Bollius: St John's Oratorio

Musical encyclopaedias only offer scant and unreliable information on Daniel Bollius: he was born around 1590 as the son of a court musician in Hechingen in Hohenzollern and died around the year 1642, probably in Mainz. He entered the services of the Archbishop of Mainz certainly by the year 1626, but most likely several years earlier as he had resigned from his post as court organist in Sigmaringen in 1618 and there is no evidence of additional intermediate posts. The Repræsentatio of St. John must therefore have been composed between 1618 and 1626, the year in which Johann Schweikhard, the dedicatee of the work, died. Daniel Bollius is one of the early German exponents of the new Italian style characterized by Monteverdi. His Repræsentatio on the conception and birth of St John the Baptist has close ties with the Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo by Emilio de Cavalieri. It is tonally and technically speaking a highly diverse composition of intense expressiveness and oriented towards the new Italian operatic style making it a unique work in Germany to have originated in the early 17th century. Bollius Repræsentatio is considered the first ever oratorio to be written by a German composer.