Hammerschmidt: Selections from the Gespräche (1655–56) with Capellen

This volume brings together two related collections of Lutheran music from the mid-seventeenth century. First, it provides a modern edition of eight compositions from two popular publications by Andreas Hammerschmidt: the Musicalische Gespräche über die Evangelia (Musical Conversations about the Gospels [Dresden, 1655]) and Ander Theil Geistlicher Gespräche über die Evangelia (Second Part of the Sacred Conversations about the Gospels [Dresden, 1656]). Collectively, these two publications provided church music directors with a variety of works for different combinations of voices and instruments, covering all of the principal Sundays and feast days of the liturgical year. With texts taken primarily from the gospel reading of the day, these musical conversations, or Gespräche, include conversations and alternations between solo singers, instruments, soloists, chorus, or any combination thereof. Obbligato instruments include strings, trombone, cornett, clarino, and recorder. Second, this edition adds to these eight works capella parts created by Hammerschmidt’s contemporary Michael Büttner (1594–1662) and thus illuminates the performance tradition of adding extra singers and instrumentalists (capellen) to the tuttis of church compositions--a practice common in seventeenth-century Breslau, Silesia (now Wrocław, Poland). This volume not only offers the first modern edition of the eight works of Hammerschmidt, but also is the first publication to combine Hammerschmidt’s music with Büttner’s added capellen.