Luogo e data di registrazione		Casino Zögernitz, Vienna (Austria) - marzo, giugno e settembre 1969
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Edizione CD		TELDEC - 8.41271 XH (244 690-2) - (1 CD - durata 48' 12") - (c) 1989 - ADD
	Originale LP		TELEFUNKEN - SAWT 9619-A - (1 LP - durata 48' 12") - (p) 1970 - Analogico
	Note		-

The veil of mystery surrounding the life history and musical education of Johann Joseph Fux has still not been lifted. When he was approximately thirty years old, he suddenly appeared as a finished musician in Vienna where he worked mainly as an organist. The emperor heard him at the home of a nobleman and named him Court Composer (the title was created especially for him) in 1698. Later he entered the court orchestra and was named conductor of the imperial court orchestra. - As a composer, Fux has not been held in the esteem he merits. That is probably because he was the author of the famous manual on counterpoint Gradus ad Parnassum (the work from which the \/iennese classicists still drew their technical knowledge), and because no one was willing to believe that a theoretician could also be a full-blooded musician. Even today, a musician who can express himself on the subject of music is usually stamped a dry theoretician. The popular picture of the "artist" shows him surrounded by a magic aureole; intellect does not fit into that picture. Fux personally took another view of himself: "...at the time in which l was not yet in full use of my reason, I was swept away by the vehemence of some urge that could not identify; it directed all of my thoughts and feelings toward music, and even now I am permeated by an almost miraculous desire to learn to master it, indeed, I am pushed in that direction as if I had no will of my own; day and night my ears seem surrounded by sweet rnusical tones, so that I have no reason to doubt the virtue of my choice of profession." In his "Concentus musico instrumentalis... 1701", that he dedicated to Leopold's son Joseph I, he presented a collection of sonatas and suites with highly varying instrumentations. ln these works the French and Italian styles pervade each other and are blended with influences that stem from Austrian folklore. These works must probably also be considered to be typical of Austria's contribution to the baroque concert of notions. The Serenade on this record is the opening piece of this collection; it is a suite with sixteen movements. The versatile employment of the valveless trumpet is particularly interesting: in three movements it comes forth festively resounding, in the other movements its line is delicate and cantabile. The composer apparently wanted to demonstrate all of the instruments possibilities. But even aside from the trumpet the scoring is remarltable. There are solo passages for the oboes like those that loter appeared in Handel's Concerti grossi. The individual movements are in part free fantasy forms (Marche, Aria, Aria, lntrada, Finale), in part dances or the movements of the French overture suite (Guigue, Menuet Ouverture, Menuet l, ll, Guigue, Aria [Passepied] Bourrée I, ll, Rigadon, Ciacona, Guigue, Menuet). But Fux by no means kept strictly to a formal pattern in the movements. To the Guigue, Ciacona and Menuet he wrote a free solo part for the trumpet: elements of peasant music from his native Styria can be heard repeatedly, for example, in several minuets, but especially in the completely unorthodox Ciacona that at times sounds just like a Ländler. The other two pieces on this recording were found in the Dresden State Library; The Rondeau a 7 was included in this collection chiefly for its unusual solo group. A simple dance-like theme (that is played by all instruments eleven times with slight rhythmic and dynamic variation) forms a framework for the soli and duets of the violino piccolo and the bassaon. The Sonata a Quattro requires exactly the same instruments as Schmelzer's Carioletta, a generation later, however; hence it is considerably clearer and smoother, a masterpiece of four-port chamber musrc, scored for four entirely different sounding instruments; thus the individual voices always remain independently clear and maintain their presence throughout the contrapuntal structure.