Frankfurter Telemann-Ausgaben / Frankfurter Telemann Editions

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) tells us in his autobiography that while director of music in Frankfurt am Main and Kapellmeister in the Barfüsser- and Katharinenkirchen (1712-1721), he composed five new yearly-cycles of cantatas and completed several cycles begun earlier in Eisenach. After moving to Hamburg in 1721 he continued to supply Frankfurt with cantatas — “one complete cycle every three years” — as part of  an arrangement to maintain his citizenship in that city. In the course of the years between 1712 and Telemann’s death in 1767 copyists in Frankfurt produced a sizable collection of performance materials for these cantatas which was apparently still in use well into the second half of the century. This collection was held during the 18th and early 19th centuries in the archives of the Allgemeinen Almosenkasten (almoner authority) next to the Barfüsserkirche in Frankfurt. In 1887 it was transferred to the city archives and then, in 1897, to the former Stadtbibliothek, today the Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg.
This collection of more than 800 cantatas is for both musicologists and music lovers one of the most revealing windows into the world of Telemann’s church music. Relatively well protected from the ravages of time by Frankfurt’s well organized bibliographic bureaucracy, it represents one of the few repertories of an important musical center remaining largely intact to the present day – comparable in this respect to the Lasso manuscripts in Munich or to the choirbooks of the Cappella Sistina in Rom –, and as such offers an array of fascinating insights into the musico-liturgical practice of the time. In addition, the investigation of this large collection, containing a number of cantatas preserved only here, promises to shed light on a question which has long fascinated Telemann research: the question of whether the various yearly cycles, each containing up to 72 cantatas, were, in fact, conceived by the composer as large coherent compositions in themselves, in other words as “Gesamtkunstwerke”, or whether they could at least be seen as such today.
From its inception in 1992 the Frankfurter Telemann-Gesellschaft has promoted scholarly research on this repertory, both in the form of contributions to the musicological literature on Telemann’s cantatas (dissertations) and in the form of new editions of the music itself for practical use (Frankfurter Telemann-Ausgaben). Of particular interest are the early cantata cycles which were written, or completed, in Frankfurt: the”Eisenach Cycle” (first performed in the liturgical year 1710/1711 and repeated in 1717/1718), the “French Cycle” (1714/1715), the “Concerto Cycle” (1716/1717, repeated 1718/1719), and the “Simonis Cycle” (1720/1721). The last mentioned has, beginning in 2012, become the object of a concerted effort, now almost completed, to publish the entire cycle, primarily because of it’s unusually beautiful choruses, but also because it was the last cycle completed by the composer before his move to Hamburg in 1721 and thus can be seen to represent his most developed work for Frankfurt (see details on the website www.habsburgerverlag.de/startseite/fta-nach-kj/ )
Each number of the Frankfurter Telemann-Ausgaben consists of a score with a short introduction to the genesis, text, and sources of the cantata in German and English. Complete sets of orchestra parts (@ €5/part) and inexpensive scores containing only the choral movements of a cantata are also available for most cantatas (please inquire as to availability).
The following cantatas have appeared to date (as of April, 2023)