Florilegium Primum & Secundum for string quintet and Basso continuo
Muffat, Georg
60,00 €
Preface
Georg Muffat
(b. Megève, Savoy, 1 June 1653 – d. Passau, 23 February 1704)
Florilegium primum & secundum
Georg Muffat was among the most cosmopolitan composers of the seventeenth century. His youth was spent in the Duchy of Savoy and Alsace, both regions subject to the conflicting political ambitions of France and the Holy Roman Empire. As a young boy, from about 1663-1669, he was in Paris, where he first encountered the French ballet and especially its performance under Jean-Baptiste Lully. Upon his return to Alsace, he studied at Jesuit schools in Schlettstadt (Séléstat) and Molsheim, where he was appointed organist to the exiled Strasbourg Cathedral chapter. Following the beginning of hostilities between France and the Empire in Alsace during 1674, Muffat first went to study law in at Ingolstadt, Bavaria. In the preface to Florilegium primum, he then describes his subsequent flight “to Vienna in Austria, Prague, and then finally to Salzburg and Passau.” His earliest known composition is a violin sonata dated Prague, July 2, 1677, in his autograph manuscript. By 1678 he was employed by Archbishop Max Gandolf, Count of Kuenberg, at Salzburg, where he served along with Andreas Hofer and H.I.F. Biber. Following the Archbishop’s death in 1687, the artistic climate had changed and Muffat was seeking other patrons, including Leopold I, to whom he dedicated his Apparatus musico-organisticus. In 1690 he was appointed Kapellmeister at the court of Johann Philipp of Lamberg, Bishop of Passau and later tutor
[Edelknabenhofmeister] to the court pages. He served at Passau until his death.
Aside from his only violin sonata and a few keyboard suites, preserved in manuscript, Muffat’s legacy is built upon his five publications. The first was the Armonico tributo (Salzburg, 1682), a set of five chamber concerti mostly composed while he was in Rome, studying with Bernardo Pasquini and Arcangelo Corelli. These are the first published works to specify the alternation of a concertino trio with a concerto grosso. After his move to Passau, he published two collections of dance music in the French style, which he claimed to have introduced to Central Europe, the Florilegium primum (Augsburg, 1695) and Florilegium secundum (Passau, 1698). His Apparatus musico-organisticus (Salzburg, 1690), dedicated to Emperor Leopold I, contains keyboard works, including twelve toccatas for organ, a chaconne, a passacaglia, and an Aria and a set of variations inscribed “Ad malleorum ictus allusio” (An Allusion to the Strokes of the Hammers), both under the collective title of Nova Cyclopeias Harmonica (The New Cyclopean Harmony). Finally, it is apparent that already in the 1690s, Muffat was dissatisfied with his Armonico tributo, since he did not list this collection among his published works in either Florilegium publication. He began an extensive revision which resulted in reworking the earlier pieces and adding new movements to his Ausserlesene Instrumental- Music (Passau, 1701), which even more clearly were concerti grossi.
Muffat was probably not the first to promote French-style dance music in Central Europe, as Georg Bleyer, Johann Heinrich Schmeltzer and others were already composing dance suites, and Johann Sigismund Kusser published his Composition de mu- sique suivant la méthode françoise, contenant 6 ouvertures de théâtre accompagnées de plusieurs airs (Stuttgart, 1682) thirteen years before Muffat’s first collection. Florilegium primum (Augsburg, 1695) contains dances he had composed in Salzburg. In line with the title (The first garland of instrumental dances in a more sweet harmony), each of the seven fascicles (or bouquets) was given a fanciful title. Five begin with a French ouverture, one with a “Symphonie” in the Italian style, and the last with a slow “Air.” These introductory movements were followed by the dances “arranged in the most recent dance style (slowly flow- ering more completely [among us]).” …
Charles E. Brewer, Florida State University, September 2015
Read full preface / Komplettes Vorwort lesen > HERE
Score Data
| Edition | Repertoire Explorer |
|---|---|
| Pages | 300 |
| Genre | Chamber Music |
| Size | 210 x 297 mm |
| Printing | Reprint |
