Musicaliches Parnassus:
Uranie
Meloponeme
Clio - exceprt
Euterpe - exceprt

Musicaliches Blumen-Büchlein:
Praeludium 8 and chaconne
Praeludium 5
Aria and eight variations
Praeludium 10 and fuga

An den liebhaber der Edlen Music:
Praeludium 1
6 Fugues and Finale

Ariadne Musica:
Praeludium et Fugue 1, 3, 13 and 1

Ricercaras Super totidem Sacrorum

In the mid 18th century, Quantz traced the origins of the Germanic style back to the country’s composers’ talent for combining foreign musical styles. Fischer’s works for keyboard, combining as they do French-style galanteries and dances, Italian influenced toccatas and passacaglias and German contrapuntal science, are an excellent example of this “mixed style”.

We know little about the life of Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (1656-1746) other than that he came from a family of craftsmen from Schönfeld in Bohemia and received his earliest musical training at the Piarist grammar school. In around 1689, he was appointed Kapellmeister of the court of Saxe-Lauenburg, in Schlackenwerth, entered the service of the Margrave of Baden in around 1690 and then, in 1715, he arrived at the latter’s royal residence of Rastatt, inspired by the Château of Versailles, where the glittering musical life led him to compose many religious and profane works. He was to remain Kapellmeister there until his death in 1746. In addition to the four collections of music for keyboard from which the pieces in this programme are taken, Fischer left behind a cycle of eight orchestral suites printed under the title Le Journal du Printemps in 1695, along with various pieces of religious music (masses, vespers, litanies, etc.). On the other hand, both his dramatic works (operas, court festivities, school dramas) and the majority of the religious works he composed for the Rastatt court are lost.