The Thuringian royal seat of Sondershausen can look back on a rich tradition of musical history. The rediscovery in 1870 of the former court music archive has proved a stroke of luck for research into 18th-century music history, as it provides a well-documented record of a key period in the history of the Sondershausen court orchestra. The archive contains, amongst other things, musical manuscripts of works by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749), Agostino Steffani (1654–1728), Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739), Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1764), Christoph Förster (1693–1745), Melchior Hoffmann (c. 1697–1715) and Johann Balthasar Christoph Freislich (1687–1764). The latter served as Kapellmeister of the court orchestra from around 1716 until 1731. In this role, he was responsible for all secular and sacred music at court, which included the musical arrangement of church services in the palace chapel and in the town church of St. Trinitatis, for which he contributed his own compositions but also drew upon works by famous colleagues (Stölzel, Keiser, Telemann, and others).
Two Passions by Freislich have survived. In addition to a Passion based on the powerful text by the Hamburg poet Barthold H. Brockes (FreisWV C 4), Freislich set to music a libretto for the St Matthew Passion (FreisWV C 2), which his colleague in the chapel, Johann Christoph Rothe (1653–1700), had already used as the basis for a Passion for the court service on Good Friday 1697. A printed libretto of Freislich’s St Matthew Passion has survived, suggesting that the work was performed in 1720 at St Trinitatis Church and that it was performed there in place of the St Matthew Passion by Melchior Vulpius (c. 1570–1615), a choral passion dating from 1613, which had been performed there annually for many decades.
Perhaps in order to make this break with tradition comprehensible to the congregation, Freislich composed the additional arias—set to non-biblical texts—as simple four-part choral choir-arias, which were performed collectively by the soloists at the time. In addition to these arias, which are unique in the history of Oratorio Passions, the work is characterised by expressive recitatives, short and incisive turbae choruses and sensitively interpretative chorales, making it well suited to smaller choirs. The piece was clearly close to Freislich’s heart, for he took the score and vocal parts with him in 1731 when he took up his post as Kapellmeister at St. Mary’s in Danzig, where it was also performed on several occasions in a revised form.
The choir score also includes all the recitatives.
A separate organ part is also available [om351/4, ISMN 979-0-502342-66-1 (€25.00)].
