Wow.
I spent today leafing through sheets of 270-year-old paper. In other words I spent the day at the ULB Darmstadt going through selected cantatas from their Graupner archive so just a quick post for anyone who may be interested.
Since there's not much point looking through 1418 church cantatas at random I'm basically looking at the ones with chalumeau(s) in them (of which there are a bit over 80). Mainly for the purpose of trying to get a handle on his chalumeau writing in those pieces, which is quite different from how he writes for them in the concertos and overtures we know and love (well, not all of us obviously
) - in particular there are quite a few which use a chalumeau written in treble clef whose range isn't easy to explain in terms of the known sizes of instrument. Managed to get through about 25 today jotting down the scoring of the various movements and the ranges of any chalumeau parts as well as anything in the treble clef parts which would seem to mark out a part as unsuitable for one of the possible instruments - trills which would be between registers for the alto, for example. That cantata with the timpani part I posted before has plenty of other amusing things in it, such as a rather fine bassoon obbligato also in that movement.
Tell you what though - Deutsche Kurrentschrift is going to make my life a complete misery for a bit.
I have also now obtained for a nominal fee 2 CD-ROMs with pdf copies of the manuscripts for all the Graupner non-vocal chalumeau pieces and for all the Telemann chalumeau pieces held at the ULB (which include the reasonably well known double concerto). For that a big SHOUT-OUT to tha ULB CREW in particular DR SYLVIA UHLEMANN whose work should stand as exemplary to custodial LIBRARIANS the world over. Props.
