Georg Arnold (1621-1676)
- Missa Quarta à 4 voci (1672)
Performers: Johаnna Koslowsky (soprano); Monа Spägеle (aIto); Paul Gerhardt Adаm (tenor); Wilfriеd Jochеns (bass); Musica Cantеrеy Bambеrg;
Gеrhаrd Wеinziеrl (Ieitung)
Further info: Georg Arnold: Missa Quarta
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Austrian composer and organist, active in Germany. As early as 1640 he
was organist of St Mark, Wolfsberg, formerly in the possession of the
Franconian bishopric of Bamberg. After the end of the Thirty Years War,
on 14 September 1649, he was appointed court organist at Bamberg through
the influence of Prince-Bishop Melchior Otto Voit of Salzburg, who also
began the Baroque restyling of the interior of Bamberg Cathedral and
called on Arnold to provide a new repertory of masses, vespers and
motets. The inclusion of a mass by Tobias Richter in Arnold’s op.2 and a
Laudate pueri by G.G. Porro in his Psalmi vespertini indicates that he
had contacts with Mainz and Munich, while the presence of 22 of his
motets in the Düben Collection and a canon in J.G. Fabricius’s Liber
amicorum testifies to his reputation outside the Bamberg area. As an
organ expert he was connected with Spiridion and Matthias Tretzscher and
helped with the reconstruction of the organs in Bamberg that had been
destroyed in the war. He became Hofkapellmeister at Bamberg in 1667. A
painting of 1675 by his son Georg Adam, who was appointed court organist
in 1685, shows the interior of the restored cathedral with the splendid
Baroque organ on the left wall; Arnold is seen standing next to it in
court dress and wig. There was a long tradition of polyphonic music in
Bamberg, to which Arnold added the Venetian polychoral style, possibly
to some extent inspired by the layout of the cathedral, with apses at
either end of the nave. The use of the term ‘sacrarum cantionum’ in the
titles of his 1651 volume and op.4 is indeed reminiscent of Giovanni
Gabrieli and Schütz; intended as open-air music, their contents are well
suited to the forces at his disposal. In his masses Arnold adopted the
large-scale, south German concertante style: in the single choir works
of 1665 the concertante principle is expressed in the alternation and
different groupings of the obbligato instruments, while the parody
masses of 1672 rely more on dynamic contrasts. In the double choir
masses of 1656 Arnold introduced the spatial effects of polychoral
writing into this style; his development is also marked by the
integration of elements of contrapuntal settings. The marked antiphonal
style of the psalms of 1662–3 owes something to Monteverdi and Viadana,
in contrast to the more seamless polyphony of op.3, most of whose 47
pieces are canzonas. But it is in the more intimate concerted motets
that Arnold is at his most inspired, particularly in the settings of
non-liturgical mystical texts.
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