Book123

    Free register and download UseNet downloader, then you can FREE Download from UseNet.

    Download without Limit " Lyrics & Music Treasures. Chamber music from the collection of Earl Rudolf Franz Erwein " from UseNet for FREE!

More

Treasures. Chamber music from the collection of Earl Rudolf Franz Erwein

The von Schonborn family dedicated themselves to music with great passion: Count Rudolf Franz Erwein, a tireless collector and accomplished cellist, assembled a veritable musical treasury in the library at Wiesentheid. The CordArte Ensemble offers listeners a number of pieces from that treasury, transcribed by the music-loving Count in his own hand.

Henrico Albicastro (ca. 1660–nach 1706) 1-5 Sonata No. 9 for violin discordarto and basso continuo in D minor

Johann Jacob Schnell (1687–1754) 6-9 Sonata D major for viola da gamba and basso continuo

Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657–1714) 10-14 Sonata sesta in F major for violino piccolo, viola da gamba and basso continuo, from: VI. Sonate a Violino e Viola da Gamba / a due Violini col suo Basso Continuo, Nurnberg 1694

Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (1650-1746) 15-23 Suite Uranie in D minor for harpsichord, from Musicalischer Parnassus

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) 24-27 Sonata C minor for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1024 (doubtful)

Anonymus: 28-33 Piece di Viola da gamba in D major, manuscript 1722

Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755) 34-36 Sonata E minor for violin and basso continuo

Johann Graf (1688–1750) 37 Allegro from Sonata in C minor opus II No. 2 for violin and basso continuo

The fruits of a baroque passion for collecting

Among the many princely courts which, for concerts and public performances, as well as from purely artistic motives, cultivated musicians, singers and a musical repertoire written especially for them, that of Rudolf Franz Erwein von Schonborn (1677-1754) is of particular significance.

The aristocratic Schonborn family, originally from the southern Taunus and resident in the Rhineland, occupied a leading position in the political and spiritual life of the Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and produced prince electors, bishops, diplomats and cathedral canons. Holding the position of Archbishop of Mainz and High Chancellor of the Empire, uncle Lothar Franz (1655-1729) was the second most powerful man after the emperor in Vienna; he also served as bishop of Bamberg. The five brothers of Rudolf Franz Erwein likewise held bishoprics: Johann Philipp Franz and Friedrich were Bishop of Wurzburg from 1719 to 1724 and from 1729 to 1746 respectively; Damian Hugo was Bishop of Speyer and Konstanz, Franz Georg of Trier and Worms. Rudolf Franz Erwein himself was elevated to the rank of count in 1701. He was active as an imperial diplomat and financial commissar, and ruled a small domain in Schloss Wiesentheid near Wurzburg, a property that would be handed down to the Schonborn family, entering the possession of Eleonora von Hatzfeld-Gleichen in 1701.

Long before that, however, Rudolf Franz Erwein had begun to form his musical collection, which still exists today at Wiesentheid. The beginnings of the collection date from 1694, with copies of Arcangelo Corelli’s trio sonatas, op. 2. After completing his education, he remained in Jesuit College near his home, the Collegium Germanicum, in order to perfect his theological and juridical knowledge, together with his brother Damian Hugo. Rudolf Franz Erwein played the flute and the bassoon, but his favourite instrument was the cello. (It is to his passion as a collector that we owe the knowledge and probably the existence of a number of cello concertos by Vivaldi and sonatas by Antonio Caldara.) In 1695 and 1696, he travelled to northern Italy, and later to the Low Countries and Paris, afterwards staying in Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig and Prague, in all of which places he found new opportunities to acquire musical scores. A part of these scores were sent to Wiesentheid in 1701, either in the purchased originals or in copies. The collection today contains around one hundred and fifty printed works and five hundred manuscripts, many of them unique. His personal copies reveal just how important the scores were to his musical activity. In the evening, he used to play chamber music with members of his family, employees, or guests, and above all with the nobles and musicians of the nearby courts of Wurzburg and Bamberg.

The selection on this CD is able to present but a part of the existing repertoire in the Wiesentheid collection, offering us only a glimpse of its riches. Nonetheless, it reveals the penchant of this typically German count for both the French and Italian styles of musical composition. Examples of this, and at the same time of the musical culture of the region, are the sonatas in D Major for viola da gamba and figured bass. They are to be found in a collection of musical manuscripts dated 16 February 1722, finalised by a prelate and educator from Wiesentheid, Johann Baptist Hornung. The manuscript belongs to a period in which Rudolf Franz Erwein, who had become a widower in 1718, withdrew from politics in order to dedicate himself to the arts in the relative isolation of his estate. The spirited piece by Bamberg musician Johann Jakob Schnell (1687-1754) must have been welcome to him. Schnell was the son of a Wiesentheid lackey, who was in the service of the count’s uncle in Bamberg at the time. Besides the concertos and sonatas proper, in his capacity as musical director of the court in the 1730s he also presented printed religious music to his colleagues in Frankfurt on Main.

The composition that follows Schnell’s sonata in the manuscript, which bears no name, was not written by him. While Schnell’s work follows the Italian model of the sonata da chiesa, according to the example of Corelli – with double alternation of slow and fast parts – the anonymous sonata chooses the form of a French suite (overtures): the pathetic opening (All tempo Apertura) follows the characteristic stringing together of parts with the titles of dances, in the pleasant manner specific to the style of Georg Philipp Telemann.

The French suite developed by Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of Versailles was adopted by Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (1656-1746) for keyboard instruments. Thus, in his Musical Parnassus, there is nine-partita harpsichord score, each partita being named after one of the nine Muses. Fischer, who, at the time, held the position of Kapellmeister at the court of Margrave Ludwig Georg von Baden, had it published in Augsburg in 1738. Shortly afterwards, his work found its way into the Wiesentheid library, probably thanks to Damian Hugo von Schonborn. The latter, together with Franz Rudolf Erwein, had permission to attend a dinner of Louis XIV in 1699. We can imagine that Fischer’s compositions reawakened the memory of those honoured hours spent at Versailles both for the Bishop of Speyer and Count Wiesentheid. In his Urania – the longest of the partitas – Fischer remarkably choose a toccata for the introductory section, according to the Italian tradition. The harmonic wealth he gains here is to be found aplenty also in the following sections.

Some of the trio sonatas of Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657-1714), Kapellmeister at Rudolstadt, are also oriented after the French suite form. Published in Nuremberg in 1694, the works can be seen as a direct continuation in chamber music of the overtures published a year previously (both printed works can be found at Wiesentheid). In CordArte’s interpretation, the sixth trio sonata resounds in a version where the upper voice is provided by a piccolo violin (a violin tuned a third higher) and gamba.

A direct musical connection between Rudolstadt and the Schonborn family appeared when the violinist Johann Graf (1688-1750) moved in 1722 from the service of Lothar Franz von Schonborn of Bamberg into that of the court music of the Thuringian residence at Saale. His refined sonata for violin, op.1, was dedicated to Rudolf Franz Erwein in 1718, an expression of his appreciation for the master of Wiesentheid, in whose castle he had often been invited as a guest musician. His opus no. 2, which he published in 1723, while he was concert master at Rudolstadt, glitters for its virtuoso Italian style, with rapid phrasing and bowing effects, was undoubtedly just as well received at Wiesentheid.

The fact that Rudolf Franz Erwein was fascinated by the Italian virtuoso violin style is also attested by a collection in which he copied with his own hand the twelve sonatas of Henrico Albicastro (Heinrich Wei?enburg, ca. 1660-nach 1706). Only vague facts are known about the life of this composer, based mainly on the sparse and ambiguous notes found in his scores, published between 1696 and 1706. According to these mentions, he may have been born around 1660 in Bieswang near Pappenheim, or else in Switzerland. In 1686, he enrolled at the University of Leiden, exactly ten years before Rudolf Franz Erwein stayed there during his tour. However, the latter must have copied Albicastro’s dozen sonatas much later. Among them can be found various works by the composer, four of which were published in Amsterdam in 1704, making up opus no. 5. They include a sonata in D minor, which demands an alternative tuning of the violin, making unusual sound combinations possible. Albicastro relies heavily of such effects, as a result achieving an exciting and even eccentric development of melody.

The following two sonatas on the CD bring to the centre of attention another contemporary of Rudolf Franz Erwein: Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755). Originally from Cadolzburg, he studied music at the court in Ansbach, in particular under Italian violin maestro Guiseppe Torelli. After years of study in Leipzig, he left for the Saxon court of Dresden in 1711, where he rose to the rank of Kapellmeister. A score preserved in manuscript, which most likely originates from Pisendel himself, can be found at Wiesentheid, but contains an enigma. For, the Sonata a Violino Solo e Basso per il Cembalo in C minor, in four parts, does not bear the name of any author. In spite of this, according to a nineteenth-century edition by Ferdinand David, concertmaster at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, it is viewed as a work by Johann Sebastian Bach. The identification of Pisendel as the possible composer of the Wiesentheid manuscript leads us to think of the possibility that he might also have the composer of the sonata. This idea is also supported by the fact that the only other copy of the work, obviously a transcription of the copy at Wiesentheid, originated from Pisandel’s activity in Dresden. Nevertheless, it is hard to establish with any certainty whether it is a Bach or a Pisendel sonata, as their lifelong friendship began with their meeting in Weimar in 1709. This original composition, with its rhapsodic opening, full of harmonic contrasts overlapping an extremely long organ note and subsequent Fugato, is neither akin to the supremely structured counterpoint of Bach’s other violin concertos nor recognisable as a work related to Pisendel’s other sonatas, with their clear formal and harmonic construction. All these things are demonstrated by CordArte in Pisendel’s Sonata in E minor, which rounds off the Schonborn CD. It is possible that Rudolf Franz Erwein may have become acquainted with it in one of his diplomatic missions to the Saxon court, during the course of which he would easily have been able to enter into contact with the court concertmaster. However, in contrast to many other musical treasures, this piece does not seem to have found its way to the remarkable library at Wiesentheid.

Bernd Heyder (Translation: Alistair Blyth)

Buy It at Lowest Price on Amazon

Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123