Thomas Stoltzer Missa duplex per totum annum Motets Weser-Renaissance Cordes - CPO999295

Stoltzer’s composing covered all the musical genres of his time. During his Breslau years he initially focused on works for liturgical performance. Later, during his years in Ofen, his interest shifted more to free sacred music intended for edification and not specifically set for the Mass. Although he was some thirty years younger than his model Heinrich Finck, he earlier and more decidedly absorbed influences from the Franco-Flemish motet style current around 1500. However, he did not deny his German roots; he retained the cantus firmus and during his last years as a composer developed affective and pictorial settings for the texts underlying his compositions. In 1996 cpo and WESER-RENAISSANCE selected a program consisting of the Missa duplex per totum annum and three Psalm motets. The austere tonal beauty unique to these works and their rich use of musical figures and profound symbols form the first high point of a typically German polyphonic style. Here the man who was perhaps the most important German composer of the early sixteenth century comes into view; in any case, it was not without reason that his contemporaries reverently termed him the »Primus Artifex.«