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Georg Philipp Telemann. (Music Reviews).(Seliges Erwagen: Passionsoratorium in neun Betrachtrungen)(Book Review)-

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Georg Philipp Telemann. Seliges Erwagen: Passionsoratorium in neun Betrachtrungen, TWV 5:2 Herausgegeben von Ute Poetzsch. (Musikalische Werke, 33.) Kassel: Barenreiter, 2001. [Zur Ausgabe, p. vii; Vorwort, p. viii-xxi; Krit. Bericht, p. xxii-xxxix; facsims., p. xl-xlvi; facsim. reprod. of libretto, p. xlvii-li; score, 174 p.; Anhang, p. 175-92. Cloth. ISMN M-006-49795-9; BA 5856. [member of]158.50.]

Georg Philipp Telemann's Passion oratorio Seliges Erwagen des bittern Leidens und Sterbens Jesu Christi (Blessed Contemplation of the Bitter Suffering and Dying ofJesus Christ) was one of the most beloved and frequently performed poetic settings of the Passion in eighteenth-century Germany, eclipsed, perhaps, only by Carl Heinrich Graun's Der Tod Jesu of 1755. Although Seliges Erwagen enjoyed performances in numerous German cities into the nineteenth century, the work today is little known outside the small circle of Telemann scholars and devotees, despite an excellent recording by Wolfgang Schafer with the Freiburger Vokalensemble and L'Apra Festante of Munich (Amati SRR 8905/1-2 [1989], CD; reissued as Passions-Oratorium, urn, Brilliant Classics 99521/1-2 [2002]). Recently published in the Telemann Musikalische Werke, this Passion oratorio is now available for convenient study in a thoroughly researched critical edition by Ute Poetzsch.

Telemann himself composed the text for Seliges Erwagen, writing the poetry for the recitatives (which include bits of paraphrased text from the Gospel narratives) and arias, and interspersing chorales. The edition includes a facsimile of the entire printed libretto for the first Hamburg performance of the work, and as Poctzsch points out, the composer probably modeled the text on Barthold Heinrich Brockes's libretto for the Passion Oratorio Der fur die Siinde der Welt gemartete und sterbende Jesus, which Telemann set in 1716. Her extensive foreword to the edition divides into twelve sections: a brief introduction followed by discussions of the genre, Telemann s text, the printed librettos and the revision, the music, the first performance, the singers and instrumentalists, the performances in Hamburg and an argument concerning the proposed participation of a female soprano...

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