Who was Röllig? - Röllig and the Sing-Akademie collection

Johann Georg Röllig (1710-1790), organist and chamber musician at Zerbst from 1737, rose to become vice-Kapellmeister and then, on the death of Johan Friedrich Fasch in 1758, the last Kapellmeister at the court, responsible for the provision of all liturgical and celebratory music in the court. In addition to many oratorio Passions, cantatas, and other liturgical music, Röllig composed birthday cantatas, symphonies and concertos for the court, some of which are listed in the Concert-Stube of 1743. However, the extent of his output is now uncertain following the discovery of a large corpus of material by Roellig junior in the Singakademie Library, bringing into question the authorship of works previously thought to be by Johann Georg Röllig. This paper examines the evidence to suggest that Roellig junior was not J.G Röllig, but possibly Christian August Röllig, Hofkantor in Dresden between 1728 and 1765 or Johann Christian Roellig

The lives and works of Johann George Roellig and Johann Christian Roellig with Thematic Catalogue

This dissertation provides the first comprehensive study of the lives and work of brothers Johann George Roellig (1710-1790) and Johann Christian Roellig (b.1716), together with a thematic catalogue to aid further research. It argues that the music of the Roellig brothers presents many insights into a period of music history often dismissed as ‘transitional’. Themes that are addressed include the contrasts between traditional employment models and the independent freelance business model emerging in the eighteenth century; new cantata structures that provide a new perspective of the state of post-Bach sacred music; a previously unidentified instrumental genre of partita linked to the political fortunes of the Wettin dynasty and new insights into the development of North German opera in the 1760s and 1770s.Chapter 1 traces Johann George Roellig’s life, examining his employment as organist and latterly Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, revealing tensions, both professional and personal in court employment. Chapter 2 provides the first discussion of the career of Johann Christian Roellig (a composer only identified for the first time in 2008 by the author) - exploring his association with Carl Jacob Christian Klipfel, the Meissen Porcelain Factory Collegium Musicum (newly identified in the course of this study), and with the Hamburg theatre impresario Konrad Ernst Ackermann. In contrast to the more conventional career path based upon court and church patronage followed by his older brother, Johann Christian’s career illustrates an emerging new career model in the eighteenth century, namely the freelance composer-musician. Exploring the rich documentary evidence of the performance history of sacred music in the court of Anhalt Zerbst, Chapter 3 examines J.G. Roellig’s contribution to the repertoire of the court chapel. The influence of external factors such as the Seven Years War is noted, but also the demands of the Zerbst Consistory, which censored cantata texts and, from 1752, restricted the duration of concerted music performed in Hauptgottesdienst, leading to the bifurcation of a number of single cantata cycles to make double cantata cycles. Chapter 4 uses the vocal music of J.C. Roellig to illuminate developments in the cantata in the generation after J.S. Bach, including the performance in Meissen of dedicated communion cantatas based upon biblical Sprüche and chorale texts, that challenge established conceptions of the state of German liturgical music post 1750.Instrumental music, composed principally by J.C. Roellig, is the focus of chapters 5 to 7. The repertoire and historical scope of the ‘Dresden partita’ (a subgenre of partita identified for the first time in this study) is established, as well as the introduction of the divertimento into Dresden c.1757-1760. The symphony and concerto are examined within the context of bourgeoise music-making in Dresden and Meissen, followed by the first overview of Dresden Redoutenmusik in the mid-eighteenth century. Finally, Chapter 8 explores the context of J.C. Roellig’s three surviving stage works composed for the Ackermann company in Hamburg between 1763 and 1771 - works that belong to a largely unknown genre, mostly lost, in a little-known period of its historyThe extensive appendices include a thematic catalogue of the works of the Roellig brothers, a key document that has driven the discussion in the dissertation. This is preceded by prefatory sections which include a discussion of the importance of collectors and collections in the preservation and transmission of music by the Roellig brothers, as well as sections on autograph copies, copyists, watermarks and paper-types and the dating of works in the Klipfel collection. <br/

The Polonaise and Mazurka in Mid-Eighteenth Century Dresden:Style and Structure in the Music of Johann Christian Roellig

While recent studies have explored the significance of the Polish style in the music of Georg Philipp Telemann and Johan Sebastian Bach and the importance of the Polish dances in Dresden has long been recognized, the eighteenth-century German polonaise remains a largely neglected area of inquiry. The restoration of the library of the Singakademie zu Berlin in 2000 has made it possible to explore an important collection of mostly unica sources of music by Saxon composers from c1740-c1763, amassed by the Meissen porcelain mosaic artist Carl Jacob Christian Klipfel (1727–1802). Klipfel’s collection includes music of Johann Christian Roellig (born 1716), possibly the most prolific composer of polonaises in Dresden during this period and one of the earliest German composers to write mazurs (mazurkas) in instrumental works. The first-hand knowledge of the Polish style that musicians of the Saxon electoral court and Count von Brühl gained as a result of the frequent journeys to Warsaw resulted in Dresden polonaises that are relatively un-‘Germanized’. This article examines the social and musical context of the polonaise in the mid-eighteenth century Dresden including the repertoire of the annual Redouten (masked Balls), then examines the polonaise and mazurka of Johann Christian Roellig and his contemporaries, including Johann Georg Knechtel, Georg Gebel and Gottlob Harrer. A survey of the use of polonaises in Redoutentänze, symphony, and partita reveals significant differences in style and structure between these genres

Johann Friedrich Fasch’s Mich vom Stricke meiner Sünden – a work for Zerbst?

Johann Friedrich Fasch reports in his autobiography that he composed a ‘strong’(‘starke’) Passion in his first year as Kapellmeister of Zerbst and, based upon this single piece of evidence, the date 1723 has generally been accepted as the possible year of composition for Fasch’s oratorio Mich vom Stricke meiner Sünden. That is, until 1997 when the completion a major study of the Zerbst Passion tradition and of the Zerbster Gesangbücher cast great doubt on this assumption. Evidence from the court records rules out the performance of Mich vom Stricke meiner Sünden, as part of the liturgy in the Schloßkirche. In this paper the two sources of the work will be compared and the evidence that suggests that the work was completed prior to Summer 1722 will be examined, in particular the evidence provided by the Zerbst Cantional, to demonstrate that the forms of the melody in Mich vom Stricke meiner Sünden are at variance with the those used by Fasch in sacred cantata works from his first year of employment at Zerbst. To conclude, the circumstances of a performance in Greiz are discussed

Porcelain, Music and Frederick the Great: a Survey of the Klipfel Collection in the Sing-Akademie, Berlin

This article provides the first survey of the music collection amassed by the amateur musician and latterly Inspector of the Berlin Royal Porcelain Factory (KPM), Carl Jacob Christian Klipfel (1727–1802). This is possibly the largest collection of a private individual to survive from the eighteenth century and one that provides a unique insight into the repertoire of a provincial collegium musicum in Meissen, an organization that hitherto has not been recognised in scholarship. The importance of Klipfel's association with Frederick the Great is also outlined. The second section outlines the repertoire, including the many unica copies of works by a large number of Dresden and other Saxon composers, and in particular, the music of Johann Christian Roellig (b.1716), who was de facto resident composer of the Meissen Collegium Musicum. The analysis also demonstrates the importance of city-to-city distribution of musical works, including those by Hasse, in contrast to the more familiar court-to-court transmission in the eighteenth century. The third section then discusses the contribution by the various copyists based in Meissen, Dresden and Berlin, including a study of the handwriting of the principal copyist, Klipfel himself, which makes it possible to date works within the collection more accurately.</jats:p