Volkmann, Robert

Robert Volkmann – Two Masses for Male Choir a cappella, Op. 28 and Op. 29

(b. Lommatzsch near Meißen, 6 April 1815 — d. Budapest, 29 October 1883)

(1843 and 1852-53)

Messe Nr. 1 D-Dur für Männerstimmen mit Soli op. 28 (1843)
Kyrie (p. 3) – Gloria (p. 6) – Credo (p. 11) – Sanctus (p. 19)
– Benedictus (p. 20) – Agnus Dei (p. 24)

Messe Nr. 2 As-Dur für Mannerstimmen ohne Soli op. 29 (1852-53)
Kyrie (p. 3) – Gloria (p. 9) – Credo (p. 13) – Sanctus (p. 21) –
Benedictus (p. 22) – Agnus Dei (p. 24)

Preface
Among the forgotten German romantic composers associated with Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, and the slightly younger Brahms, Robert Volkmann was one of the most original and significant. The second son of a Lutheran cantor, Gotthelf Volkmann (1767-1833), he began to compose while still in his childhood and played the piano, organ, violin, and cello. In 1832 he went to study in Freiberg, where he was championed by the town music director, an ardent Beethovenian named August Ferdinand Anacker (1790-1851). Anacker urged Volkmann to take up a musical career, and the young man duly moved to Leipzig in 1836. At that time Leipzig did not have a conservatory (it was not founded until 1843), and Volkmann took lessons in composition and theory from Karl Ferdinand Becker (1804-1877), the organist at St. Peter’s and later the head of the organ department at the Conservatory. He also attended the Thursday concerts in the Gewandhaus (conducted by Felix Mendelssohn) and enjoyed the esteem of Robert Schumann. In October 1839 he accepted a teaching appointment at a music school in Prague, but a year later he was retained as a music teacher for the two daughters of Countess Stainlein-Saalenstein at their family estate in Szemeréd near Ipolyság, Hungary. Here he increasingly turned to composition. As part of the countess’s retinue he often visited Pest, the then largely German section of present-day Budapest. After resigning his position in Szemeréd in June 1841 he moved to Pest, where his first works of any importance originated. In 1844 a breach arose between the confirmed bachelor and his family in Saxony, a breach so bitter that when his mother died in 1852 she did not know whether her son were still alive. In 1846 he composed a string quartet in G minor, later to become his Second Quartet, op. 14; it was followed a year later by what would become his First String Quartet in A minor, op. 9. …

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