Brüser, Elke

A year or so ago my wife and I were standing on Juliet’s balcony in Verona, a romantic spot. Below us there assembled a mixed choir which started to sing one of the most famous madrigals of the 16th century, Il bianco e dolce cigno by Jacques Arcadelt. Apparently all Italians know this music, almost from memory, as do I, so I joined in, much to the delight of all those in the little courtyard below. There is more to Arcadelt than this or any of his over one hundred other published madrigals. His church music helped to lay the foundations for Palestrina and his contemporaries yet has been sadly neglected.

When musicological research fails from the outset because it finds the deed but not the slightest clue as to the perpetrator, then we have to surrender completely to the listening experience and forget the unknowns. This is also the case with Missa solennis, which a certain Ioannes Cuisean composed for the people of Cologne as commissioned for the Feast of St. Gereon in 1663. Did the composer have something to do with the Strasbourg Cathedral because the only copy of the work survived there? No one knows. This has motivated the Cologne-based Josquin Capella, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2024, to make a grand event of this piece, which is as enigmatic as it is beautiful. Framed and interspersed with organ pieces by his – anything but unknown – contemporary Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-1667), a liturgy of magnificent sound is created with no need for further "research".

When musicological research fails from the outset because it finds the deed but not the slightest clue as to the perpetrator, then we have to surrender completely to the listening experience and forget the unknowns. This is also the case with Missa solennis, which a certain Ioannes Cuisean composed for the people of Cologne as commissioned for the Feast of St. Gereon in 1663. Did the composer have something to do with the Strasbourg Cathedral because the only copy of the work survived there? No one knows. This has motivated the Cologne-based Josquin Capella, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2024, to make a grand event of this piece, which is as enigmatic as it is beautiful. Framed and interspersed with organ pieces by his – anything but unknown – contemporary Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-1667), a liturgy of magnificent sound is created with no need for further "research".

Volume 4 of our Sigfrid Karg-Elert Edition contains an impressive collection of large-scale secular organ works: Kaleidoscope, Seven Pastels from the Lake Constance, Rondo and Homage to Handel…

Lüdenscheid, Christuskirche. The organ of the Christ Church in Lüdenscheid was built by E.F.Walcker in 1902 as opus 1035…