Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758)
- Missa Brevis (B-Dur) à 4 voci
Performers: Solists, choir and orchestra Linden; Walter Reiter (conductor)
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German composer and Kapellmeister. He was one of the most significant
German contemporaries of Bach, and his orchestral works are
characteristic of the transition from the late Baroque style to the
Classicism of Haydn and Mozart. Fasch was descended from a line of
Lutheran Kantors and theologians. His earliest musical studies were as a
boy soprano in Suhl and Weissenfels, and at 13 he was enlisted by J.P.
Kuhnau for the Leipzig Thomasschule; his first compositions followed the
style of his friend Telemann. While a student at the University of
Leipzig he founded a collegium musicum which rivalled the eminence of
the Thomasschule in the city's musical life. In this cosmopolitan city
he encountered the concertos of Vivaldi, which greatly influenced his
whole generation. Although he had no regular instruction in composition,
he soon became so well known as a composer that his sovereign Duke
Moritz Wilhelm of Saxe-Zeitz commissioned him to write operas for the
Naumburg Peter-Paul festivals in 1711 and 1712. For purposes of study
Fasch undertook a long journey through several courts and cities,
eventually arriving at Darmstadt, where he studied composition with
Graupner and Grünewald. He then held several positions, including those
of violinist in Bayreuth (1714), court secretary and organist in Greiz
(until 1721) and Kapellmeister to the Bohemian Count Wenzel Morzin in
Prague, whose accomplished chapel orchestra earned Vivaldi’s praise. In
1722 Fasch reluctantly accepted the position of court Kapellmeister in
Zerbst. In the same year he was twice invited to apply for the position
of Thomaskantor in Leipzig, but withdrew from the competition shortly
after Telemann did so, deciding that it was too soon to leave Zerbst.
In 1727 Fasch spent some time at the Saxon court in Dresden, where his
friends Pisendel and Heinichen were in charge of orchestral music and
the Catholic chapel respectively. Heinichen's death in 1729 is a
'terminus ante quem' for several of Fasch's surviving liturgical pieces,
which were performed by the chapel choir under Heinichen, who noted the
duration of pieces on the manuscripts (as well as rewriting sections,
which Pfeiffer has taken as an indication that the Dresden experience
was another learning venture). Surviving correspondence, particularly
with Nikolaus Ludwig, Reichsgraf von Zinzendorf, head of the Pietist
Brotherhood in Herrnhut, reveals Fasch's unhappiness in strictly
Lutheran Zerbst. Only one further application for a formal position is
recorded (Freiberg, 1755), but it was unsuccessful, and Fasch remained
at Zerbst for the rest of his life. During his 36 years there Fasch was
primarily occupied with the composition of church cantatas and festival
music for the count. His fame as a composer spread far beyond Saxony:
his works were familiar to numerous courts and city churches, from
Hamburg (where in 1733 Telemann performed a cycle of his church
cantatas) to as far afield as Prague and Vienna. He enjoyed especially
close relations with the famed Hofkapelle in Dresden, at which the
Kapellmeister Pisendel performed many of his concertos (to some extent
in arrangements), and likewise with the court at Cöthen, which attracted
him by its Pietist leanings. Through his son C.F.C. Fasch,
harpsichordist at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin from 1756,
he was connected with C.P.E. Bach.
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