Musicatlas
Music
[As per the notes on the sleeve of a Turnabout LP label with number TV 34216S.]
The Sonata by Alfons Albertin, Per la Festa di Pasqua, composed in 1781, represents probably the all-time summit of polychoral organ music. Albertin, a Benedictine like Marian Muller, lived and worked in the Abbey of Petershausen near Constance on the lake — abolished during the secularization. The extremely complicated structure of this sonata, concentrated at a point to a canon of all four organs and all instrumnets, can really be performed only on instruments which are spatially divided. The instrumentation of this sonata combines the organs with the wind instruments in the following way:
- Organ 1 - 2 trumpets drums
- Organ 2 - 2 horns
- Organ 3 - 2 trumpets
- Organ 4 - 2 horns
The rich gamut of the dynamic and colour shadings is the result of the gorgeous ensemble and the colourful alteration of the groups. It is a well-nigh monstrous gradation of the polychoral playing on the organs, astonishing at this late date, when simila forms were long abandoned in other musical species.