6 Sonatinas In C

Johann Christoph Pezel (1639-1694) was trained as a Stadtpfeifer, was appointed Kunstgeiger in Leipzig in 1664, and reached the Stadtpfeifer group in 1669. In 1676 he applied unsuccessfully for the position of cantor of St. Thomas, not receiving the post perhaps because he was both a city piper and a Catholic. At any rate, he was highly esteemed as a musician, becoming a city piper in Bautzen in 1681, where he took an important part in local musical life until his death. In the sonatas for two cornetts and three trombones, Hora Decima (1670) and Fünff-stimmigte blasende Music (1685), Pezel reached the highest level of so-called tower music, the compositions being arranged as suites and distributed all over Germany and even beyonf its borders. In 1674, he published his Bicinia Variorum Instrumentorum, of which the present six sonatinas for two trumpets form a part. Trumpeters who have previously regarded Gottfried Reiche as the greatest Baroque trumpet player, since he played the difficult works of Bach, will be surprised to learn that the same high level of trumpet technique had already been reached in Leipzig a full fifty years before Bach ever set foot in the city. Furthermore, since Pezel was known as a trumpet player, there is every reason to believe that the composer himself first performed one of the trumpet parts of the six sonatinas published here. Thus when Bach came to Leipzig in 1723, he found a fully developed school of trumpet playing with a well established tradition, as witnessed by these very works.