Musical Rhetoric and Meanings in the Maundy Thursday Cantatas by G. H. Stölzel (1690–1749)

Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, according to the Baroque convention, used the musical rhetoric and theory of affects for musical interpretation of the text, which, in the case of religious creation, realized an especially important practical function. The aim of the article is to discover the meanings proper to the Lutheran theology encoded by the composer in his two Passion cantatas for Maundy Thursday. The theme of the cantatas refers to the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and the arrest of Jesus. The conducted analyses especially include the use of musical-rhetorical figures focused on demonstrating the bitter aspects of the Passion of the Lord, the semantics of the key based on the catalogue by Johann Mattheson, supporting the expressive layer and determining the stages of the inner change due to the reflection, and the numerical symbolism revealing the mixture of profane and sacred content. Meanwhile, the establishment of the composition in the religious tradition of Gotha is ensured by the intertextual references to the chorale melodies known to the participants of the service, which are simultaneously a link between the orthodox Lutheranism represented in Stölzel’s cantata poetry and the kind of individual piety resulting from the influence of Pietism on the musical culture of the centre.