Publisher's Synopsis
Oratorios, Masses, Cantatas and other Sacred and Religious Works is the first stage in the publication of the Sing-Akademie's entire valuable historical collection of music. Through this edition, the archive's treasures, some of which were previously unknown, are now being made available to a broader public for the first time. Now available, the first part of this microfiche edition with some 75,000 pages of music, contains a number of theoretical musical studies in addition to the oratorios, masses, cantatas and other sacred and religious works in the archive. Among the Oratorios are many well-known works by Händel, including some variants not available anywhere else: one striking example being Zelter's adaptation of the "Messiah". A speciality among the Masses, Psalms, 'Quartalsstücke' and Liturgical Music is Orazio Benevoli's famous 16 voice "Missa in Dilario Aquarum multarum", which inspired the founder of the Sing Akademie, Carl Friedrich Fasch, to compose a mass of his own. It was to perform this very mass that the Sing-Akademie was initially founded. Consequently, Fasch's mass became the first work to be performed in what was to become, for musical Europe, an exemplary institution. In the category Spiritual Cantatas, Motets, Mourning and Introductory Music unique specimens such as the cantata "O! Schmertzens Tag" by Johann David Heinichen or four short vocal works by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber can be found. They are valuable gains both for musical performance and research, belonging to the highlights of the sacred and religious compositions from the Sing-Akademie's archive. Research is expected to reveal more discoveries here, since a number of works in this category are anonymous. Precious items such as the autograph of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's chorale "Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu dir" are hoarded in the archive's Chorale Books and Individual Chorales. For the microfiche edition the music was examined and collated for the first time. In addition, the compositions were identified using published catalogues of works and assigned to their corresponding numbers. Several indexes provide access to the holdings and make it possible to find individual works effortlessly.
