Praetorius - San Marco In Hamburg - Weser-Renaissance, Cordes

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Praetorius - San Marco In Hamburg - Weser-Renaissance, Cordes

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the city church music director's post involving the responsibility for the music in all of Hamburg's churches, both large and small, was regarded as an outstanding musician's office in the northern territories of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. This Hamburg music director's post (to which appointments ceased being made after 1822) offered its holder excellent opportunities to earn great renown for church music in circles of influence extending far beyond the city's borders: it was accompanied by the lesser directorship at the exterritorial cathedral church, received organizational reinforcement from the new structuring of Hamburg church music in the 1640s, was situated in the midst of an attractive organ landscape, and participated in productive dialogue with the opera founded in 1678. Composers such as HIERONYMUS PRAETORIUS, Thomas Selle, Johann Schop, Matthias Weckmann, Christoph Bernhard, Jan Adam Reincken, Johann Mattheson, Reinhard Keiser, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who were active in Hamburg as organists, town musicians, or music directors, contributed significantly to the development of music in general and in sacred genres such as the passion, the sacred concerto, the cantata, and the oratorio in particular.

Hieronymus Praetorius (1560 - 1629)

German organist and composer, not related to Michael Praetorius . Kantor in Erfurt from 1580 to 1582. In 1582 he succeeded his father Jakob (also his teacher) as organist at the Jakobskirche in Hamburg. Two of hiss sons, Jacob (2) and Johannes, were also musicians. His Opus Musicum (collected church music; 1616-22) includes over 100 motets in up to twenty parts, many of which make skilful use of the Venetian polychoral style. With Hans Leo Hassler, Hieronymus Praetorius is one of the best representatives of the VENETIAN tradition in Germany. His music is however old-fashioned for its time in that the basso continuo is still optional, and no use is made of the new monodic style or of obbligato instruments. He also published a collection of Latin and German sacred songs as used in his Hamburg church.

CD Content

01. Jubilate Deo
02. Ecce Dominus veniet
03. Hodie Christus natus est
04. Ab oriente venerunt Magi
05. Nunc dimittis
06. O bone Jesu
07. Magnificat quarti toni
08. Wie lang, O Gott
09. Surrexit pastor bonus
10. Ascendo ad patrem meum
11. Hodie completi sunt
12. Adesto unus Deus
13. Cantate Domino