CD 39

Music from Stams Monastery XIV

Innsbruck (detail), hand-colored copperplate engraving, about 1750

This CD presents the earliest surviving symphonic music of the Tyrol. The composer Johann Elias de Sylva was born in Innsbruck in 1716, where he became a leading representative of 18th-century musical life. As the highly regarded director of the parish choir and orchestra of St Jakob, he composed mainly sacred music. In a broader sense the symphonies recorded on this CD also belong to this category because their original function was probably to serve as musical interludes during mass. In de Sylva’s time it was quite possible for a symphony or solo concert to be interpolated, for instance by way of a graduale, in the course of the ordinarium. Like the sensuality sometimes apparent in the art decorating the house of God, the worldliness often appearing in the expression and touch of this music did not bother anyone. In many compositional elements de Sylva’s symphonies demonstrate the transition towards a new symphonic form as the dominant instrumental genre, which gradually came to be shaped by different schools and trends during his times. Besides his self-confident taking up of innovations and adapting them to his personal use, as in the Symphony in D Minor (tracks 13-14), which is clearly a decisive feature of de Sylva’s symphonies, there is also a certain conservative persistence in musical tradition. Characterized by this particular blend of regional and supra-regional musical infl uences, de Sylva’s contribution to the importance of Tyrolean musical history is not to be underestimated. His symphonies are unparalleled examples of the high quality and originality of musical life in the Tyrol, which, after peaking in the 16th and 17th centuries, also demonstrates excellence during the 18th century thanks to exemplary documentary sources such as this.

Track 3, 2:01
Sinfonie in G-major
Presto
Johann Elias de Sylva
(1716-1798)