Delphin
Strungk was born, worked, and died in the German city of Braunschweig.
His eldest son, Nicolaus Adam was a traveler, journeying to Vienna
and Italy at least twice and holding musical posts across Germany.
The father was born in the first year of the 17th
century: the son died at the turn of the next.
The father devoted his creative life almost exclusively to the
music of the church; the son achieved fame as a composer of opera.
This recording offers a musical portrait of a family’s two very
different generations.
Delphin
Strungk’s father had been an organist in Braunschweig, and after service
in nearby Wolfenbüttel and more distant Celle, Delphin was by 1637
ensconced as the leading organist in
the town of his birth, where he held forth on a large three manual organ,
equipped with the panoply of sounds typical of 17th century
North German instruments. Delphin
counted among his friends Heinrich Schütz, who stood as godfather to one
of his sons and for whom Delphin served as agent, selling Schütz’s
musical publications in Braunschweig.
By mid-century Delphin was responsible for providing organ music at
five churches in the city and was helped in discharging these duties by
one of his sons, a daughter (!), and two of his students.
More than simply a musical functionary, Delphin was an important
cultural attraction: a 1652 tribute to the Braunschweig town council
commended its members for retaining so many outstanding employees, “not
least of whom is the very famous organist Herr Delphin Strungk.”
Crown Prince Rudolf August often journeyed from his residence in
Wolfenbüttel to hear Strungk play for Saturday evening vespers, the
traditional venue for the display of the organist’s art.
The centerpiece of the Vespers service was the Magnificat, and the
separate movements of the Magnificat noni toni represent the kind of music
Delphin would have improvised for interpolation between the verses sung by
the choir. Delphin’s
setting of the Magnificat draws on the wide tonal range of the instrument
he had at his disposal: the grave, ceremonious opening; the distinctive
solo colors; the intricate and varied figuration spanning the full compass
of the instrument; and the extended echo effects- a favorite conceit that
exploits the spatial dislocation of the separate divisions of large
northern organs, not simply a
collection of discreet chorale preludes on the Magnificat melody, the
individual verses of Delphin’s Magnificat noni toni form a full-blown
chorale fantasy in which all the techniques known to German organists of
the first half of the 17th century are used.
Strungk’s
setting of the chorale of death and resurrection, Ich hab mein Gott sach
heimgestellt, is another of the multi-verse cantus firmus-based organ
pieces that formed the foundation of the North German organ tradition.
The tree-tiered echo effects head near the end of the piece are
characteristic of Delphin’s unique voice, as is the angular and often
unpredictable course of the melodic writing; likewise, the staid
contrapuntal opening, with its occasional chromatic wanderings and curious
syncopation, bears his unmistakable signature.
Strungk’s Lass mich dein sein und bleiben may be the only
surviving verse from a larger cycle, and its placid counterpoint, heard
below the unadorned chorale melody, is all the more moving for its
restraint.
Freed
from the organizing principles inherent in chorale-based composition,
Delphin’s fantastical imagination is unleashed in the toccata ad manuale
duplex, a piece in which the composer’s musical investigations reach
unprecedented proportions- this is perhaps the longest piece in the North
German repertoire. The
bravura echoes, the extensive experimentation with severe chromaticism,
and the buoyant imitative writing offer a panoramic view of Delphin the
performer indulging his boundless gifts of invention.
The pieces by Delphin on this recording represent his four sur-organ;
the intabulations of motets by other composers are not included here.
Nicolaus
Adam Strungk grew up learning from his father and hearing
him expand the boundaries of the traditional
north German genres. After
studying the violin in the north German city of Lübeck, Nicolaus Adam was
by 1660 employed as a violinist in Celle.
Nicolaus Adam journeyed to Vienna and played for Emperor Leopold
III, a musical enthusiast from whom he received a coveted golden chain.
During the trip Nicolaus Adam established a lasting friendship with
the renowned violinist and later Imperial Kapellmeister, Johann Heinrich
Schmeltzer. As the Emperor--
and probably Schmiltzer as well-- recognized, Strungk was also one of his
generation's greatest performers on the violin.
An anecdote from the 18th century finds Nicolaus Adam in
Rome accompanying the great Italian violinist Archangelo Corelli on the
harpsichord. After prodding
Strungk to play the violin, Corelli was astounded by the German’s
demonic technique, and declared, “if I am the Archangel you are
certainly the Archdevil.”
The
journey south was crucial in sending the younger Strungk down a different
path from that of his father, for it was on this first trip to Vienna that
Nicolaus Adam encountered the Italian contrapuntal genres-- the capriccio
and the ricercar-- which he would explore in his own keyboard
compositions. Where Delphin
had composed in a letter notation (German tablature) favored in the north,
Nicolaus Adam’s extant keyboard music derives from the south and is
written in open score, a format favored by Frescobaldi and his student
Froberger when writing in learned genres, and one that Nicolaus Adam
employed to lay bare the rigor of his own counterpoint.
The
intricacy and dramatic flair so evident in Nicolaus Adam’s compositions
ensured their popularity among subsequent generations of keyboard players.
His works circulated widely in manuscript in central Germany; both
Bach and Handel copied his music into the volumes they compiled as youths.
C.P.E. Bach cited Nicolaus Adam as one of the important influences
on his father, and Handel appropriated music from two of Strungk’s
keyboard pieces for use in his own vocal music composed much later in
London. The young Bach would
have learned much form Strungk’s commitment to his contrapuntal
material, his genius for combining multiple themes and overlapping them in
close strettos, his adventurous harmonic language, and his ability to use
counterpoint for emotional effect.
As
is rarely the case for surviving 17th century music
manuscripts, Nicolaus Adam dated his keyboard works (seven out of the nine
extant compositions appear on the recording).
Composed over a seven-year period, these pieces track Nicolaus
Adam’s peregrinations across Europe.
He wrote the Capriccio in g in 1678 while he was in the
service of the Duke of Hannover who supported a lavish Italianate musical
establishment. The Capriccio
in a (1681) was composed during Nicolaus Adam’s tenure as a municipal
musician in Hamburg *1679-16820 and on of the leading composers for the
city’s opera, the first public opera house in Germany.
In Hamburg he not only performed on the violin in the city’s
churches but also played the large organs alongside such luminaries as
Johann Adam Reinken, one of the most famous of north German organists.
The Capricci in e-minor and F-major and the Ricercar in G--
all composed within ten days of each other in 1683-- mark Nicolaus
Adam’s return to Hannover, where he served the Dukütze, Ernst August,
while continuing to compose operas for Hamburg.
In
early 1685 Nicolaus Adam accompanied the Duke to Venice for Carnival, a
festival filled with regattas, serenades, and of course, performances at
the famous Venetian opera. Given
his fascination with Italianate keyboard music, it is fitting that during
this Italian sojourn Nicolaus Adam composed what must be considered one of
the entire 17th century. He
wrote the Ricercar sopra la Morte della mia carissima Madre in December of
1685 on hearing that his mother had died at home in Braunschweig in August
of that year. The lengthly
inscription, which notes his mother’s full name, the date and place of
her death, and the date and place of composition, reflects the importance
of the piece and the event it so eloquently commemorates.
That the Ricercar sopra la Morte will be a contrapuntal
tour-de-force is apparent from the striking theme, which I answered by its
exact melodic inversion. But
Nicolaus Adam deploys this standard, if highly intellectual, contrapuntal
procedure in an unprecedented way to contradict the major mode established
by the opening subject; this conflict between major and minor is never
resolved over the course of the Ricercar and contributes an important
layer of emotional tension to a piece rich in meaning. Already a very old
man in 1685, Delphin lived on for nearly a decade after the death of his
wife; he certainly would have been moved by his son’s tribute while
being at the same time proud of his finest pupil’s accomplishments as a
composer.
The
last piece of the collection, the Capriccio primi toni (1686) stems from a
final trip to Vienna; its craftsmanship is a fitting acknowledgment of the
central role that city had played in Nicolaus Adam’s development as a
keyboard composer. The place
of composition anticipates the trajectory of his subsequent career: to
Dreseden, where he would eventually become Kapellmeister (a post once held
by his father’s friend Schütz), and to Leipzig where he founded the
second public opera house in Germany.
Nicolaus
Adam Strungk’s singular contribution to German keyboard music would not
have been achieved without the patience to draw all he could form his
native instruments an musical idioms- that is, without the peculiar
inspirations of home.