Johann Stadlmayr (c.1580-1648)
- Te Deum (1645)
Performers: Neue lnnsbrucker Hofkapelle; Detlef Bratschke
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German composer. The title-page and dedication of his Sacrum Beatissimae
Virginis Mariae canticum (1603) report that he came from Freising. The
date of his birth, given as 1560 by Fétis and others, was probably
closer to 1580, for in 1619 he was called a ‘rather young and lively
man’. The earliest documented reference to him is in Georg Draudius’s
catalogue Bibliotheca classica (Frankfurt, 1611, 2/1625), where a
collection of eight-part masses by him is said to have been published in
1596 (misprinted as 1569 but corroborated elsewhere). In 1603 he was a
musician in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg. In 1604, the year
of his first marriage, he became vice-Kapellmeister and then
Kapellmeister there, a post he held until 1607, when he was appointed to
a similar position at the court of the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian II
of the Tyrol at Innsbruck. Though later offered other positions he chose
to remain in Innsbruck for the rest of his life. Maximilian, who was
Grand Master of the Teutonic Order and specially interested in serious
music, apparently held Stadlmayr in great esteem, for he bought him a
house and included him in his will. After Maximilian’s death in 1618,
the Innsbruck chapel was disbanded because his successor, Archduke
Leopold V, kept his own musicians at his former Alsatian residence.
Stadlmayr presented several petitions for employment so that he and his
large family need not leave Innsbruck, where, as he said in 1620, he had
‘spared no effort in 13 of the best years of his life’. During this
period, which also saw the death of his first wife (in 1619) and his
remarriage (in 1621), he added to his income by working as government
meat inspector.
Not until 1624, after he had sought leave to apply for a post in Vienna,
was he reappointed Kapellmeister, with an appropriate salary. Leopold
also wanted to make him a member of the nobility, but he refused (as he
had also done when Maximilian made him a similar offer some years
before) because he lacked sufficient funds to maintain such a position.
The court chapel now attained its greatest brilliance, and after Leopold
died in 1632 his widow, Claudia de’ Medici, continued to support
Stadlmayr despite financial difficulties caused by the Thirty Years War,
which was ravaging neighbouring countries; part of her support was to
help finance the publication of some of Stadlmayr’s works. Stadlmayr was
almost exclusively a composer of Catholic church music, and a prolific
one. 16th-century traditions as well as 17th-century innovations inform
his style. He achieved clear articulation of the liturgical texts, as
required by the Council of Trent, with short phrases of generally
syllabic declamation that follow natural speech inflections. In
imitative sections he highlighted the texts by frequent repetitions of a
few words, and he often used stereotyped figures for expressive
emphasis. His publications up to about 1628 continue 16th-century
traditions of carefully handled polyphony and effectively treated
homophonic chordal blocks in the Venetian manner. In some works the two
kinds of texture are set against each other. In others one texture may
predominate: the polychoral idiom does so in the masses and Magnificat
settings for two and three choirs, while the textures of the fifth and
ninth items in the Magnificat collection of 1603 are exclusively
contrapuntal. Stadlmayr also continued to make use of plainchant in long
notes for cantus firmi as well as of parody technique for many masses
and Magnificat settings, which are based mainly on Italian works.
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