Mein Lieb, wie schöne bist doch du – Arias and Cantatas by Caspar Kittel, a Pupil of Schütz

Ensemble Phoenix Munich
Hannah Ely | soprano / Michaela Riener | soprano
Ivo Haun | tenor, lute / Manuel Warwitz | tenor
Michael Eberth | harpsichord / Sven Schwannberger | theorbo, recorder
Joel Frederiksen | bass, lute, artistic director

Caspar Kittel (1603–1639) belonged to the generation of German musicians who brought the new Italian art of singing to Germany and gave it a distinctive voice of its own. After training in Dresden, he was sent to Venice in 1624 to study, where he encountered the new Italian vocal style at first hand. He returned to the Dresden court as a theorbist, singer, and teacher of the choirboys, and in 1638 published his only surviving collection: Arien und Cantaten für 1. 2. 3. und 4. Stimmen (Arias and Cantatas for One, Two, Three, and Four Voices).

The collection is one of the earliest German examples of the stile nuovo, the modern monodic style that emerged in Italy around 1600. It also marks the first appearance of the term “Cantate” in a German music publication. Kittel combines the rhetorical power of the German language with Italian virtuosity, creating music of remarkable verbal precision and melodic expressiveness.

Particularly revealing are the five solo arias. Kittel expressly intended them for “still inexperienced singers” and used them in the training of his choirboys. In each aria, the first stanza appears in a simple, unornamented form; with each subsequent stanza, increasingly elaborate ornamentation unfolds, closely attuned to the meaning and affect of the text. The collection thus offers a rare glimpse into early seventeenth-century vocal practice and into the way the new Italian art of singing was taught and transmitted in Germany.

The program presents a selection from Kittel’s only surviving publication, placing his music in the context of his time alongside works by Giulio Caccini, Johann Nauwach, Biagio Marini, and Matthias Weckmann.