Capriccios und Preludes für Orgel (Cembalo)

Gottlieb Muffat (1690-1770) war zu seiner Zeit hochgeschätzt - in jüngster Zeit konnte insbesondere seine Bedeutung für G. F. Händel nachgewiesen werden. Der Sammelband vereinigt 25 unveröffentlichte Capricen und Präludien aus der Wiener Minoritenhandschrift.

This volume is the latest publication in the well produced „Diletto Musicale“ series; it is the first modern edition of twelve Capriccios, six Caprices and seven Preludes by the Austrian composer Gottlieb Muffat. (…) The works, all of which are between half a page and four pages in length, are all quite playable on manuals only. (…) The style and texture of these works is typical of that encountered in much Italian and South German repertoire of the period. Many of the Capriccios and Preludes open with slow-moving, arpeggiated chords, followed by a rapid development of activity, with scale passages in (demi-)semiquavers in one hand played against sutained chords in the other. The Caprices are more aria-like in style and are generally more consistently in three or four parts. A Preface (in German and English) provides the player with helpful information about composer, instruments and sources. The pieces would make delightful preludes or postludes to a service on even the smallest of instruments; quite a few could be virtually sight-read by an organist of reasonable competence. (Philip Swanton, SYDNEY ORGAN JOURNAL, Vol. 43/1, Summer 2011-2012) The transcription from the Vienna Friar Minor manuscript is in print for the first time. All will be relieved that the “Italian tablature” notation is turned into 5-line staff notation for us. Everything is clear and orderly, and the “execution of ornaments” table is helpful. Many feature quite wide-ranging semiquaver or even demisemiquaver runs, arpeggiated semibreve chords occupy both hands and considerable stretches of three-part writing. In other words they adopt the stylus phantasticus – perhaps the most fantastic of all being Capriccio septima, getting on for being black enough on the printed page to have delighted Max Reger. (…) (Michael Bell, ORGANISTS’ REVIEW MAGAZINE, March 2012) „This is a most interesting issue of material by a resourceful composer whom Händel admired and from whom Händel was known to copy.“ (THE CONSORT, Summer 2012)