Melchior from Bremgarten

We know very little about him: born in Bremgarten/Aargau in 1626, organist from 1651 and cathedral conductor in Augsburg from 1654, where he died in 1683. Apart from the fifteen children he brought into the world and his works, that is essentially what we have left of him - in prints, which testifies to his reputation: a Swiss in Swabia after the Thirty Years' War. Johann Melchior Gletle must have been an interesting personality. This is evident in every note of these 36 motets op. 5, which were published in 1677. Gletle did not simply set texts to music, he conceived vocal works, which led to surprising and occasionally quite elaborate results, created artfully and with a keen sense of linguistic melody. This can be felt in a touching way in the only two German-language motets; Gletle shapes them very flexibly between recitative and arioso. This opens up an astonishing variety of compositional possibilities. It is not always the great names of music history where the special features are to be found.

Here we have a complete recording that has been created over the years: first recordings in May 2000, further recordings in 2005, already released on CD. The cycle was completed in 2014. This also reveals differences in the liveliness of the interpretation. The vocal parts are performed fluently, mostly more, sometimes a little less smoothly. The instrumental accompaniment sounds splendid and colorful, clear and not overpowering. It always lets the voices take the lead. The Musica Fiorita ensemble, founded in 1991 - it has just celebrated its 25th anniversary - and directed by Daniela Dolci, performs against the backdrop of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where apparently all the ensemble members studied and are therefore historically informed.

Of course, one may wonder whether the entire CD project is more than just a valuable edition for musicology. Although instrumental sonatas are inserted between the motets on each of the four CDs, providing variety, and the pieces have also been grouped in a new and sensible way compared to the printed edition, it is still just a series of pieces. Thus this CD box weighs heavily as a documentation, but as an artistic product (which a CD could also be) it is somewhat too cumbersome. The performances of selected chamber music, as Wikipedia reports on Musica Fiorita, are occasionally staged as social events. It is precisely the liveliness of the composer and the music-making in his environment that one would like to feel even more directly on the Gletle CDs.