Silva Manfre - Ricercate for Organ - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Franz Xaver Murschhauser was born in the summer of 1663. In 1676 Murschhauser joined the choir and orchestra of St Peter's, where he benefited first from the tuition he received from the church's choir director Sigmund Auer and later, from 1684 to 1693, from the Court Kapellmeister Johann Kaspar Kerll, which left a lasting impression on him. In July 1690, most probably on the recommendation of his teacher Johann Kaspar Kerll, Murschhauser was asked to stand in for the choirmaster of the Munich Frauenkirche, Ludwig Hölz, who was indisposed owing to illness. After the latter's death in 1691, Murschhauser became his successor, holding the position for the remainder of his life. The Prototypon Longo-Breve Organicum (which might be translated as 'Prototypes for organ pieces, long and short') was published in two parts in Nuremberg in 1703 and 1707 and contains eight cycles/sections totalling 46 compositions, comprising varying numbers of intonations, praeambulae, fugues, canzonas, toccatas and finales designed as preludes or postludes to figural music. In 20 of the more extensive numbers, Murschhauser indicates cuts as an aid for organists in liturgical use, if needed. It is precisely these sorts of adaptations of the musical material offered by the composer himself to suit the time available in liturgical performance that make the Prototypon such a practical and relevant work, right down to our own times. The intonations are made up of figures, broken chords and passages over a pedal point, deliberately kept free of any imitative interplay. The praeambulae consist either of motivic figurations with imitative passages and pedal points somewhat reminiscent of the style of Johann Pachelbel, or they are more akin to the old Italian toccata in their alternation of chord successions and scales. By contrast, the two toccate arpeggiate, with their full-voiced chordal writing and

The Naples of Antonio Valente was the principal city of the Spanish Empire of the day, second only to Istanbul of Mediterranean cities in population, a cultural and intellectual hub where ideas were traded as readily as goods at the port. This is the context for ready wit and vivid characters dancing before us in the harpsichord manuscript left to us as the principal work of an instrumental virtuoso who was blind from birth. Little else is known of Valente, though he became an organist in one of the city's private chapel between 1565 and 1580, and we know that this Intavolatura was published in 1576, by which time the composer's reputation had spread far beyond the kingdom of Naples. It seems certain that the collection was the first of it's kind to be written in southern Italy. These are popular dances rather than original melodies, and Valente transcribes and elaborates them in various genres of song and dance there are hymns (a Salve Regina), galliards, ricercars, ballads, even a flamboyant 'Bascia Flammignia', placed in exuberant juxtaposition, hardly designed to be heard in strict order but a collection to delight and entertain. The Intavolatura does so here, thanks to the imaginative re-instrumentation and sparkling performances of an Italian early-music ensemble, L'Amorosa Caccia. The songs are reattributed to a pair of singers (Giulia Valentini and Marcos Garcia Gutierrez), accompanied by two violas da gamba and a recorder, with the overall artistic direction undertaken from the keyboard by Fabio Antonio Falcone.

3LP/1BR.