are tuned A-E-A-C sharp.
In Catholic countries it was customary to perform instrumental music in church - with the exception of wind instruments, vvhereas the Protestant Church strictly prohibited the use of any pure instrumental music. It was Dietrich Becker, a Hamburg violinist who hit upon an expedient; according to Walther‘s Lexicon dating from 1732, he had “set sonatas for a violin, a viola da gamba and ground bass to chorales and performed during vespers", Pohle’s five-part variation sonata was probably composed for church use, too.
South German taste comes to light in the incomplete sonata composed by the Stuttgart chapel-master at the court, Nicolai, which was probably taken from the work Dritter Theil Instrumentalischer Sachen (1682) now lost. A solo violin is opposed to a group of deep strings in homophonic-chordal style which are the background to the expressive solos of the violin. It is also in the first section of Schmelzer’s composition Lamento auf den Tod Ferdinand III. that the first violin stands out from the other instruments. The 49 bars of the lamentation symbolize the age of the deceased - 49 years. Whether this work is based on a programme, so, for example, mourning, funeral bell, church-going and funeral repast remains an unsolved question exposed to speculation. At any rate it is one of Schmelzer’s ripest works. As to the Polnische Sackpfeiffen, he shows himself in different colours. It is a canzona closely connected with Farina’s Capriccio stravagante. Sentimental euphony, jarring bagpipes, parts in unison of shocking scantiness, pathetic cadences where not expected, a closing which is none - to put it briefly, an accumulation of twinkling gags. We are still wondering whom he actually wanted to lead up the gardenpath, the Polish beer-hall fiddlers or the Italian musicians at the Viennese court.
Concerning the performance
Reviving the authentical style of 17th century musicmaking, one will meet with some difficulties. Contrary to the 18th century music with its detailed reference books, we are thrown back upon comments in contemporary letters and prefaces, retrospective references in manuals of the 18th century. As a general principle, “the steady, extensive course of the bow on the violin", postulated by Heinrich Schütz in the preface to the Symphoniae Sacrae, i.e. the Italian bowing, must be given preference over the short, emphatic bowing of Lully`s school. Rhythmical irregularity of notes of equally noted value was not made a rule - according to the French practice, but we considered it to be a deliberate ornament following Caccini’s example. Since the source specifies almost no trills at all, some were included in cadences, and so were mordents and other "graces". The trill is frequently started from the main note, in order to avoid unauthorized parallels, and to make allowance for the trill as a melodic ornament - because it became a purely harmonic ornament as late as in the 18th century. The ground bass is mainly performed in accordance with the Italian usage.
The ensemble musica antiqua köln, founded in 1974, has since been performing baroque chamber music works on authentical instruments, with the stress on early Italian violin music, German violin music before Bach and French ensemble music. The repertoire of the group comprises works by Farina, Marini, Schmelzer, Biber, Couperin, Leclair and others.
Reinhard Goebel

EMI Electrola "Reflexe"