Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel

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Gottfried Henrich Stölzel (January 31, 1690 in Grünstädtl – November 27, 1749 in Gotha) was a prolific German composer. From 1707 he was a student in Leipzig of Melchior Hofmann among others. He studied, worked and composed in Breslau and Halle, then a year and a half sojourn in Italy from 1713— where he met Antonio Vivaldi in Venice— rendered him au courant with the latest musical taste. After working for three years in Prague, he became briefly court Kapellmeister in Gera, then he married in 1719 and the next year took up an appointment in Gotha, where he worked until his death.

In 1731 the Kapellmeister of the court at Sondersburg left for Danzig and Stölzel supplied numerous festive occasional pieces and arias for court performance; the archive at Schloss Sondersburg retains many of his manuscripts, but half of Stölzel's output, never engraved, is lost. He enjoyed an outstanding reputation in his lifetime: Lorenz Mizler ranked him as great as Johann Sebastian Bach.

His most important works are: four concerti grossi, many sinfonias, a concerto for oboe d'amore. Operas and oratorios: Narcissus, Valeria, Artemisia, Orion, twelve complete annual cantata cycles as well as cantatas to secular texts. Maurice André performed Stölzel's concerto in D for trumpet and strings and continuo.

His Abhandlung vom Recitativ ("The Art of Recitative"), written about 1739, remained unpublished until 1962 (Werner Steger, Gottfried Heinrich Stoelzels "Abhandlung vom Recitativ")