Gregor Joseph Werner Vol. III: Masses and Motets Grand Master of Sacred Music

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An impressive continuation of the documentation of Gregor Joseph Werner's oeuvre, showing Haydn's predecessor at the Esterházy court as a pioneer in musical development.

Gregor Joseph Werner was by no means a mere minor master preceding Haydn - this was already impressively shown by the previous recordings in this series. Now the newly acquired picture of him is put into even sharper focus: Werner's symphonies and instrumental concertos composed for the princely table have been lost, but the composer comes to the fore as a grand master of Latin sacred music. With his strength of character and contrapuntal perfection, he proves to be not only a prerequisite and teacher for Joseph Haydn, the father of Viennese classicism, but himself a gateway to this stylistic epoch. Werner appears to us today as the spiritual support of the rather mundane Viennese classicism.

The mass settings recorded here need not fear any comparison with Haydn's, Mozart's and Schubert's smaller and mid-scale masses. They consolidate the greatest contrasts imaginable between instrumental brilliance and vocal polyphonic richness. The composer was also the last great master of Palestrina's stile antico. The way he updated the imitation technique in the motet, which was already two hundred years old at the time, by increasing dissonance reveals a hidden power in the development of Western composition.