Beethoven’s „Pastorale“ in Pocket Form

“Now this is enough description of this ingenious product, for listening to it will provide more pleasure for every educated person than even the most detailed description. Let us hope that this genius, Beethoven, will give us another such masterpiece soon.” The author of this “Recension” is Michael Gotthard Fischer from Erfurt. Fischer, who was born in Albach near Erfurt on 3 June 1773 and died in Erfurt on 12 January 1829, was a pupil of Bach’s last pupil, Johann Christian Kittel. Fischer earned his living as an organist and conductor of the winter concerts in Erfurt. But as a composer, too, he left a trace in musical history with his limited oeuvre of chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and, of course, organ works. However, there was never any written correspondence, let alone any personal contact between Fischer and Beethoven. In all the various connections with Beethoven the name of Michael Gotthard Fischer never occurs, and Beethoven had no direct relationship even with Fischer’s geographical region of origin and field of activity. Fischer’s enthusiasm was clearly fed only by Beethoven’s music.

The enthusiasm for Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony that is obvious in Fischer’s “Recension” of the work clearly inspired the Erfurt composer to present it to a broader audience in an arrangement for a chamber group. His arrangement was brought out by the publishing house of Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig in January 1810. Two years earlier Fischer had already gone public with other arrangements: a piano score of the opera “Calypso” by Peter von Winter, a quite popular composer in his day, and a year later with an arrangement of the heroic songs from the opera “Tigrane” by the no less popular composer Vincenzo Righini and, also in 1810 with a piano score of Mozart’s “Magic Flute”.

VALENTE – six to midnight

A string sextet of glass and avalanches. On the one hand extremely delicate weaving of flageolet tones, on the other huge masses of sound that are roaring down to their own destruction. Spiderlike threads of glissandi reach like a bridge over the gap between them; of all things, this being-nowhere of music, unsteadiness in sound forms, u-topos.