MENU — TRACKLIST P. 4 ENGLISH P. 8 FRANÇAIS P. 14 DEUTSCH P. 20 SUNG TEXTS P. 28 Th is recording has been made with the support of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (Direction générale de la Culture, Service de la Musique) Recording 2 Kerll: Beaufays, église Saint-Jean-Baptiste, November 2015 Fux: Stavelot, église Saint-Sébastien, October 2015 Artistic direction, recording & editing: Jérôme Lejeune Cover illustration Johann Gottfried Auerbach (1697-1753) Portrait of Emperor Karl VI Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum. Photo:© akg-images/ Nemeth Our thanks to the staff of the Festival de Stavelot for their invaluable assistance in organising the use of the church of Saint-Sébastien for this recording. JOHANN CASPAR KERLL 16271693 JOHANN JOSEPH FUX 16601741 3 REQUIEMS — VOX LUMINIS SCORPIO COLLECTIEF (Simen van Mechelen) L‘ACHÉRON (François Joubert-Caillet) Lionel Meunier: artistic director Missa pro defunctis Johann Caspar Kerll TEXTS 01. Introitus (Requiem aeternam – Te decet hymnus – Requiem aeternam) 5’26 02. Kyrie 2’02 DE SUNG 03. Sequenza 13’34 FR Dies Irae dies illa (coro) Quantus tremor (bassus) Tuba mirum (tenor) Mors stupebit (altus) MENU EN Liber scriptus – Judex ergo (coro) 4 Quid sum miser – Rex tremendae (cantus) Recordare Jesu pie (tenor) Quaerens me (tenor) Juste Judex-Ingemisco (coro) Quid Mariam absolvisti (altus, tenor, bassus) Inter oves (cantus, altus) Confutatis maledictis (bassus) Oro suplex (coro) Lacrimosa dies illa (cantus) Huic ergo – Pie Jesu (coro) 04. Off ertorium (Domine Jesu Christe – Sed signifer – Quam olim Abrahae) 3’57 05. Sanctus – Beneditus – Hosanna 4’27 06. Agnus Dei 2’34 07. Communio (Lux aeterna) 2’44 VOX LUMINIS Sara Jäggi & Zsuzsi Tóth: sopranos Barnabás Hegyi & Jan Kullmann: countertenors 5 Philippe Froeliger & Dávid Szigetvári: tenors I Olivier Berten & Robert Buckland: tenors II Matthias Lutze & Lionel Meunier: basses Bart Jacobs: organ L’ACHÉRON François Joubert-Caillet: treble viol Marie-Suzanne de Loye: tenor viol Andreas Linos: bass viol Lucile Boulanger: consort bass viol Kaiserrequiem Johann Joseph Fux 08. Introitus (Requiem aeternam – Te decet hymnus – Requiem aeternam) 6'47 09. Kyrie 3'12 10. Sequenza 15'07 Dies Irae dies illa (coro) Quantus tremor (cantus 1 & 2, bassus) Tuba mirum (altus & trombone alto solo) Mors stupebit (coro) Liber scriptus – Judex ergo (tenor 1 & 2, bassus) 6 Quid sum miser (cantus 1 & 2) Rex tremendae (coro) Recordare Jesu pie (cantus 1, altus, tenor, bassus) Quaerens me (coro) Juste Judex (cantus 1 & 2, altus, tenor, bassus) Ingemisco (cantus 1 & 2) Quid Mariam absolvisti (cantus 2, altus) Preces me (coro) Inter oves (cantus 1 & 2, altus) Confutatis maledictis (coro) Oro suplex – Lacrimosa dies illa (tenor, bassus, altus) Pie Jesu (coro) 11. Off ertorium (Domine Jesu Christe – Sed signifer – Quam olim Abrahae) 5'00 12. Sanctus – Beneditus – Hosanna 3'33 13. Agnus Dei 1'54 TEXTS 14. Communio (Lux aeterna) 5'00 DE SUNG FR VOX LUMINIS Zsuzsi Tóth & Kristen Witmer: sopranos I Sara Jäggi & Stefanie True: sopranos II Barnabás Hegyi & Jan Kullmann: countertenors Olivier Berten & Robert Buckland: tenors MENU EN Matthias Lutze & Lionel Meunier: basses 7 SCORPIO COLLECTIEF Josue Melendez & Frithjof Smith: mute cornets Jacek Kurzydło & Jivka Kaltcheva: violins Manuela Bucher: viola Simen van Mechelen: alto trombone Adam Woolf: tenor trombone Jérémie Papasergio: bassoon Matthias Müller: violone Kris Verhelst: positive organ TWO VIENNESE REQUIEMS TEXTS Th e use of the words Requiem and Vienna in the same sentence leads us almost unconsciously to Mozart’s celebrated Requiem, the one that was commissioned from him and which he hastily began DE SUNG to compose in what was to be the last year of his life; his more pressing concerns at that time were of course Die Zauberfl öte and the clarinet concerto that he composed for his friend Anton Stadler. It is also quite possible that he found his simultaneous commission for La Clemenza di Tito, to be written for the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia, to be much more interesting than the composition of the MENU FR MENU FR Requiem. It had been almost ten years since his last large scale sacred work, the Mass in C minor. What could 8 have passed through Mozart’s mind when he sat before a blank sheet of manuscript paper with the text of the Requiem Mass in his hand? It is often forgotten that Mozart applied to become the successor of Leopold Hoff mann as Kapellmeister of the Stephansdom in Vienna in April 1791; Hoff mann was gravely ill and Mozart had even suggested that he could assist him. Hoff mann, ironically, would only die some two years after Mozart’s death. We have seen how busy 1791 was for Mozart; as a candidate for the position of Kapellmeister, would he have had the time to spend a few moments in the music library of the cathedral, amongst the works of Johann Caspar Kerll and Johann Joseph Fux, previously organist and Kapellmeister of the cathedral respectively? We remember Mozart’s account of his discovery of Bach’s motets in the Th omaskirche in Leipzig in 1789; would he have felt the same on discovering works by his predecessors in the Stephansdom in Vienna? What were the works that Mozart could have used as his models when he came to compose the Requiem? If we look at his earliest sacred works, composed during his time in Salzburg, it is easy to see the debt he owed to the composers of the previous generation and to composers such as Antonio Caldara in particular. It is clear that Mozart’s training in counterpoint, like that of all Austrian composers of the18th century, was carried out in accordance with Johann Joseph Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum; Mozart possessed a copy of this which has survived and which contains annotations in his own hand. On his arrival in Vienna he discovered the arts of counterpoint and polyphony through the works of J.S. Bach and of Handel; their infl uence is clearly to be heard in his Mass in C minor. Mozart therefore had a great deal of experience in the composition of sacred music, but this was the fi rst time that he had been required to set the text of the Requiem, with its texts that alternate expressions of sorrow with invocations of light eternal as well as the dramatic contrasts of the verses of the Dies Iræ. Consciously or unconsciously, he was practically certain to think of earlier settings of the text. First of all, 9 he sought an individual orchestral colour: he rejected the characteristic timbre of the Classical orchestra by stressing the intimate a nd warm timbres of the basset horn (a type of low clarinet) and the bassoon instead of the oboe and French horn. Here he created a link to one of the primary elements of the majority of funeral works or compositions of Holy Week that had been composed in Vienna from the end of the 17th century onwards: their use of muted cornets and violas da gamba. Mozart’s Tuba mirum as well, gave a solo to the alto trombone. Th e fugato treatment of the theme used in the Quam olim Abrahæ follows exactly the same metrical pattern as its equivalent in works by Kerll, Fux and many others. While Mozart’s Requiem seems to open the door to Romanticism, especially with the posthumous story of the composer writing his own Requiem, Mozart had also never seemed so close to the past. Th is new recording by Vox Luminis reveals this past to us anew. Johann Caspar Kerll, born in Adorf in Saxony in 1627, divided his career between Vienna and Munich. He completed his training in Vienna and there entered the service of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm as organist. His talent gave him the possibility of travelling to Rome for further study, where he studied composition with Giacomo Carissimi and organ, this most probably with Girolamo Frescobaldi; a better pair of masters could hardly be imagined. After spending ten years in service to the Brussels court from 1646 to 1656, he joined the Munich court where he was soon appointed Kapellmeister; his task was to compose sacred works and operas. He returned to Vienna in 1674, where he was appointed organist of the Stephansdom and then organist to the court; he continued to compose throughout this time, concentrating on sacred works. We can regard the fact that a large number of Kerll’s sacred works were published as proof of his importance as a musician; a fi nal volume of fi ve Masses was published in 1689, jour years before his death: this was entitled Missae sex, cum instrumentis concertantibus, e vocibus in ripieno adjuncta una pro defunctis cum 10 seq. Dies Iræ. Kerll states the intended purpose of his Requiem in a note included with the continuo part: “Given that the title page states that this is a Missa pro Defunctis, I see no point in explaining its subject; I simply wish to request the gentlemen in charge of the music (whom I embrace in friendship) to have those whom they employ sing it, together with the Dies Iræ sequence, for the repose of my soul: may they also console others on my behalf, if they hear that the Supreme Lord of Heaven and Earth has invited me to pass onwards from this life into another. Th is is the wish of all those who are detained in the fl ames of Purgatory, and what they desire from their militant brothers in this vale of tears here below. I now declare that I off er up all the trouble that this work has cost me to speed the deliverance of those affl icted souls; I dedicate this work to the kindly Divinity.” Th is volume, aged 1689, is physically dedicated to the Emperor Leopold I; we may suppose from this that it was composed during Kerll’s fi nal Vienna period, a time marked by two grave events: the outbreak of plague between 1679 and 1682 and the fi rst siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683.