Gerhard Poppe: Das Te Deum laudamus in der Dresdner Hofkirchenmusik – liturgische und zeremonielle Voraussetzungen, Repertoire und musikalische Faktur

Te Deum laudamus settings—used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries both for various liturgical and political occasions—are difficult to classify due to a lack of available particulars regarding respective performance modes. Special conditions in Dresden at the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, allow for a direct comparison of Catholic and Protestant liturgical customs and for an exploration of their relationship to court ritual. It has already been proven that this hymn was combined with gun salutes for official occasions since the seventeenth century. This together with the Bohemian practice of interrupting the figural music in the verse “Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine, et benedic hereditati tuae” for the sacramental blessing are the salient characteristics of most compositions or reworked settings for local use in Dresden. Only one of these compositions—Johann Adolf Hasse’s Te Deum (1751)—spread throughout the region and beyond and is performed up to today on New Year’s Eve in the Dresden Hofkirche.

• zurück zur Stammseite

• zurück zum Gesamtinhaltsverzeichnis