Tyrolean Musical Treasures 27

Tyrolean Church Music Concert 2002
Alexander Utendal (ca. 1530-1581): Sacred Works
Alexander Utendal came from the Netherlands, as did many members of the famous ensemble of singers and instrumentalists at the court of Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol. In Utendal’s own words, he had “served the House of Austria from his youth.” He came to Innsbruck in Archduke Ferdinand’s retinue in 1567. The new ruler of the Tyrol moved into his princely residence and set up a splendid household in which music played a leading part. Ferdinand, an art-obsessed Renaissance prince who assembled musicians from all over in his court ensemble, had summoned in Utendal one of the most talented composers as his vice-director of court music. Because of his position, Alexander Utendal wrote mainly church music, which he had published in several collections in Nuremberg, some of them dedicated to his lord. As though by a miracle, Utendal’s oeuvre of sacred music, documented in its entirety in old part-book editions, has been preserved, not in Innsbruck but scattered amongst many libraries and archives in Europe. We have collected copies of these holdings and transcribed all of them into modern musical notation. They form the basis for the representative program selected and presented within the framework of the 2002 Tyrolean Church Music Concert at the magnificent basilica of Stams Monastery. Heard for the first time since they were written, played on historical instruments with the collaboration of specialists in the performance practice of early music, were two six-part parody masses by Utendal and remarkable examples of his utterly impressive artistry in the motet form. Utendal was a completely modern composer and he shaped the stylistic trends of his time, which he came across in the colorfully mixed repertoire of the Innsbruck court ensemble, into a highly personal, unmistakably individual, musical idiom. He is presumably one of the first composers north of the Alps to use polychoral compositional techniques. In this respect he was surely the model for his Tyrolean pupil Blasius Amon (ca. 1560-1590), who was to become very famous.
 

Track 12, 2:40
Kyrie
from "Missa sex vocum repleti sunt omnes"