Gottfried Heinrich Stolzel

Biography

Stolzel grew up in Schwarzenberg, Saxony in the Erzgebirge. From 1707 he was a student of theology in Leipzig and of Melchior Hoffmann, the musical director of the Neukirche. He studied, worked and composed in Wroclaw and Halle. Then an 18-month sojourn in Italy, from 1713 — where he met Antonio Vivaldi in Venice — rendered him au courant with the latest musical taste. After working for three years in Prague, he became briefly court Kapellmeister in Bayreuth and Gera. Then in 1719, he married, and the next year took up an appointment in Gotha, where he worked until his death for the dukes Frederick II and Frederick III of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, composing a cantata each week.

From 1730, he also wrote for Sondershausen. Stolzel supplied numerous festive occasional pieces and arias for court performance; the archive at Schloss Sondershausen retains many of his manuscripts, found in a box behind the organ in 1870. Half of Stolzel's output, never engraved, is lost. Stolzel's immediate successor at the court in Gotha, Georg Benda, bears most of the responsibility for losing many of Stolzel's works. In 1778 Benda wrote: "... Only the best works of my predecessor, which could be used even today for church music, are saved, because already a long time ago I separated them from useless junk and kept them in my own house." This suggests that occasional music (birthday cantatas, serenatas), operas and so on, and most of Stolzel's instrumental music were lost during Benda's lifetime. Those "junk" pieces were apparently taken to the castle attic where holes in the roof exposed the manuscripts to rain and mildew damage, and rodents also ate the paper manuscripts as well. Christian Ahrens has offered another reason why so much of Stolzel's music vanished. According to Ahrens, musicians at the court apparently took instruments and music manuscripts and sold them in advertisements in local Gotha newspapers. Stolzel apparently did this himself before his death (possibly to cover medical expenses as he became more sick near the end of his life), and with Benda's prejudiced view towards the instrumental pieces, it is theorized that the musicians felt this gave them tacit permission to sell the music. The losses were staggering: Stolzel is reputed to have composed over 18 orchestral suites alone (none survive), as well as 90 serenatas (vocal pieces performed as "table music"). In fact, out of what had to have been thousands of compositions in Gotha, only twelve manuscripts survive there today.

Stolzel enjoyed an outstanding reputation in his lifetime: Lorenz Christoph Mizler rated him as great as Johann Sebastian Bach. Johann Mattheson reckoned him among "the level-headed, learned, and great music masters" of his century. Stolzel was an accomplished German stylist who wrote a good many of the poetic texts for his vocal works. Students beginning the piano may remember some pieces by him, those that are included in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. His most important works are: four concerti grossi, many sinfonias, and a concerto for oboe d'amore. His five operas: Diomedes, Narcissus, Valeria, Artemisia, and Orion have not survived.

Musicologists and conductors such as Ludger Remy have successfully revived his music. Oratorios such as a version of the Brockes Passion (1725) and two Christmas Oratorios, made of cantatas, have been recorded, as well as a Deutsche Messe (German Mass), a Lutheran Mass of Kyrie and Gloria, in German, set for four-part choir, strings and basso continuo. Stolzel composed 1,358 cantatas (twelve complete annual cycles of sacred cantatas) of which 1,215 are extant; but of these, only half (605) have musical materials (i.e. score and or parts).

Additionally, Stolzel set cantatas to secular texts. A recent CD recording included several cantatas for Pentecost Sunday.