On Heinrich Albert (*1604, † 1651) Der große Unbekannte
Die bremische Musikbücherei veranstaltete früher regelmäßig an in-house flea market. Retired stocks could be purchased at the lowest prices. In such a flea market to me a little green booklet came in the finger: "Heinrich Albert. Songs, "Heidelberg 1932nd I wanted to put it away already, because I thought it was bird of music. Fortunately, I still threw a look inside and discovered the piano systems with numbers below the bass. So were the songs with no ride guitar chords, this was music from the bass - term always interesting!
The lyrics I liked the part quite well. Simon roof I knew from Günther was Grass's novel "The meeting in Telgte" Robert Roberthin and a certain lane Chasmindo not me. In any case, everything came from the first half of the 17th Century. On suspicion, I took the magazine.
Six months ago I proposed a dear friend, we could still make music together. She would like to sing to the lute, but it should not be too difficult, and please, if possible, in German. Accompanied solo songs, not too difficult, in German? The small green booklet I remembered. Eleven Songs "for a singing voice accompanied by a keyboard instrument or lute, "a booklet of Bärenreiter Fritz Dietrich - a typical house music issue, I thought like that.
for sounds? 1932, only the migrant bird sounds meant. However, every song is the singing voice of a dual system for piano that you can play impossible on a lute. Several songs are in keys with two or three crosses. Enough evidence to suggest modifications to it. I liked the tunes so well that I decided to get the original text to produce their own versions.
Only: An original text was temporarily unavailable. I first tried it on the web. are in the Werner Icking Archive, it only three Heinrich-Albert-songs, but the agent monitoring has composed new, only the upper voice and the text are original.
Fritz Dietrich mentions in his afterword a two-volume edition of Heinrich Albert "and airs Melodeyen" German musical art in the monuments, Episode 1, vol 12-13, 1903/1904. In the Bremen University Library is strongly improved in 1958. Browsing I went to different lights.
first lesson: The extensive introduction by Hermann Kretzschmar († 1924) is the basis of all subsequent lexical entries of Henry Albert, which I have read.
Second insight: the realization of the bass in the earlier edition was overloaded unplayable, so the new edition was created in 1958.
Online is the edition of 1903 in the Digital Collections of the Bavarian State Library is available, the score of the output 1958 in the International Music Score Library Project.
The comparison showed that in fact had transposed Fritz Dietrich for his Bärenreiter supplement with several songs. On the bird of lute or guitar played so happy in sharp keys. A set for lute or guitar is missing, however. The young assistant at the Heidelberg musicology seminar, which later was allowed to teach despite Habilitation not because his wife had Jewish ancestors, who disappeared in January 1945 in East Prussia - he played piano, organ, oboe and viola, but either guitar or lute. Its still very useful little issue is still one of the few practical Albert expenditure at all, in the Bremer UB it is so still. The librarians of the music library was probably not clear what they cast as the flea market.
led to a further foray into the Internet, that 1954 "Festschrift in honor of Heinrich Albert (1604-1651)" was published by Günther force in Gera. I was able to get a copy in a Berlin bookseller. It is an issue of hundred pages and reads exciting because implied in many lines, first, that the Second World War less than ten Years old from was (Günther force over the plight of musicians during the 30 years war) and second in the East especially the young history has been rewritten (the populist Albert as part of the national heritage). Most exciting, I find that the best, in my view this article in this publication from the GDR completely compromised by its Nazi past Joseph Müller-Blattau is, the then newly started now at the University of Saarbrücken had.
Biography of Heinrich Albert's always fascinated me more. An unspectacular start to the Latin School Gera - but then! To Dresden, to Heinrich Schütz, the cousin who study music with him, he had learned from Monteverdi himself! For a year, then made the engagement of parents: law, not music! From enroll to Leipzig to study the rights.
But in Leipzig, at the St. Thomas Church, lives and works Johann Hermann Schein, a good friend of contactor. Heinrich Albert studied with him on music, incidentally, but perhaps not even in secret.
thunder, cannon. The war moves closer. What to do? Like many other East German students in 1626 Albert goes to Konigsberg. This is practically a way of avoiding the war, but perhaps a way of avoiding the clutches of the parents. Good boy, he first studied law further, breaking even in the wake of a peace delegation to Warsaw.
But the move is applied, the Group of Sweden, was arrested and locked. King Gustav II Adolf is flexing the muscles. A long year Albert is caught, then everything is different. Back in Koenigsberg, now it is anything but the right hand, he has seen how it stands with it. Instead, he is now studying how to make a fortress impregnable. Certainly.
finally breaks her in his car, he was always at the best of what makes him excited, which carries it, if nothing else with more: the music. Neat play the organ, he can, so he is applying to the vacant post of organist at the cathedral. A quarter of the sample, then he is on 1 April 1631 permanent staff and will remain there until the end. As one has heard the call and his call is accepted.
recent secondary literature did not yet. The librarian of the Library at the University of the Arts, Veronika atrocities, has helped me at all knowledgeable and experienced. I saw the latest articles on Heinrich Albert in music past and present is mainly based on the MGG article on Heinrich Albert 1949 (Helmut Osthoff), the corresponding article in the New Grove is something of an excerpt from it . Really new is not yet available. After all, in this library but a facsimile available: the eight volumes of the "arias or Melodeyen" in a band (Cornetto).
A small fluke: When searching under "Heinrich Albert" from Amazon, I came across this devotional booklet "The day and night, it can be" (fundus Issue 94, Hamburg 2004) with well-written texts wonderfully practical information, a view of the Konigsberg Cathedral and an old Merian map of Königsberg.
The together enough to write the wrong Wikipedia article on Heinrich Albert again.
Albert was both to protect students and had studied under license, was on the other hand, as a student of Stobaeus in the Konigsberg Tonschule. That is, he has composed many three-and five-part sentences, but not madrigals and motets, but songs (mostly strophic songs, some composed by almost cantatas): an upper voice accompanied by lower voices or instruments, taking the bass voice was almost always quantified.
This bass songs he has become well known and popular. His melodies were heard far and wide (to his chagrin, however, were often reprinted illegal). His "Annie of Tharau" is still sung today, though mostly in the High German text version by Herder and to the tune of Silcher.
Albert credited with an embodiment of the figured bass by "full-voiced instruments, such as" positive, Clavicimbel, theorbo "(title page to part two of the arias of 1640). In theorbo is unlikely to be to understand the great Italian chitarrone, but the then popular and widespread, according to dual-peg box, which also affected many Dutch paintings to see that time and mentioned in their titles theorbo. Albert mentioned the theorbo as well as anywhere else, but called in the preface to the second volume (1640) as bass instruments "positive or Flötwerk, harpsichord, lute and Bando (box?) And also mentioned in the preface to the third Band (1640) According to the game (in the edition of 1651 replaced by "Apollo with his Cythar").
Heinrich Albert's effect is now time, the 1630s and 1640s, the beginning of the heyday of loud music in the later so-called transitional moods. Renata wrote from Virginia in East Prussia Gehema little later, her lute book, which contains four songs by Heinrich Albert, almost entirely in the tone ravissant. Not much later, in the East Prussian space the manuscript, which is now kept in Rostock under Sigel XVII-54 and the - again, in the tone ravissant! - Contains six songs by Heinrich Albert.
In both manuscripts, but the songs are not arranged as an accompaniment, but for the instrumental performance, as Albert has made it myself: "Much confusion But it is when a song / VND agree to hear only the Melodey / gespielet be sol / da must be cheap or the aria is the treble as they take / with and bring into clear hearing. "(preface to volume 3 , 1640) The instrumental purpose and a comparison with the originals by Albert. Should accompany the sounds, the first chorus should be voted as C, which itself would be bad for a bass sounds deep.
least I've taken from me in these arrangements as an example and the bass sounds in the sound for a zwölfchörige ravissant exposed (g 'e' c 'ae HAGFEDC). The result justifies the attempt in every way, I think. The sound is enormous wealth of this mood, the mood is not difficult to learn, and it is ideal to play along.
I am aware that a zwölfchörige sounds will be in this mood, a very rare bird. When I sent the publisher Albert Reyerman the first Midi files of songs and bass in the suspension of these sounds, I was expecting a positive response. I write to Heinrich Albert's skill in composition and his glad hand with melodies and harmonies, that Albert Reyerman not ruled negative, but encouraged to produce a version of the Renaissance atmosphere. That's what I liked to do and I am glad and grateful to Albert when acting as publishers.
In the early 17th Century was the bass, both as a concept (figured bass as shorthand, which replaced the previously common "tab") as in the design (professionally improvised accompaniment) not old. Schutz's "Psalms of David" of 1619, the first pressure with bass in German countries. Therefore, there Albert in the prefaces to the first volume (1638) and the second volume (1640) his "arias or Melodeyen" practical instructions.
He asks, first, you need someone, "the opportunity to know his instrument with the General Lower right vmzugehen / auff not any note with both hands would fall to VND selfsame [ the B . c. ] as a weed hoe "(preface 1638). In view of the sounds I understand this to mean that to be accompanied, according to according to first and second, playing full chords are not continuously.
point of view of Albert sounds pretty clear. So he asks that each following chord tones over successive bass tones are interwoven and linked to votes. While this happens to "Flötwerk or positive" practical, while keeping the fingers on the keyboard requires a "Clavizimbal (and sounds / Bando) because the clay a stirred or very soon forfeit and weak, "that connects to the chord tones are played to öffters wiederholet VND / So that soon the öbere / soon one of the middle / soon vnterste voice stir VND doing their fee. "(Preface to Vol 2, 1640, item 5)
Mind you, Albert speaks of a vocal courses to be heard by repeatedly striking. I think he speaks to a specific sound style that is still at the end of the century described in the "Fundamenta the Lute Musique".
Fundamenta the projects the sounds, rather than by figuring the bass chord blocks build, rather break the chords and connecting openings melodic. This corresponds exactly to the broken melody style that meets in the French printing the 1630s up to Gehema and Rostock XVII-54. So I tried to write melodies as in a French contre game and the set-usually two to hold a maximum of three parts. This will be an all loosened up and sounds light and airy.
the "Fundamenta the Lute Musique" According to the lute playing the bass line usually as deep as possible, so if available, usually on the drone strings. Unless there is an altered tone, then the phrase in question raised.
And even at John Dowland is to study the sounds that the singing can go first if there are suspensions dissolved. The example: If a G in the bass and the song has also c-h, then plays the lute just the G chord with F-derivative (g-c-d), but the resolution is, to The leaving it to the song. By omitting the resolution mush the singer is given the opportunity to present their third to sing as a pure interval. It just sounds nicer.
And so on and so forth. Heinrich Albert, the project has expanded rapidly in a short time. Now, however, has reached a provisional maintenance, for the twelve songs are with realized figured bass for Renaissance lute finished (the twelfth is not Albert). Albert (Reyerman) says in the spring they come into the catalog. I hope they will find friends, they make just as much fun as I did when researching and writing. The research is far from over, there is still plenty to do. A little light I do now but yet risen: the identity of the poet Chasmindo, Albert frequently set to music. It is none other than Albert's old friend in Kaliningrad - Simon Dach.
