Almost a precise contemporary of Handel and Rameau, Christoph Graupner (1683-1760) was the "second choice" of the Leipzig city council in 1723, when they had to choose a new Cantor and Telemann turned them down. We know that Graupner didn't get permission from his employer to leave for Leipzig, and so their third choice was Bach: the council was annoyed at having to "settle for a mediocrity". Graupner stayed in Darmstadt, where, throughout his long career, he managed to write 1,400 devotional cantatas – and we can only salute the decision of his legatees to defy his dying wish that his works be destroyed! That said, posterity would see his work largely consigned to the shadows: a truly unjust state of affairs, given that Graupner was an exceptional composer, as demonstrated by these five cantatas which were written for Epiphany.
Exceptional: and also a great musical curiosity, because, although he never left Germany, he set about copying out the music of his European contemporaries for his own edification; and his own scores brought in various rare instruments, such as the flûte d’amour, the oboe d'amore, the viola d'amore, and, more adventurously, the chalumeau – an ancestor of the clarinette, heard here in the cantata Die Waßer Wogen im Meer sind groß, one of the less-common sounds in baroque music, although often used in Vivaldi and Teleman. The five works on this album were written between 1730 and 1753: the composer's mature period, in which his language and imagination were overflowing with originality. His breadth of vision for want of a better word, the artful contrasts, the rarity of the orchestral sounds, give this music a profound air of mystery: the sheer number of his works in circulation have probably put off a number of performers who perhaps mistake such a great quantity for a dilution of quality. Alas... If Graupner had only limited himself to writing five cantatas, his works would be lauded to the heavens – and commentators would regret that he never wrote more. © SM/Qobuz