Paul Immler

Paulus Immler (born March 28, 1716 in Unterlauter near Coburg, † May 12, 1777 in Coburg ) was a German composer.

Life

Paul Immler was born on March 28, 1716 in Unterlauter not far from Coburg, the son of the tailor Nikolaus Immler and his wife Barbara. His first musical knowledge is said to have been imparted to him by the schoolmaster Nikolaus Müller from Lauter, who had already given lessons to Johann Schneider, who was born in 1702 and who later became the Bach assistant and cantor of St. Nicolai in Leipzig. Afterwards - dates are not known - Immler went to Johann Nikolaus Wiefel in Steinach, where he is said to have learned to compose. In 1738, at the age of 22, he was appointed a teacher in Weitramsdorf, where he worked until 1772. On November 2, 1756, Immler married Dorothea Christ, the daughter of the Weitramsdorfer official and court school leader Johann Nikolaus Christ, who was born in 1736.

At the age of 55, Paul Immler faced another professional challenge when he applied for the vacant position of Cantor of St. Moriz in Coburg in 1771 . He managed to outdo his competitors, the cantor of Themar and the cantor of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg. On January 30, 1772 he received the call and was introduced to his new office on February 17. He worked in Coburg until his death, where he died of whooping cough on May 12, 1777.

No matter how hard the regional literature tried to establish a connection to Johann Sebastian Bach in the sense of a teacher-student relationship, there is currently no credible evidence that Immler left Weitramsdorf for a long time after 1738. So we have to assume that he exchanged and trained himself mainly through printed music and contact with neighboring musicians. His musical circle can be reconstructed through the choice of godparents for his children: Johann Wilhelm Gehring, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt chamber musician; Johann Gottfried Wirsing, Cantor in Rodach; Elisabeth Schultesius, the wife of the cantor in Meeder, who is mentioned as the teacher of the organist and first Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel; Johann Christoph Conrad, Stadtorganist von Eisfeld, who, like Immler, composed himself and even published his works in print.

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In Robert Eitner's "Sources Lexicon of Musicians and Music Scholars" from 1901, it says about Immler:

"City cantor and cellist in Koburg, [...] was once known as a hard-working composer of church and chamber music."

His oeuvre must therefore have been much more extensive and is not limited to the six works that could be researched in the run-up to the Fischbacher revival in 2011. In addition to the Rotenhan archive, in which the Fischbach cantata was found, the Coburg State Library is keeping three other pieces by Immler: a cantata for the second Easter day “Do not leave us”, a Pentecost cantata “This is the day the Lord made” and a cantata on the second day of Pentecost “O inexhaustible sea of ​​love”. In the so-called music collection Rossach in the regional church archive of the evang.-luth. Church in Nuremberg there is a cantata on the 92nd psalm “This is a delicious thing” and a motet “My days are a hand's breadth with you”. Finally, a copy of the cantata “How lovely are your apartments, Mr. Zebaoth” was found in this musical collection. This is a shortened version of the Fischbacher piece, which Immler probably used afterwards for the general parish fair.

Cantata How lovely are your apartments 1761

In 1761, for the consecration of the church in Fischbach , he composed the cantata How lovely are your apartments, Mr. Zebaoth , which was performed in the newly built church on November 22, 1761. The Rotenhan family is mentioned in the cantata text, a branch of whose descendants still live in Fischbach Castle.

The performance of such a richly orchestrated piece in the small manor Fischbach can be understood as a musical demonstration of the evangelical faith in the denominational area of ​​the former knight canton of Baunach, as parts of the village belonged to the neighboring parish and thus to the monastery of Würzburg under parish and tithe law. A total of eight evangelical pastors from the area helped to organize the Fischbacher inauguration festival. For Immler's cantata, two timpani and timpani had to be borrowed from Rodach. This festival spectacle was likely to have been a unique event in the life of the Fischbachers. May the words Paul Immler uttered to the village and its church in his cantata continue to exist: When Fischbach yells for help here; Protect it from weather, robbery, fire and flood.

Reconstruction and modern edition

Ekkehard Grieninger writes about the reconstruction:

"When Matthias Göttemann raved about the planned re-performance of a long-lost baroque cantata by the hitherto unknown composer Paul Immler, I spontaneously assured him that, as part of my music lessons at the Regiomontanus-Gymnasium Haßfurt, I would create the performance material from the old manuscript together with my students, without really knowing what kind of work we would have to do.
The cantata in question has been preserved as a 31-page handwritten score. We used a digital copy from the Bamberg State Archive (archive of the Barons von Rothenhan) as a template for the transcription . There are up to 21 staves per page, the staff lines of which have been drawn freehand with a raster pen. Text and notes are also written in pen and ink. The quality of the paper used must have been pretty bad, as the ink blew through to the back in many places, which severely impaired legibility in some places.
The work is lavishly scored for four-part choir, 3 vocal soloists, strings, 2 flutes, basso continuo and - as it should be for a "solenne Einweyhung" (ceremonial opening) - also for 2 horns, 2 trumpets and 2 timpani. The timpani part is not noted in the score, however. Voices were not available. The composer presumably directed the performance himself from the organ or the harpsichord, as was customary at the time.
Three lively tutti choral movements form the cornerstones of this cantata to which 4 recitatives (1x for a tenor; 3x for a bass), 2 arias (one each for tenor and bass) and a duet (for soprano and tenor) - with 2 obbligato flutes instrumented - create a varied contrast.
The text of the cantata consists of 2 short quotations from the Bible from Psalm 83 and the Evangelist Matthew (chapter 18, verse 20). By far the largest part is by an unknown author (perhaps by Paul Immler himself) in the pompous language customary at the time, somewhat bumpy in rhyme with local allusions to the church consecration.
The music stands in the field of tension between the end of the baroque age and the beginning sensitive style of the early classical period. With its musical-rhetorical figures it is still largely associated with the school of JS Bach , but it already gives an idea of ​​the new musical language, especially in the lyrical arias.
With a few examples I want to show how the composer manages to interpret the text with his music so vividly that the listener is emotionally carried away:
The music of the inauguration cantata has an extremely cheerful character, which is particularly evident in the second choral movement (“God is with her inside ”) is expressed. Here the composer has shown the joy of the consecration of the church through the melodious sound of the major chords in the dancing élan of the lively waltz measure. The loud jubilation in the extremely high pitch of the choir voices is supported by horns, timpani and trumpets.
As a contrast, the listener is z. B. in the second bass recitative when describing the war suddenly surprised with a unison passage in thirty-second notes played in all instruments, which traces the image of a spearhead in the rapid ups and downs of its melody. When it comes to the cruelty of war, a diminished seventh chord appears, which with its sudden volume and its dissonant character must have frightened the listener 250 years ago, especially since the Seven Years' War that had just ended was certainly still deep in his bones. who had also left bitter wounds in the area around Bamberg.
But one would not do justice to the composition if one only wanted to reduce it to the musical figures that were generally known at the time. Paul Immler knew his craft, he could compose very effectively, no question about it. What sets him apart from the broad mass of everyday music composers are small surprises: here an unusual harmony progression (as in the middle section of the opening choir, which deals with paradise, when it suddenly changes from D major to the median B flat major), there a surprising rhythmic one Finesse (when he composes the overwhelming joy of the successful new church building with sixteenth-note sextoles in the violins.)
Because of its astonishingly high compositional quality, this cantata definitely deserves to be performed again.
It took many hours on the computer to produce the performance material, and each of the 50 participating colleagues made a small but important contribution. In addition to dealing with an interesting work from the transition period between the Baroque and Early Classical periods, he gained insights into the problems of transcribing, reconstructing and editing historical music texts and also expanded his media skills.
Entering the notes into the computer was of course not enough, because the manuscript contained many spelling mistakes, missing notes had to be supplemented from parallel passages, the figured bass numbering had to be deciphered, part excerpts had to be created and adapted to today's spelling. The coding that was common at the time (soprano, alto and tenor were notated on different staves in the C clef) did not yet correspond to modern standards, not to mention the German Kurrent script, which today only the older generation can read. Before the singers and instrumentalists could finally start rehearsing, many an editorial problem had to be resolved: transmission errors had to be eliminated and the layout for the score and the parts books created.
Without the work of the students, however, the cantata would not have been able to sound on July 10, 2011 for the 250th anniversary of the parish fair in Fischbach, at the place for which it was composed at the time. I would like to thank everyone who has helped for their cooperation.
Everyone involved in this project can see the fact that even television was interested in it as confirmation of the relevance of the work they have done. "

Individual evidence

1. ^ Church book Weitramsdorf, 1738
2. ^ Acta Consistorialia Coburg in 1738
3. ^ Philipp Carl Gotthard Karche: Year Books of the Ducal Saxon Residence City of Coburg: The older and oldest history of the city and the country of Coburg, Volume 3 , Verlag Ahl, 1853, page 323
4. ^ Acta Consistorialia Weitramsdorf Anno 1772
5. ↑ ^{a b} Volker Rößner: Paul Immler and the cantata for the Fischbacher Kirchweih 1761 in: CD booklet "Paul Immler (1716-1777): How lovely are your apartments. Cantata for the consecration of the Schlosskirche zu Fischbach 1761"
6. ↑ Robert Eitner: Biographical-Bibliographical Sources-Lexicon of Musicians and Music Scholars of the Christian Era up to the Middle of the 19th Century , Vol. 10, 1901, p. 243 ( digitized version )
7. ↑ Church music in the Hassberge mountains at Kulturkurier
8. ↑ Volker Rößner: Paul Immler and the cantata for the Fischbacher Kirchweih 1761 in: CD booklet "Paul Immler (1716-1777): How lovely are your apartments. Cantata for the consecration of the Schlosskirche zu Fischbach 1761". Sources: Bamberg State Archives, Archives of the Barons v. Rotenhan; Regional Church Archives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, Nuremberg; Rainer Axmann, Pastor i. R., Coburg
9. ↑ Ekkehard Grieninger: Reconstruction and edition of the 250 year old manuscript in: CD booklet "Paul Immler (1716-1777): How lovely are your apartments. Cantata for the consecration of the Schlosskirche zu Fischbach 1761"
10. ↑ Stations. Magazine Bayerisches Fernsehen BR Wednesday, July 6, 2011 7:00 p.m. to 7.45 p.m.