Copenhagen Renaissance Music Festival - 7-20 November 2011
Christian
Geist
Individual, distinctive and daring – German composer Geist has been overlooked for too long.
I
n 1674, the young Mecklenburg musician Christian Geist applied for the prestigious position as cantor of the Hamburg Johanneum, a post that had become vacant when Christoph Bernhard decided to leave Hamburg to return to Dresden. At that time, Geist was active as a court musician in Stockholm, and had been recommended for the position by the Hamburg envoy there. It seems that Geist handed in two compositions with his application, now housed in the Bokemeyer Collection in Berlin; it is not known if he also went to Hamburg himself for the occasion. Nevertheless, he never got the position, which went instead to Joachim Gerstenbüttel. In his biography of Bernhard in Grundlage einre Ehren-Pforte, (published in 1740 and one of the most important sources of in-
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and the delicate Italian style
formation about Baroque music of that time), Johann Matthesson quotes Bernhard’s assessment of Geist’s music from that occasion, which he especially commended for its ”delicate style”, that demonstrated he had been directly influenced by Italian musicians. This kind of contemporary criticism of music is not very common
Regarding the association with Italians referred to in Mattheson’s quote, however, some reservations must be made. It is unlikely that Geist actually met many Italian musicians, never visiting Italy; instead, his Italian connection was restricted to the studying and imitation of musical compositions and scores.
By Lars Berglund
in 17th-century sources, and when it does appear is not always easy to interpret. In this particular case however, the notion of a “delicate” Italianised style in connection with Geist’s music is not at all hard to comprehend. On the contrary, it pretty much hits the mark: adherence to Italian models, a refined, delicate taste and strong sentiment are traits typical of his works – not least in one of the two trial pieces for Hamburg, his Vide pater mi dolores from 1674. One of his early pieces for the Swedish Royal Court, the Easter concerto Alleluia. De funere ad vitam from 1672, demonstrates how this association could have come about. The composition is what is often called a parody, i.e. an imitation of an older composition that is independent enough to be regarded as an individual work, but still close enough for the connection to be unmistakable. The model that Geist imitated was a solo motet by the Roman composer Bonifazio Graziani, who between 1646 and his death in 1664 was