Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (13 January 1690 – 27 November 1749) was a German composer of the Baroque era.
Biography
Early life Stölzel was born in Grünstädtel in the Electorate of Saxony on 13 January 1690. His father, organist in Grünstädtel, gave him his first music education. When he was thirteen, he was sent to study in Schneeberg, where he was taught music, including thoroughbass, by cantor Christian Umlaufft, a former student of Johann Kuhnau. A few years later he was admitted to the gymnasium in Gera, where he further practiced music under Emanuel Kegel, the director of the court chapel. Some of his educators took a dim view of music, and tried to divert his attention from it: apart from engaging in poetry and oratory, Stölzel nonetheless continued to develop his interest in music.Mattheson 1740Mizler 1754Melvin P. Unger, editor. "Introduction" pp. vii–xi of Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel – German Te Deum: a setting of Martin Luther's translation. A-R Editions, 2010.
In 1707 he became a student of theology in Leipzig. The city had a lot to offer from a musical point of view: its opera had been reopened shortly before, which Stölzel liked to visit. He became acquainted with Melchior Hoffmann, at the time music director of the Neukirche and conductor of the Collegium Musicum, both in succession of Georg Philipp Telemann, who had left Leipzig in 1705. Perfecting his art under Hoffmann, Stölzel also acted as his copyist, and started composing: initially Hoffmann performed these compositions as his own, Stölzel gradually coming to the open as their composer.
As a composer In 1710 Stölzel went to Breslau in Silesia, where his first opera, Narcissus, on his own libretto, was performed in 1711. Returning to Halle after over two years in Silesia, he composed the operas Valeria, instigated by Johann Theile, for Naumburg, and Rosen und Dornen der Liebe for Gera. In 1713 he composed two further operas on his own librettos, Artemisia and Orion, both premiered in Naumburg.Narcissus at
Late in 1713 he travelled to Italy, where he met composers like Johann David Heinichen and Antonio Vivaldi in Venice, Francesco Gasparini in Florence and Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Bononcini in Rome. Returning after more than a year, he spent some time in Innsbruck, and travelled over Linz to Prague where he worked for nearly three years (1715–17).
In 1715 the post of Kapellmeister at the court of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen became vacant. Stölzel applied, but Prince Christian William I promoted Johann Balthasar Christian Freißlich, the court organist, to Kapellmeister in 1716. Court musicians such as Johann Christoph Rödiger felt disappointed with their master's choice.Cantatas for Pentecost review of the 2002 recording by Johan van Veen, 2005
In Prague Stölzel premiered three more operas, several oratorios, masses, and many instrumental compositions. Stölzel was for a short time court Kapellmeister in Bayreuth (1717–18) and in Gera (1719). His opera Diomedes was premiered in 1718 in Bayreuth. Stölzel married Christiana Dorothea Knauer on 25 May 1719. They had nine sons and one daughter. Three sons died at a young age.
On 24 November 1719 Stölzel assumed the position of Kapellmeister at the court in Gotha, where he worked under the dukes Frederick II and Frederick III of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg until his death in 1749.Owens et al. 2011/2015, p. 203
Stölzel wrote several theoretical works about music, but only one of these was published during his lifetime: a treatise on the composition of canons, of which 400 copies were printed in 1725.Hiller 1784Gerber 1792Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. Practischer Beweiß wie aus einem nach dem wahren Fundamente solcher Noten-Künsteleyen gesetzten Canone perpetuo in hypo dia pente quatuor vocum viel und mancherley ... Canones perpetui à 4 zu machen seyn. S.l., 1725
In 1720 Prince Günther I succeeded his father in Sondershausen. He too regretted his father's choice for the court Kapellmeister. He asked Stölzel to provide music for the court chapel. However, Stölzel did not comply with this request until 1730, when Freißlich was leaving for Danzig (where he was appointed in 1731). Until Günther's death in 1740 Stölzel provided music for the Sondershausen court, which included four cycles of church cantatas, other sacred music, and secular music such as serenatas.Scheitler 2005, pp. 338–345
In 1739 Stölzel became a member of Lorenz Christoph Mizler's . As a member of this Society he composed a cantata and wrote a treatise on the recitative, which was published as Abhandlung vom Recitativ in the 20th century.Steger 1962
Final years The last two years of his life Stölzel suffered from ill health, becoming feeble-minded ("im Haupte schwach"). Some of Stölzel's manuscripts were sold to cover expenses.Ahrens 2009 He died 27 November 1749 in Gotha, less than 60 years old. Mizler printed Stölzel's obituary as second of three (of which Johann Sebastian Bach's was the third), in the fourth volume of his , the organ of the Society of Musical Sciences.
Compositions
According to an 18th-century source Stölzel would have composed eight double cantata cycles.
Stölzel composed twelve complete annual cycles of sacred cantatas, which amounts to 1,358 cantatas. 1,215 of these are at least partially extant, 605 surviving with music.Siegmund 2007 Additionally, Stölzel set cantatas to secular texts.
Among his extant compositions are a Brockes Passion of 1725, two Christmas Oratorios, made of cantatas,Stölzel: Christmas Oratorio - Epistle Cantatas on ArkivMusik, review of David Vernier, 2005 and a Deutsche Messe (German Mass), a Lutheran Mass consisting of Kyrie and Gloria, in German, set for four-part choir, strings and basso continuo. Extant instrumental works include four concerti grossi, many sinfonias, and a concerto for oboe d'amore. He also wrote for organ and harpsichord.
His five operas, Diomedes (1718), Narcissus, Valeria, Artemisia, and Orion, have not survived. Stölzel is reputed to have composed over 18 orchestral suites alone (none survive), as well as 90 serenatas (vocal pieces performed as "table music").
Half of Stölzel's output, never engraved, is lost. Out of what had to have been thousands of compositions in Gotha, only twelve manuscripts survive there today. The archive at Schloss Sondershausen retains many of his manuscripts, found in a box behind the organ in 1870.
Reception Stölzel enjoyed an outstanding reputation in his lifetime. Shortly after his death some of his compositions were still performed, and Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg rated him slightly above Bach in his list of prominent composers of the 18th century. By the 19th century he was largely forgotten.. Article in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung. 1832, pp. 639f. From the second half of the 20th century there was an increase of musicological research about the composer, and recordings of his work.
Contemporaries Before he settled in Gotha for the last thirty years of his life Stölzel had already seen his music performed from Germany to Italy. His operas had been staged in several major cities in the 1710s. His sacred music was performed from Catholic Prague to the Protestant German principalities. Even after his music production became concentrated on Gotha and Sondershausen, his music was still performed outside these places. One of his operas was performed in Altenburg in 1722, Nur in dir wohnt mein Ergötzen schöne Gegend stilles Land the Saitenspiel cantata cycle was performed under Johann Friedrich Fasch in Zerbst in 1724–25, and the first Passion he had composed for Gotha, and reworked around 1730, was taken up in several German cities: Johann Sebastian Bach performed Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld on Good Friday in Leipzig. In 1736 the Passion was performed as Geistliche Und Heilige Betrachtungen der Gläubigen Seele über Ihren Leidenden und Sterbenden Jesum in Rudolstadt, and in a similar version (Der Glaubigen Seele geistliche Betrachtungen Ihres leidenden Jesu) in Nürnberg.
Bach didn't only perform the work: around 1742–43 he reworked the aria "Dein Kreuz, o Bräutgam meiner Seelen" from Die leidende und am Kreuz sterbende Liebe Jesu into Bekennen will ich seinen Namen, BWV 200.Bach Digital Work The music of this work had originally been believed to have been Bach's own.Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (1998), p. 202
Before that, Bach and his family had shown their interest in various genres of Stölzel's music: Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: in the 1720s Bach copied a four-movement harpsichord suite Partia di Signore Steltzeln (Partita by Mr. Stölzel) as 48th piece in the Klavierbüchlein (keyboard-booklet) of his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, adding a Trio (BWV 929) of his own hand to its last movement, a Minuet.Alfred Dörffel, editor. BGA Vol. 451 (1897), pp. 213–231Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (1998), pp. 391–392Bach Digital Work Possibly in the period 1732–35 Bach performed cantatas of Stölzel's Namebook cycle in Leipzig. From the first Sunday after Trinity 1735 to Trinity Sunday the next year Bach probably performed Stölzel's entire String-Music cantata cycle in Leipzig's churches. Text booklets containing Schmolck's librettos and the chorales Stölzel had added to his settings of these librettos, were printed for the Leipzig church services in that period.Tatiana Shabalina "Recent Discoveries in St Petersburg and their Meaning for the Understanding of Bach’s Cantatas" pp. 77-99 in Understanding Bach 4, 2009 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach: some time after 1733–34 Anna Magdalena Bach noted "Bist du bei mir", BWV 508, based on the aria "Bist du bei mir geh ich mit Freuden" from Stölzel's opera Diomedes, Diomedes (Excerpts): "Bist du bei mir geh ich mit Freuden" in her notebook. For a long time the music of this aria was misattributed to her husband Johann Sebastian.Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (1998), pp. 308–309Bach-Jahrbuch 2002, pp. 172–174.Bach Digital Work
Johann Mattheson reckoned Stölzel among "the level-headed, learned, and great music masters" of his century. Lorenz Christoph Mizler rated Stölzel as great as Johann Sebastian Bach.
Next generation
Georg Benda, Stölzel's immediate successor at the court in Gotha, restaged church music of his predecessor, sometimes with score revisions, until 1768: Passion settings and many cantatas such as the 1728–29 double cantata cycle (restaged in the liturgical years 1752–53, 1763–64 and 1765–66) were included in such repeat performances.Owens et al. 2011/2015, p. 213 Stölzel's legacy was however disintegrating through sales of manuscripts, which court musicians had continued after the composer's death. 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 useless junk and kept them in my own house.""Nur die besten Arbeiten meines Vorgängers, von welchen man noch izt beÿ den Kirchen-Musiken einigen Gebrauch machen könnte, sind gerettet, weil ich solche schon vor langer Zeit von dem unbrauchbaren Wuste abgesondert und eigends in meinem Hause verwahrt habe.", quoted in Hennenberg 1976, p. 22