Stylus Phantasticus

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The Stylus Phantasticus (also Stylus Fantasticus or Fantastic Style ) is an Italian style in Baroque music, the beginnings of which go back to Claudio Merulo and which reached its peak in the north German organ school of the late 17th century.

Works held in the Stylus Phantasticus are characterized by a dramatic game derived from improvisational practice , in which short, different and sometimes dissonant , bizarre figures, extremely chromatic sections, and frenzied runs are linked together in an original way. This is done through the use of ostinato structures over which the solo instruments, similar to today's practice of improvisation of jazz , complex counterpoints develop.

Other pioneers of this style besides Merulo were Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643), Giovanni Pandolfi (c. 1620–1669) and Johann Jakob Froberger (1616–1667). In various sonatas by Heinrich Ignaz Biber , Dietrich Buxtehude , Nicolaus Bruhns and Francesco Maria Veracini , the Stylus Phantasticus reached climaxes. An impressive example is Johann Sebastian Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue . But Bach's sons also continued this style.

In contrast to the Stylus Phantasticus, there is the Stile antico . This strict contrapuntal style refers back to liturgical works from the Renaissance, with the Masses of Palestrina often serving as a model, such as in the writing Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux (1725).

Contemporary descriptions of the style

For the first time, the polymath Athanasius Kircher described the Stylus Phantasticus 1650 on page 585 in the 5th chapter of the 7th book of his "Musurgia Universalis", about 50 years after its first appearance, as one:

" Free type of instrumental music that does not impose any strict rules on the composer's imagination / that is not tied to words or a cantus firmus / gives the composer wide development opportunities and the opportunity to push the limits of his art / in free forms such as fantasies, toccatas, Ricercare and Sonatas "

Regarding the stylus phantasticus, Johann Mattheson said in

“ The Stylus Phantasticus is the most free and unbounded way of setting, singing and playing that can only be imagined, as one soon comes across these ideas, as all kinds of otherwise unusual passages, hidden ornaments, ingenious twists and trimmings are produced without actually observing the beat and tone; now hastily, now hesitating; now one, now polyphonic; soon also for a short time after the bar: without sound dimensions; but not without intent to please, to rush and to astonish. "

Johann Joachim Quantz , who belongs to the younger generation, wrote critically:

" In this style you find more cheek and confused thoughts than modesty, reason and order "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gilles Cantagrel (ed.): Guide de la musique d'orgue. Éditions Fayard, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-213-02772-2 .
  2. ^ Karl Kaiser (ed.): Basic knowledge of baroque music. Volume 1: On the instrumental music of the high and late baroque. Verlag ConBrio, 2010, ISBN 978-3-940768-12-4 .
  3. ↑ Athanasius Kircher: Book 7 of the Musurgis Universalis (PDF)
  4. ↑ Johann Mattheson, The Perfect Capell Master, Chapter 10, §93 (Public Domain in the Petrucci Music Library)