Luogo e data di registrazione		St.-Michaelis-Heim, Berlin-Grunewald (Germania) - 20-22 novembre 1969 (Odes) Studio Hamburg, Hamburg-Rahlstedt (Germania) - 1-5 dicembre 1975 (Fantasias)
	Original Editions		- Archiv Produktion | 2533 058 | 1 LP | (p) 1971 | ANA | (Odes) - Archiv Produktion | 2533 326 | 1 LP | (p) 1976 | ANA | (Fantasias)
	Edizione "Codex"		Archiv Produktion "Codex" | 453 168-2 | durata 55' 00" | LC 0113 | 1 CD | (p) 1996 | ADD | stereo
	Executive Producer		Rainer Brock (Odes); Dr. Andreas Holschneider (Fantasias)
	Recording Producer and Tonmeister		Hans-Peter Schweigmann (Odes); Heinz Wildhagen (Fantasias)
	Cover		Hendrick Ter Brugghen "Duo" (detail), Louvre, Paris
	Art Direction		Fred Münzmaier
	Note		Original-Image-Bit-Processing - Added presence and brilliance, greater spatial definition

ORIGINAL EDITIONS 1 LP - 2533 058 - (p) 1971 1 LP - 2533 326 - (p) 1976

Treasures from Archiv Produktion’s Catalogue A rare and valuable collection of documents is the pride of any library or archive. CODEX, Archiv Produktion’s new series, presents rare documents in sound from 50 years of pioneering recording. These recordings have been digitally remastered using original-image bit-processing technology and can now be appreciated in all the richness of their original sound-image. They range from the serene counterpoint of a Machaut, the intensely spiritual polyphony of a Victoria, to the imposing state-music of a Handel. For the artists on Archiv Produktion recordings, a constant aim has been to rediscover the musical pulse of past times and to recreate the spirit of past ages. In this sense each performance here - whether by Pro Musica Antiqua of Brussels in the 1950s, the Regensburg Domchor in the 1960s, or Kenneth Gilbert and Trevor Pinnock in the 1970s - made a vital contribution to the revival of Early Music in our time. CODEX highlights recordings that were unique in their day, many of them first recordings ever of this rare and remarkable repertoire, now appearing for the first time on CD. A special aspect of the history of performance in our century can now be revisited, as great moments from Archiv Produktion’s recording history are restored and experienced afresh. Dr. Peter Czornyi Director, Archiv Produktion “... He has succeeded in investing these brief song settings with a very real significance” Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s songs had long since ceased to be part of the general musical consciousness when the leading Swiss composer and teacher, Hans Georg Nägeli, contributed a generous assessment of them to the Allgemeine musikaliscbe Zeitung in 1811: “As experienced as any other in the scientific branch of art and as accomplished in the artistic branch, while at the same time incomparably intelligent and imaginative, he [Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach] has succeeded in investing these brief song settings with a very real significance that even today’s song composers would seek in vain to surpass.” Even as Nägeli was penning these lines, Franz Schubert was setting the first of his 600 lieder, Schiller’s Der Mädchen Klage. Nägeli rightly draws attention to the singularity and originality of Bach’s songs. The composer’s first such collection - a setting of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert’s anthology of sacred odes and hymns - appeared in 1758, amid the depredations of the Seven Years War. Published under the title Herrn Professor Gellerts geistliche Oden und Lieder mit Melodien, it turned him overnight into one of Germany’s most highly regarded song composers. The fact that the edition was reprinted no fewer than five times during its composer’s lifetime is in itself sufficient to underline the extraordinary popularity of these Gellert settings. Berlin was the centre of the German art song in the years around 1750. Agricola, Kirnberger, Marpurg, Quantz and Carl Philipp Emanuel himself were only the most prolific of the many composers who turned, by preference, to the poetry of Gellert, Hagedorn, Gleim, Gräfe, Ramler and Lessing. The majority of their songs were secular in character and, technically speaking, relatively simple, so that amateur musicians could easily sing them. The Gellert songs, by contrast, are rather more demanding, as is clear from a review that appeared in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek in 1766: “Nor is there any mistaking Mr. Bach’s fiery and imaginative spirit in these odes. Although they really seem to have been conceived more in terms of the keyboard than the voice, a well-trained and technically competent singer will none the less find ample opportunity to improve his or her execution of small ornaments, to practise the accurate rendition of certain difficult melodic configurations and, in general, to develop his or her powers of expression.” Influenced, as he was, by Pietistic ideas, Bach wrote these songs with the specific aim of being both edifying and instructive. In Bitten, the setting of the text is largely syllabic, with only a few significant exceptions. The words “so weit die Wolken gehen” (as far as the clouds go) are set melismatically, no doubt in an attempt to underscore the poetic image, while the sense of contrast contained within the strophe as a whole, notably at the words “Herr, meine Burg, mein Fels” (Lord, my fortress, my rock), is reflected in the detailed musical setting, with its emphatic repeated notes underscored by agitated accompanying figures and firmly anchored in G major, before the music abruptly modulates back to the opening key of E minor at the words “Vernimm mein Flehn" (Hear my entreaty) and finally dies away on a rapt pianissimo. Almost 50 years later Beethoven would adopt a totally different series of compositional solutions when setting this same poem. But that he was familiar with Bach’s version is beyond question, so striking are the parallels between individual passages. Bach‘s close collaboration with his various poets lasted many years and continued to bear fruit during his years in Hamburg. Time and again, however, it was the poets of the Göttinger Hain - a league of student-poets enamoured of Klopstock’s new and emotional brand of poetry - to whom the much older composer returned and who, in turn, approved of his manner of setting their poems. Bach not only wrote many secular songs, some of which are almost popular in tone, he also composed numerous sacred songs. In 1774 he published, at his own expense, Herrn Doctor Cramers übersetzte Psalmen mil Melodien zum Singen bey dem Claviere (Dr. Cramers Psalms in Translation, with Melodies to Sing at the Keyboard), settings of words by the Kiel professor of theology, Johann Andreas Cramer. Bach’s ability to capture the tone of contemporary Empfindsamkeit is clear from a whole series of enthusiastic reviews of these musical miniatures. When Christoph Christian Sturm was appointed preacher at St. Peter’s in Hamburg in 1777, Bach wrote an introductory piece to welcome him. Their collaborative Geistliche Gesange of 1780 and 1781 were so successful that no fewer than 224 printed copies of the first part were ordered in Hamburg alone. In her authoritative study of Bach’s songs, Gudrun Busch offers an admirable assessment of both collections: “Experimentation and a conscious desire to be different are avoided. All this reflects the contemplative religiosity of Sturm’s texts. The most powerful expressivity is concentrated in the highly successful Passion hymns, which provide further evidence of Bachs distinctive style in terms of chromaticism, harmonic writing and declamation.” At the same time that he was devoting his creative energies to songs such as these, with their profoundly internalized moods, Bach was also writing highly virtuoso keyboard music. The fantasia offered him the possibility, as he himself said, to express the changes “from one affect to another with surprising speed”. As a “trial effort” he did this out for the first time in 1753 in the C minor Fantasia included in his Versusch über die wahre Art, das Clawier zu spielen (“Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments”). Thirty years later, in his collections “for connoisseurs and amateurs”, he returned to the genre. The expressive contrasts found in the C major Fantasia from the sixth collection could hardly be more extreme and inevitably recall Reichardt’s description of Bach as a “serious humorist”. Hans-Günter Ottenberg (Translation: Stewart Spencer) The Instruments The tangent piano (Tangentenflügel) is a keyboard instrument of the 18th century. Its position within the history of the keyboard instruments is between the clavichord and the fortepiano. The first types of the Tangentenflügel produced their sound like the clavichord, but the shape of the “tangent” at the rear end of the keys was different: instead of the vertical brass blade there was a jack-shaped wooden pin to strike the string. While the strings of the clavichord are set up at right angles to the keyboard, those of the Tangentenflügel are arranged in a line with the relevant finger-keys and give the instrument the shape of a grand piano. This had already been the shape of the harpsichord, and it prevailed in the further development of the keyboard instruments (from the different kinds of the hammerklavier to the grand piano of today). In the course of the 18th century the mechanism of the Tangentenflügel was refined, among others by Christoph Gottlieb Schröter of Dresden, but only towards the end of the century did the instrument gain some popularity for its “very strong and sumptuous sound” (Heinrich Christoph Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon, Frankfurt-on-Main, 1802, p. 1493). The sound was now produced by a tangent made of wood (also later covered with leather) striking the string by means of an intermediate lever, a second wooden pin attached at the rear end of the key muted the string. This mechanism was also used by Franz Jakob Späth and Christoph Friedrich Schmahl of Regensburg who made Tangemtenflügel from about 1751 to 1812. The Tangentenglügel used in this recording was made by them in 1793. The instrument was loaned by the Museum of Musical Instruments of the State Institute for Musical Research, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. The clavichord heard in this recording was made by Hieronymus Albrecht Hass, Hamburg, in 1742. Hass (1721-85) came from a well-known Hamburg family of instrument makers who concentrated almost exclusively on the production of keyboard instruments and are known to have maintained a workshop in Dresden as well as in Hamburg. The instrument is an unfretted clavichord with a compass of five octaves (F1-f3). From F1-d there are three unison strings to a note, from d#-f3 pairs of strings. In 1953 the instrument was restored by Hans Lengemann. Then, in 1975, a complete examination and restoration was carried out by Martin Skowroneck of Bremen. During restoration in 1975 the strings were replaced completely; those now used are composed of a copper alloy. Archiv Produktion wishes the thank the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte for the loan of this valuable instrument, and Frau Dr. Gisela Jaacks for her help and co-operation. For technical resasons, the transfer has been made at a high level. In order to obtain natural reproduction corresponding to the original quiet sound, the volume should be turned down as low as possible.