Fux

Die Triopartiten von Johann Joseph Fux gehören zweifellos zu den stärksten Werken des habsburgischen Hofkapellmeisters und wurden bereits zu seinen Lebzeiten weithin gerühmt. Gerade die Könnerschaft auf dem Gebiet der Triokomposition wog in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts schwer, da – mit den Worten Johann Matthesons – „in einem Trio mehr Kunst stecke, als in vielstimmigen Sätzen“. Die Hochschätzung der Triokomposition lässt sich an der zunehmenden Zahl entsprechender Musikdrucke ablesen: Wer als Instrumentalkomponist überzeugen wollte, tat gut daran, schon als erstes Opus eigene Triowerke zu publizieren.

The delightfully unusual disc Alla turca takes its initial inspiration from the failed 1683 siege of Vienna by the Turks and never looks back. The music explored here belongs to the Holy Roman Empire of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, an empire that celebrated both the arms that held back the Islamist hordes, and the more gentle arts of music that several Emperors personally studied. Alla turca brings a seldom-heard Baroque repertory to life in vivid musical color.

The young Czech soprano Hana Blažíkóva is one of the most exciting voices in the baroque scene. Conductors such as Philippe Herreweghe, Masaaki Suzuki and Vaclav Luks frequently invite her for CD recordings, concerts and tours. She regularly appears at renowned festivals including Prague Spring, Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Resonances in Vienna and the Early Music Days in Regensburg.

Fux was a prolific composer of vocal and instrumental music. His works include 19 operas, of which Costanza e fortezza (1723) is notable; 29 partitas, including the Concentus musico-instrumentalis (1701); 10 oratorios; and about 80 masses, of which the Missa canonica, (1708), written in canon. His book Gradus ad Parnassum" (1725; Steps to Parnassus) attempted to systematize contrapuntal practices. It was long the standard textbook on counterpoint and was studied by Wolfgang A. Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and other 18th-century composers.

The Stabat Mater Dolorosa is a sequence, not a chant, and no unified melody was established for it until the mid-nineteenth century; it was even banned for a time by the Council of Trent, but restored to liturgical use in the late 1720s by Pope Benedict XIII. Much as Prohibition did not stem the tide of alcohol use, the Council of Trent's ban on the text did not diminish the popularity of the Stabat Mater. It was during the official, 160-year-long period where the Stabat Mater was not heard in churches that Giovanni Felice Sances composed the title work on this Mirare CD Stabat Mater, featuring Carlos Mena, Philippe Pierlot, and the Ricercar Consort.

The Viennese Court Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741) is regarded in music history as the forefather of modern counterpoint, and his instructional work ""Gradus ad parnassum"" continues to influence education in this subject to the present day. But the many compositions Fux wrote for the Viennese court are largely forgotten. If at all, one still knows of sacred compositions in which Fux followed this strict, academic style. On the other hand, the composer was able to free himself from this in his opera and in his ""Componimenti sacri"", which are operatic oratorios for Holy Week (during which no operas were allowed to be performed).

In 2018, the Styriarte Festival in Graz launched, in collaboration with Zefiro, a project to rediscover the operatic output of the Styrian composer Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna for forty years, with the aim of restaging six of his nineteen operas, one per year. With a cast of Baroque vocal specialists, led by Monica Piccinini and Arianna Venditelli, this set of Dafne in lauro marks the beginning of a new series in which Arcana will release the recordings made in the course of the six-year cycle.

Johann Joseph Fux was a contemporary of Bach, but his compositions owe more to the lyrical, Austrian-Italian musical tradition of Biber, Muffat, and Schmelzer than to the contrapuntal complexities of his North German colleagues. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that he was the author of the most revered counterpoint textbook (Gradus ad Parnassum, Vienna, 1725) in the history of Western music. Written in Latin in the form of a Socratic dialog, the book offered such a thorough and systematic course of self-study in the musical language of “Golden Age” composers such as Palestrina, and was so immediately successful, that it completely obliterated Fux’s reputation as a composer.

Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1740) was an influential teacher, having written 'Gradus ad Parnassum' which codified compositional principles for musical training throughout the classical era. His compositions include abundant church music, operas, and numerous suites and trio sonatas. Counterpoint in his compositions was a hallmark of his style but did not keep him from incorporating modern tendencies in his music. The 'Missa Corporis Christi' was written in February, 1713, probably written for the next Feast of Corporis Christi, which fell on June 15 in that year.

Andreas Staier’s informed and inspired interpretations have left their mark on the discography of both the harpsichord and the fortepiano and have enabled us to see Bach, Mozart and Schubert in a completely new light. This is Staier’s first solo album of a projected series for Alpha Classics, in which he also presents his own compositions for the first time.