Gottfried Finger's Christmas pastorellas

The Moravian composer and viola da gamba virtuoso Gottfried Finger (c.1655-1730) is known primarily to musicians for his contributions to musical life in London at the end of the 17th century and a few recorder pieces written for the amateur market. Evidence of his early music and career, however, has so far eluded scholars. While much important work has been done on the genre of the Christmas pastorella in the Czech lands by scholars such as Jiří Berkovec, Geoffrey Chew and Mark Germer, evidence from the 17th century for some common pastor-ella melodies has been scarce. By the first half of the 18th century the basic characteristics of the genre seem to have been in place: the evocation of shepherds' piping or horn calls, the cuckoo, and the quotation of common Christmas tunes, usually lullabies to the Christ-child. Detailed source studies show that Finger was at the court of Bishop Liechtenstein-Castelcorno at Olomouc and Kroměříž in Moravia, falling under the influence of local masters such as Vejvanovský, Biber and Schmelzer. Finger's early contributions to the pastorella genre (for viols and recorders) reveal previously unknown sources of Christmas melodies that would become more commonplace in the following centuries. Some of these melodies were probably intended to evoke the texts of earlier vocal models. The identification of certain melodies in his pastorellas reveals that this tendency was already present in instrumental works of the 1670s and 80s. The discovery and analysis of these pieces sheds new light on an often obscure genre and a little-known composer.