# Explorations in Baroque Music



## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Currently listening to Andreas Scholl's performances of Baroque operatic arias written for of performed by Senesino (Francesco Bernardi) one of the great castrati of the era and a peer of the famous Farinelli. The arias are by Handel, Tomaso Albinoni, Antonio Lotti, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Nicola Porpora... all, with the exception of Handel, woefully forgotten but currently undergoing a revival along with the operas of Vivaldi. Who knows how the lists of the 50 greatest opera composers or 100 greatest operas will look in another twenty years when Lully, Rameau, Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Hasse, J.C. Bach, etc... have all been recorded by top-notch performers as we have with Handel. Until then, these recitals by Scholl, Jaroussky, Simone Kermes, etc... offer a magnificent view of a rich body of music. As always Scholl is magnificent... perhaps the greatest living countertenor... in spite of Jaroussky's facile fluidity.










_De Vitae Fugacitate_ is a collection of laments, cantatas, and arias from Baroque Germany... of the generation (or two) before Bach and before the music in the Scholl disc above. Two of the composers are well-known enough to aficionados of the Baroque: Heinrich Schütz and Dietrich Buxtehude. The other composers are less-well-known: Adam Krieger, Johann Schien, Johann Kindermann, and Christian Geist. The music involved was all influenced by the developments in vocal/instrumental music in Italy. Schütz studied with Giovanni Gabrielli in Venice and was profoundly impressed by the ability of Gabrielli to compose such splendid motets in spite of his access to limited numbers of singers and instrumentalists. Schütz took what he had gleaned home to Germany where he would influence the other two "great 'S's'" of the early German Baroque: Johann Schein and Samuel Scheidt. J.S. Bach undoubtedly learned from his predecessors with regard to composing for a limited number of singers and instrumentalists and employed this ability in his larger compositions such as the St. Matthew Passion so that the work displayed a variety of small instrumental and vocal groupings in a chamber music-like manner achieving a variety of musical colors.

Johann Kindermann also studied in Italy... either under Monteverdi or Cavalli. His work included here, _La Affettuosa_ is essentially a sonata for three viols in which one viol essentially takes the line of the absent vocalist in a cantata or motet without word.

The most important composer here, of course, is Buxtehude... quite likely the greatest composer active in Germany prior to J.S. Bach. The two works chosen by Buxtehude illustrate opposing aspects of the _viola da gamba_. In Jubilate Domino the viol plays a joyful virtuoso _obbligato_ in accompaniment of the solo singer. Klaglied was composed upon the death of the composer's father and illustrates the warmer, mournful sound of the viol in suggesting death.

All in all, a fascinating collection that illuminates the transmission of musical ideas from Italy to Germany establishing the environment and the musical ideas that would allow for the later developments of J.S. Bach, Handel, Telemann, etc... As with every GLOSSA disc I have come upon, the recording, the performance, and the packaging are all elegant and top notch. The countertenor Claudia Cavina may be less-well-known than Scholl or Jaroussky, but he is clearly of the same class as a vocalist.


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