Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (13 January 1690 in Grünstädtel – 27 November 1749 in Gotha

Gotha (town)

Gotha is a town in Thuringia, within the central core of Germany. It is the capital of the district of Gotha.- History :The town has existed at least since the 8th century, when it was mentioned in a document signed by Charlemagne as Villa Gotaha . Its importance derives from having been chosen in...

) was a prolific German composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

Biography

Stölzel grew up in Schwarzenberg, Saxony

Schwarzenberg, Saxony

Schwarzenberg is a town in the district of Erzgebirgskreis in Saxony’s Ore Mountains, near the German–Czech border. The town lies roughly 15 km southeast of Aue, and 35 km southwest of Chemnitz....

in the Erzgebirge. From 1707 he was a student of theology in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, and of Melchior Hofmann, the musical director of the Neukirche. He studied, worked and composed in Breslau and Halle

Halle, Saxony-Anhalt

Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...

. Then an eighteen-month sojourn in Italy from 1713 — where he met Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...

in Venice — rendered him au courant with the latest musical taste. After working for three years in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, he became briefly court Kapellmeister in Bayreuth and Gera

Gera

Gera, the third-largest city in the German state of Thuringia , lies in east Thuringia on the river Weiße Elster, approximately 60 kilometres to the south of the city of Leipzig and 80 kilometres to the east of Erfurt...

. Then in 1719 he married, and the next year took up an appointment in Gotha

Gotha (town)

, where he worked until his death for the dukes Frederick II

Frederick II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg

Frederick II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg , was a duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.He was the fifth child and first son of Frederick I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg and Magdalene Sibylle of Saxe-Weissenfels....

and Frederick III

Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg

Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg , was a duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.-Biography:He was the eldest son of Frederick II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg and Magdalene Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst....

of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, composing a cantata

Cantata

A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....

each week.

From 1730 the Kapellmeister of the court at Gotha also wrote for Sondershausen

Sondershausen

Sondershausen is a town in Thuringia, Germany, capital of the Kyffhäuserkreis district, situated about 50 km north of Erfurt. On 1 December 2007, the former municipality Schernberg was incorporated by Sondershausen....

. Stölzel supplied numerous festive occasional pieces and aria

Aria

An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...

s for court performance; the archive at Schloss Sondershausen retains many of his manuscripts, found in a box behind the organ in 1870. Half of Stölzel's output, never engraved, is lost. Stölzel's immediate successor at the court in Gotha Georg Benda

Georg Benda

Jiří Antonín Benda, also Georg Anton Benda or J.A. Benda was a Czech kapellmeister, violinist and composer of the classical period.-Biography:...

bears some responsibility in both saving and losing many Stölzel's works. In 1778 Benda wrote: "... Only the best works of my predecessor, which could be used even today for church music, are saved, because already a long time ago I separated them from uselessness junk and kept them in my own house." This suggests that occasional music (birthday cantatas, serenatas), operas and so on, and most of Stölzel's instrumental music were lost during Benda's lifetime. Those "junk" pieces were apparently taken to the castle attic where holes in the roof exposed the manuscripts to rain and mildew damage, and rodents also ate the paper manuscripts as well. Another reason why so much music vanished is based on research by Christian Ahrens (2009) According to Ahrens, musicians at the court apparently took instruments and music manuscripts and sold them in advertisements in local Gotha newspapers. Stölzel apparently did this himself before his death, and with Benda's prejudiced view towards the instrumental pieces, it's theorized that the musicians felt this gave them tacit permission to resell the music. The losses were staggering: Stölzel is reputed to have composed over 18 orchestral suites alone, (not a single one survives) as well as 90 serenatas (vocal pieces performed as "table music.") In fact, out of what had to have been thousands of compositions in Gotha, only twelve pieces survive.

He enjoyed an outstanding reputation in his lifetime: Lorenz Christoph Mizler

Lorenz Christoph Mizler

Lorenz Christoph Mizler von Kolof was a German physician, mathematician, and writer on music.-Biography:...

rated him as great as Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

. Johann Mattheson

Johann Mattheson

Johann Mattheson was a German composer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat and music theorist.Mattheson was born and died in Hamburg. He was a close friend of George Frideric Handel, although he nearly killed him in a sudden quarrel, during a performance of Mattheson's opera Cleopatra in 1704...

reckoned him among "the level-headed, learned, and great music masters" of his century. Stölzel was an accomplished German stylist who himself wrote a good many of the poetic texts for his vocal works. Students beginning the piano may remember some pieces by him, those that are included in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach

Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach

The title Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach refers to either of two manuscript notebooks that the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach presented to his second wife Anna Magdalena...

.

His most important works are: four concerti grossi, many sinfonias, a concerto for oboe d'amore. His four operas: Narcissus, Valeria, Artemisia and Orion have not survived. Musicologists and conductors such as Ludger Rémy

Ludger Rémy

Ludger Rémy is a German harpsichordist, conductor and musicologist.- Biography :Ludger Rémy studied the harpsichord in Freiburg im Breisgau and continued his studies with Kenneth Gilbert in Paris. He was a teacher at several German academies including the Folkwang Hochschule and the Hochschule für...

have successfully revived his music. Oratorio

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...

s such as a version of the Brockes Passion

Brockes Passion

The Brockes Passion, or Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus is a German oratorio libretto by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, first published in 1712 and going through 30 or so editions in the next 15 years....

(1725) and two Christmas Oratorios, made of cantatas, have been recorded, also a Deutsche Messe (German Mass), a Lutheran Mass of Kyrie and Gloria, in German, set for four-part choir, strings and basso continuo. Twelve complete annual cycles of sacred cantatas as well as cantatas to secular texts (five hundred) have come down in full, including several cantatas for Pentecost.

His Abhandlung vom Recitativ ("The Art of Recitative

Recitative

Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...

"), written about 1739, remained unpublished until 1962 (Werner Steger, Gottfried Heinrich Stoelzels "Abhandlung vom Recitativ"). He was followed by Georg Benda

Georg Benda

Jiří Antonín Benda, also Georg Anton Benda or J.A. Benda was a Czech kapellmeister, violinist and composer of the classical period.-Biography:...

Sources

Gottfried Heinrich Stoelzel Biography (in German), Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel Biography from bach-cantatas.com

External links

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Biography

See also

Sources

External links