Gottfried Henrich Stölzel (January 31, 1690 in Grünstädtel – November 27, 1749 in Gotha) was a prolific German composer. He grew up in Schwarzenberg, Saxony. From 1707 he was a student in Leipzig of Melchior Hofmann among others. He studied, worked and composed in Breslau and Halle, then a year and a half sojourn in Italy from 1713 — where he met Antonio Vivaldi in Venice — rendered him au courant with the latest musical taste. After working for three years in Prague, he became briefly court Kapellmeister in Gera. Then he married in 1719 and the next year took up an appointment in Gotha, where he worked until his death for duke Friedrich III.
In 1731 the Kapellmeister of the court at Sondershausen left for Danzig and Stölzel supplied numerous festive occasional pieces and arias for court performance; the archive at Schloss Sondershausen retains many of his manuscripts, but half of Stölzel's output, never engraved, is lost. He enjoyed an outstanding reputation in his lifetime: Lorenz Mizler ranked him as great as Johann Sebastian Bach. Stolzel was accomplished German stylist who himself wrote a good many of the poetic texts for his vocal work. Beginning piano students may remember some pieces by him, those that Johann Sebastian Bach included in his Klavierbüchlein.
His most important works are: four concerti grossi, many sinfonias, a concerto for oboe d'amore; four operas: Narcissus, Valeria, Artemisia, Orion have not survivid, and oratorios like Brockes Passion (1725), Christmas Oratorio, have recently been recorded. Twelve complete annual cantata cycles as well as cantatas to secular texts (fivehundred have come down in full). Maurice André performed Stölzel's concerto in D for trumpet and strings and continuo.
His Abhandlung vom Recitativ ("The Art of Recitative"), written about 1739, remained unpublished until 1962 (Werner Steger, Gottfried Heinrich Stoelzels "Abhandlung vom Recitativ")
See also
- Bist du bei mir: Stölzel's aria was copied out by Johann Sebastian Bach in one of his notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach
References
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