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Concert Dates 2003
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ZERBST
Saturday, 27 September 2003, 7:30 p.m.
Hotel "von Rephuns Garten"
Fasch-Get-Together featuring the Salonorchester of the Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau
Thursday, 11 December 2003, 8 p.m.
Stadthalle
This Christmas concert will feature the Stadtchor Zerbst and the "Johann Friedrich Reichardt" University Chorus Halle, performing a-cappella choral music from different countries.
BOCHUM
Sunday, 2 November 2003, 4 p.m.
Stadtparkrestaurant
The Fasch-Collegium Bochum will perform a "Coffee Concert" as part of a series hosted by the Bochum Symphony Orchestra; the program will include one overture suite and two instrumental concertos by Johann Friedrich Fasch.
Important Dates for 2004
The IFG will once again organize a concert as part of the 39th Days of Culture of the City of Zerbst (February/March 2004).
An "evening serenade" is in the works for the month of May 2004. It will feature the Chamber Choir of the "Johann Friedrich Reichardt" Chorus of the University Halle-Wittenberg. The emphasis will be on "European choral music from four centuries", with instrumentalists on flute and guitar accompanying the choir. University music director Jens Lorenz will direct the ensembles.
Dear Fasch friends,
In this issue of our newsletter we happily reflect on the Eighth International Fasch Festival in view of its success. If you were among the visitors, you surely enjoy thinking back and remembering the impressive concerts. Obviously, the focal point we chose, "Johann Friedrich Fasch and the Italian Style" was very rewarding, having impacted the program of each and every concert. Outstanding performers who are among the best in the world thrilled audiences in Zerbst and other locations from 3 to 13 April 2003. Top quality performances could be experienced, and with regard to the number of international ensembles this year's festival surpassed its predecessors by far. The press paid much attention to this event and documented it accordingly. We thank the administration of the city of Zerbst for the splendid collaboration, high commitment with regard to organizational matters and for the securing of finances. The latter cannot be taken for granted, due to the tense situation everywhere. We look forward to and have begun preparing the next Fasch Festival together.
On the ensuing pages you can expect a detailed description of the Eighth International Fasch Festival and the scholarly conference, plus an interesting travel diary of a group of concert goers. We will also look ahead a little and provide you with information on events in the coming months to which we would very much like to invite you. In addition, we will bring you updates on new Fasch projects as well as recent editions of musical works and CDs. We are also delighted to tell you once again about the most recent results in Fasch research, i.e. the discovery of a new letter by Fasch.
This newsletter marks the end of Hagen Jahn's employment with the IFG during Susanne Schuster's maternity leave. We would like to thank him for helping us prepare and organize the Fasch Festival and wish him all the best for the future.
Konstanze Musketa
President
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Eighth International Fasch Festival 2003 - Looking back
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From 3 to 13 April 2003, the city of Zerbst and the International Fasch Society hosted for the eighth time a festival in honour of the Zerbst Court Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Fasch.
This also meant that we celebrated an anniversary of sorts because this type of event- albeit it on a much smaller scale - had first taken place 20 years ago. Since then the festival has become an integral part of the festival calendar of Saxony-Anhalt and beyond. Moreover, the idea of expanding the festival to run for a total of 11 days, making use of several different performance venues in the Anhalt area proved to be a success once again. Also, St. Mary's Church in Dessau and Central Lutheran Church in Oranienbaum could be secured as new performance venues. The number of concertgoers increased to 1734 in 2003, due to of the numerous individuals who were visiting Zerbst on the occasion of the bi-centennial celebrated by the Francisceum Secondary School.
However, the high percentage of visitors from virtually all parts of the Federal Republic of Germany was especially remarkable. The German Central Radio helped draw nationwide attention to the festival by recording the concert performed by the chamber orchestra Basel barock in Dessau; DeutschlandRadio Berlin even broadcast the concert performed by King's Consort in Zerbst's town hall live.
The motto "Johann Friedrich Fasch and the Italian Style" was not only the focal point of the scholarly conference but also evident in the concert programs; indeed, all performers traced the impact of the Italian style on Fasch's oeuvre and that of his contemporaries. The festival opened with a festive ceremony during which the Fasch-Prize was awarded at the Fasch-Saal (Zerbst Stadthalle). After the patron of the festival, Prof. Dr. Jan-Hendrik Olbertz, minister of culture, read the laudation, mayor Helmut Behrendt and the president of the IFG, Dr. Konstanze Musketa, presented the Fasch-Prize 2003 to the Academic Orchestra of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
The award acknowledged the commitment of the ensemble to the dissemination of Fasch's compositions through concretizing all over the world; its director Matthias Erben has consistently been programming works by Fasch since the mid-1980s. During the ceremony, the Leipzig ensemble barock a.c.c.u.u.t performed several pieces.
Following the opening ceremony the Italian ensemble Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca thrilled and dazzled the audience with their fiery performances of works by Vivaldi and Fasch, especially exuberant bassoonist and soloist, Sergio Azzolini. He also joined Epoca Barocca at Schloss Wendgräben and he managed to again excite the audience, supported by Margarete Adorf, Alessandro Piqué and Alexander Weimann. The concert at Wendgräben and the one at Schloss Leitzkau were both sold-out. At Leitzkau the ensemble Mediolanum not only offered a diverse program but also admitted that their first "contact" with Fasch - much to their surprise - turned out to be most enjoyable; they promised to continue to promote the compositions of the Zerbst master.
In contrast to these more intimate chamber concerts performances that featured larger ensembles such as Kammerorchester Basel barock, King's Consort and Musica Alta Ripa, were held at larger venues, including St. Mary's Church in Dessau and the Zerbst Stadthalle. Our Swiss guests dazzled the audience with a rich sound and scoring that included natural horns that one only rarely gets to experience live. They premiered a newly edited overture suite in A major by Johann Friedrich Fasch which was recorded for broadcast at the concert by the Central German Radio. King's Consort, London, joined by soprano Lorna Anderson, offered - compared to the fiery temperament exhibited by Sonatori in the opening concert - a somewhat subdued performance. The highpoint of the concert was probably the oboe concerto by Tomaso Albinoni when the (completely silent) audience was enchanted by the magical sound of the music. The closing concert featured Musica Alta Ripa who played a concertino by the obscure Dutch composer Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer and premiered two sinfonias by Johann Friedrich Faschs. Finally, flute concertos by Vivaldi and Fasch side by side allowed a direct comparison and once again confirmed that while Fasch has been influenced by Vivaldi, he need not fear comparison with the famous Italian when it comes to musical expressiveness.
When taking stock at the end of the Fasch festival all reports were very positive. Specifically, the musicians who had been invited to perform managed to achieve the highest artistic level ever - something also reflected in the response of the audiences. Four musicologists from Halle had prepared editions of four works by Fasch that had only been accessible as primary sources; these works were all premiered on the occasion of this year's festival (in addition to the works referred to above, the Zerbst Kantorei and the Johann Friedrich Fasch Ensemble performed the cantata "Er hat große Dinge an mir getan"). Zerbst's city council is now considering offering several additional events to fill the time between the two festival weekends. In view of the increasingly precarious situation of the federal and the municipal budget we can only hope that the high standard of the festival can be preserved in the future and funds will be available to realize such an excellent idea.
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Zerbst is worth a visit…
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Zerbst is worth a visit, they say… and the supporters and friends of the Handel House in Halle couldn't agree more. They boarded a chartered mini-bus on 6 April to travel from Halle due north to Zerbst, district town of the Anhalt region. The occasion was an important one: a visit of the Eighth International Fasch Festival. While our travels usually concern some aspect of the life and works of George Frederick Handel, it seemed reasonable to finally get to know Handel's important contemporary from Central Germany a little more. The Handel Society and the International Fasch Society (founded in 1991) are in close contact due to two members serving on both executive boards. Dr. Musketa, the president of the Fasch Society, is also the secretary of the Handel Society while Professor Dr. W. Ruf, president of the latter, serves as a member on the Academic Advisory Board of the Fasch Society.
It is certainly tempting to examine the oeuvre of Handel - a resident of England but always conscious of his German heritage - from Johann Friedrich Fasch's perspective, who was only three years his junior. Thanks to the meticulous research initiated by the Fasch Society we know now that the prolific number of works composed by Fasch and those conceived by his son Carl Friedrich Christian (who was born in Zerbst and later founded the Berlin Sing-Akademie), were important to the development of European music. In addition, scholarly conferences held during the biennial Fasch Festivals have contributed much to drawing attention to the oeuvre of this exceedingly diverse musician who was interested in contemporary eighteenth-century music within its historical and stylistic context.
The focal point of the Eighth International Fasch Festival - its patron being the minister of culture of the province of Saxony-Anhalt - was "Johann Friedrich Fasch and the Italian style". Incidentally, the focal point of the 2004 Handel Festival in Halle will be "National styles in a European context at the time of Handel with special emphasis on the influence of French music".
The program was diverse and demanding, well suited to encourage respected artists, music lovers and scholars from all over the world to visit Zerbst, which used to be a rather sleepy town until recently.
Unfortunately, we were able to participate in only two musical events on the day of our visit, the first one being the festive worship service at St. Bartholomäi Church. Significantly, musical works by Johann Friedrich Fasch and Antonio Vivaldi were played: the premiere of "Er hat große Dinge an mir getan" by Fasch and several movements from Vivaldi's "Gloria" in D Major. The Zerbst Kantorei directed by Tobias Eger, as well as several aspiring young vocalists (Ulrike Fulde, Stefanie Täschner, Sebastian Reim und Daniel Blumenschein) performed together with the Johann Friedrich Fasch Ensemble from Halle, producing festive melodious sounds in an involved yet easy-going manner. They made the first and exceedingly positive impression of this festival, right at the beginning of the day. The fact that the Zerbst Kantorei - following good Central German traditions - feels obliged to "teach sacred choral music to the people of this town and region and reintroduce it to the general public" is indicative of the importance which the Fasch Festival has been able to achieve, also for the region itself.
The highpoint of the day was naturally the festive concert performed in the Stadthalle; the latter was reopened in 2002 after extensive restorations and renovations. Formerly a riding hall built during particularly splendid times by the reigning Princes of Anhalt-Zerbst, it is situated in the middle of the old court yard. An wonderful concert hall surprised us as the still ignorant visitors, having traveled from far and near only to be delighted by the concert program and the artists. The King's Consort Ensemble led by its musical director Robert King is one of the leading Early Music Ensembles in Europe. The musicians who applied their usual precision and virtuosic-playful approach to music in compositions by Fasch, Albinoni and Vivalidi in various instrumental combinations, were most impressive. The crowning finish was the "Stabat Mater" by Luigi Boccherini, an exceedingly subtle composition for soprano solo and strings which best represented the Italian style prevalent in the late eighteenth century. The soprano soloist Lorna Anderson - whose brilliant interpretation of the role of Morgana in Handel's opera "Alcina" at the Handel Festival in Halle remains unforgotten - impressed the audience with her bell-like voice and fascinating virtuosity. Even though she did not achieve her usual radiance, this concert was a momentous experience and, having been recorded for radio broadcast, is bound to cast a spell over many more listeners.
Moreover, we Handelians learned that Zerbst had many more exciting sights to offer than initially expected and which begged be explored despite the limited time. Evidence of the town's splendid historical past - including the fact that the future Tsarina Catherine the Great had spent her childhood there - reveals itself only reluctantly to the interested visitor. The Old and dilapidated are amalgamated with the resurrected in a very individual way. Only the ruins of the east wing of the former u-shaped princely residence, still stands. But the old cavalier houses at the Schlossfreiheit, the former palace guard house and many a building still manage to reveal the splendour of the past which made Zerbst the cultural and political centre of Central Germany.
And once inspired by Johann Friedrich Fasch, Zerbst and Anhalt's history, we were drawn to another place which also was being celebrated: the Francisceum. "May my wishes be fulfilled for the happiness of the Zerbst people. Franz", we read right away on a decorative plaque at the entrance of what is now a secondary school. And the words refer the entering visitor to the rich and diverse history of the oldest original monastery in Zerbst. It had been founded by Franciscan monks in 1246 and had been conquered and closed during the course of the reformation. Only in 1532 did a Lutheran "Lateinschule" (Latin School) move into the old building, making it the oldest secondary school of Saxony-Anhalt. Celebrating its 200th birthday, this institution remembers being remodeled by Duke Franz of Dessau in 1803, from monastic church to school to be given the name "Francisceum" later on.
All this and many more interesting facts we learned from the current principal of the school. Dr. Hans-Eberhard Schmahling has been the headmaster of this honourable school since 1991, which he himself attended. "Those who were supposed to be someone important in Anhalt were sent to Zerbst by their parents to attend the Francisceum, and when they had become important they were often identified as graduates of the school." (An observation from the nineteenth century.) A special attraction is definitely the 400-year old library, housing a total of 4400 historical volumes: anyone not willing to pay proper homage to these historical documents, can always surf the internet where they are described in detail. We were, however, completely enthralled by the principal's enthusiasm whose stories about his "monastery" seemed inexhaustible. Naturally, Martin Luther also came up, having played an important role in Zerbst during reformation times and contributed to the history of the founding of the school. Pondering Luther's involvement caused us to visit Luther House in near-by Wittenberg after all, between the two concerts. Luther House which contains the biggest museum of reformation history in the world, made a similarly lasting impression.
All in all it was an eventful day, filled with experiences and new impressions. Clearly, this will not have been our last visit, because Zerbst is always worth a visit.
Karin Zauft
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Election of Executive Board Members
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During the Annual General meeting of the IFG on 6 April 2003 members of the executive board were newly elected:
· Dr. Konstanze Musketa, president
· Jens Lorenz, vice-president
· Ellen Arndt, vice-president
· Christiane Schwenke, treasurer
· Karin Crain, secretary
Members-at-large:
· Angela Jahnke
· Dr. Inge Werner
· Susanne Schuster
· Stephan Blaut
Honorary life membership
During the AGM the IFG awarded an honorary life membership to Shalev Ad-El. This honour was bestowed upon the harpsichordist and conductor from Israel in appreciation of his promotion and dissemination of Fasch's music in recent years.
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International Scholarly Conference on the Occasion of the Eighth International Fasch Festival 2003
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As an important and traditional feature of this festival, a scholarly conference once again took place in the pleasant surroundings of the hotel "von Rephuns Garten". On 4 and 5 April thirteen scholars from Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Switzerland and Germany as well as numerous visitors came together to examine the topic "Johann Friedrich Fasch and the Italian Style". The musical introduction on both conference days was, like in previous years, provided by students majoring in early music at the Conservatory "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig. Thorben Klink (horn), Heike Wulff (violin), Christine Mothes (recorder), Marcel Plavec (oboe) and Zita Mikijanska (harpsichord) performed sonatas by J. F. Fasch, his friend G. H. Stölzel and A. Vivaldi. Heinz Westphal, head of the city's social services department, brought greetings; he noted how difficult it had been for the city to adequately support this festival financially, but emphasized that everyone wished for the festival to continue.
Following a general keynote address on the conference topic presented by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ruf, Halle, Dr. Raymond Dittrich, Regensburg, provided the basis for further papers by surveying contemporary discussions of the development of national style in the 17th and 18th century. Dr. Konstanze Musketa continued with an overview of works by Italian composer in the inventory of the Zerbst Concert=Stube from 1743 and attempted to identify several significant works of the period. Beginning with an examination of Saxon electors and their preference for music conceived in the Italian style, Dr. Hans-Georg Hoffmann, Basel (Switzerland), proceeded by identifying connections between the Dresden court and Italian musicians that had been established via commissioned works and appointments; he closed by shedding light on how the musical taste of nobles developed.
The two papers that followed were also devoted to musical activities at princely courts. Prof. Dr. Michael Talbot, Liverpool (GB), reported on works by Vivaldi that had been commissioned by Count Wenzel von Morzin; Fasch himself had been employed by the latter for a short time. Dr. Samantha Owens, Brisbane (Australia), drew attention to works by Fasch that formed part of the extant musical collection of Prince Friedrich Ludwig von Württemberg, one of the leading aristocratic musicians of his time. A paper by Stephan Blaut, Halle/Leipzig, followed, in which he introduced Fasch's "Hunt Concerto" in D Major; its unusually long first movement abandons the customary formal structure in favour of a schematic rendition of several original hunting signals. Dr. Undine Wagner, Chemnitz/Weimar, concluded the first conference day with a look at the oeuvre of Christoph Förster, a contemporary of Fasch who was active in Merseburg, Sondershausen and Rudolstadt.
Prof. Dr. Karl Heller, Rostock, opened the second conference day with an examination of Fasch's sinfonias in view of their Italian style characteristics and an explanation of why these sinfonias have been viewed as inferior when compared to Fasch's concerts and suites. Brian Clark, St. Ives (GB), searched for concrete compositional models in some of Fasch's works and found them in compositions of G. P. Telemann, A. Scarlatti and Fr. Mancini.
The two papers that followed dealt with Fasch's vocal music. While Dr. Janice Stockigt, Melbourne (Australia), highlighted the Italian tradition as evident in Fasch's settings of Vesper psalms, Dr. Barbara Reul, Regina (Canada), focused on a compositional technique used by Fasch in his sacred cantatas that allowed him to unify several movements by way of rhythmic and motivic elements. Elena Sawtschenko, Leipzig, concluded the conference with a paper on the funeral cantata 'Die mit Tränen säen' and the serenata 'Beglückter Tag', two hitherto-unknown compositions by Fasch from the holdings of the Berlin Sing-Akademie that have recently been returned to Germany from Kiev.
All scholarly papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings (volume 9 of the Fasch Studies) which is scheduled to be published in late 2003.
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Preview
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The Ninth International Fasch Festival will take place from 7 to 17 April 2005. The focal point of the scholarly conference scheduled for 8 and 9 April 2005 will be "Johann Friedrich Fasch as a composer of instrumental music". We welcome proposals from interested musicologists. Please submit them to the IFG Headquarters.
Symposium
From 6 to 8 November 2003 the Department of Music at Rhodes College in Memphis (USA) will be hosting a symposium on "The composers and compositions of the Berlin Sing-Akademie" which will also shed light on the contribution of Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch. Among the presenters will be IFG members Dr. Barbara Reul (Canada) and Dr. Steven Zohn (USA).
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Reports and Announcements
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New letter by Fasch discovered
While carrying out research at the Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt in Dessau (formerly Landesarchiv Oranienbaum) our member Dr. Barbara Reul (Canada) discovered a hitherto-unknown letter by Johann Friedrich Fasch in a composite of old manuscripts (call number "Kammer Zerbst" no. 2769). This is a communiqué dated 28 September 1753 is addressed to the duke Friedrich August of Anhalt-Zerbst. Referring to the imminent marriage of the duke with Princess Carolina of Hessen-Kassel, Fasch requests on behalf of the "other [members] of the Princely Capelle" funds to be made available from the court's budget in order "appear in clean and good-quality clothes before your grace and other nobles (as it is the case for most of the other orchestras at Princely courts)". Whether or not he was granted this request remains unclear but in a letter from 21 March 1754 to the Konsistorium Zerbst we read that Fasch was forced to buy "a complete set of new clothes as well" for his son "Carlchen" (Carl Fasch, 1736-1800, founder of the Berlin Sing-Akademie) on the occasion of the wedding, because the latter was not yet "in service", i.e. not yet an official member of the court orchestra, but "necessary when performing music" (see pp. 40-43 in Was dieser Geldmangel uns vor tägl. Kummer machet. Briefe, Johann Friedrich Fasch betreffend, aus dem St. Bartholomäi-Stift zu Zerbst (1752 bis 1757), ed.. K. Musketa and D.-K. Bischoff, Oschersleben 1997.)
International Fasch Society commissions editions geared toward students at "Musikschulen"
For many years the IFG has considered introducing children and youths to Fasch's music one of its most important objectives and recently collaborated with the Musikschule Zerbst on a very special project. Gero Schmidt (Musikschule Zerbst) chose ten movements from five sonatas by J. F. Fasch which Heiko Lippmann (Hamburg) arranged for various ensembles and instruments; he adapted the scoring and technical demands to meet the needs of students at "Musikschulen" (NB: in Germany, these "conservatory" type music schools cater primarily toward students in elementary and secondary schools). The arrangements will be published by Edition GAMUS in Dessau and the IFG, having commissioned the editions, will receive 50 copies to be distributed among music schools in the Regierungspräsidium Dessau region. This commission was made possible with the financial support of the Regierungspräsidium Dessau and the county of Zerbst. Audiences shall be introduced to some of the arrangements on the occasion of the Jugendmusikfestival Saxony-Anhalt on 13 September 2003 in the Musikschule Zerbst.
Performance
The final concert of the Akademie für Alte Musik on 14 May 2003 at Schloss Horst in Gelsenkirchen featured the Baroque orchestra Caterva Musica. They performed J. F. Fasch's concerto in g minor for 2 oboes, strings and b.c., with soloists Linda Leighton and Hans-Heinrich Kriegel.
Premiere CD
The Main-Barockorchester Frankfurt chose to record only works by Johann Friedrich Fasch for their first CD. Included are three instrumental concertos as well as three sinfonias, some of which have never been recorded before. The launching of the CD by the label AEOLUS is scheduled for September 2003. Info: www.main-barockorchester.de
Berlin Sing-Akademie
The contents of the Berlin Sing-Akademie's musical collection that were returned from Kiev are currently being transferred onto microfilm by the publisher Saur, Munich. The collection also includes works by Carl Friedrich Fasch. Frau Dr. Susanne Oschmann, Berlin, has been appointed by the IFG to serve as our consultant to the publisher and, in addition, will continue to pursue a working relationship with the executive board of the Sing-Akademie.
New Editions
Three new sonatas by J. F. Fasch have been edited by Brian Clark and can be ordered from King's Music (GB). Info: www.kings-music.co.uk
Moreover, in the past two months Hans-Heinrich Kriegel has edited two cantatas, three orchestral suites, five concertos and one sonata by Fasch. We would like to thank him for depositing copies of these scores with the Fasch Archive. Performance material can be ordered from him directly; please contact the IFG for his contact information: IFaschG@t-online.de
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