Harmonischer Gottesdienst (Easter and Pentecost Cantatas) - Telemann

The Harmonischer Gottesdienst is a collection of cantatas to be played every sunday in the Lutheran Calendar. In fact it is the most famous Telemann's set of vocal music.

Telemann was not just an excellent musician, admired and respected by everyone, he was moreover an extraordinary instrumentalist, capable of playing almost all the instruments of the orchestra; he was also poet, pedagogue, theoretician, he studied law and was attached to sciences and classic letters and arts, adding to all this his skill to make business, enthusiasm for traveling and his easiness to speak various languages. 

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All the skills Telemann had facilitate his fame to be spread to all corners of Europe and his music to be acquired almost by everyone who can afford it.

Apart, Telemann was very versatile, a quality that enable him to write music no matter the circumstances, music for the most prodigious musicians and singers, and music for dilettantes, which is the case in great part of the Harmonischer Gotesdienst, because the oeuvre is intended for both performances, church and in private meetings or domestic, so the writing is aim mostly to dilettantes, but despite of it, the mastery and beauty is undeniable.

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L'Estro Armonico - Vivaldi

L’estro armonico is perhaps the most influential set of Italian concertos of the XVIIth century. It was with this set that Vivaldi gained worldwide fame and a assured the post as violin teacher and composer at la Pietà.

It is actually revolutionary the way Vivaldi composed these concertos in which combines the solo concerto with the concerto grosso so popular by that time thanks along to others, mainly to Corelli. Thus, there were other different soloists alongside the foremost violinists, where moreover the cello was given a concertante character.   

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Die Auferstehung (The Resurrection) - Telemann

Telemann never stops fascinating us, and doesn’t matter the time, because his music will delight many generation ahead, because his fame and glory are immortal. Telemann’s genius filled music with his everlasting creativeness, always fitted to the new requirements and tastes of the always avid public in his time.  

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Sei cantate per soprano, strumenti e basso continuo - Melani

It is just great to know that exist plenty of unknown musicians whose oeuvre is not still revived, that is the case of one member of the Melani´s family, Alessandro, which was perhaps the most prolific between his brothers, just traded off by his brother Jacopo. 

The world in which lead us these cantatas, is the world in the minds of the thinkers in the XVII century (the front image of the disk says everything), a classic world where love was in the highest post.

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La Grandezza della Musica Imperiale - Fux

Johann Joseph Fux is among the great musicians in History despite of been forget so long and his music the same. He was better known a cause of his contrapunctual treatise Gradus ad Parnassum, but now, his music is more present as never before (after his death), it is a music that conveys such a doses of emotions that is hard to believe we are not alive, that life is not beautiful. His mastery in the composition is just admirable.

The title makes allusion to the greatness of the imperial music, and I fully agree.

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