Poor Christian Geist; his name, in German, means ghost and the colloquial phrase "den Geist aufgeben" means to give up the ghost; something Geist was repeatedly having to do in a professional sense before he did so in a corporeal sense. Born in the very North German town of Güstrow about 1650, Geist opted to follow in his father's footsteps, as the elder Geist was Kantor at the local Cathedral. A good bass singer and student of organist Albert Schop -- son of violinist Johann Schop -- Geist traveled to Copenhagen in 1669 in hopes of finding work, but came up empty. In 1670, he was hired by Gustav Düben the elder in Stockholm, but was already out of the job by 1674 owing to some disagreement with Düben. After authorities in Hamburg turned him down, Geist ended up in Gothenburg for a decade, playing an organ that was barely built, and petitioning -- frequently without success -- for payment for services rendered. Finally, in 1684 Geist made it back to Copenhagen, playing organ in three churches, though he dropped one of these positions in 1686. Geist married the widow of his predecessor, gave concerts, and enjoyed a fairly stable existence in Copenhagen until a late outbreak of bubonic plague in 1711 claimed him, his wife, and entire family.
All but a handful of Christian Geist's extant 60 or so sacred vocal works have come down to us through Gustav Düben the elder's library and thus date only from 1670-1674. This Hungaroton disc, Christian Geist: Kirchenkonzerte, appears to be the very first disc of any kind devoted entirely to the work of Geist and contains several first recordings; such recording as has attended to Geist heretofore hews closely to the three organ works attributed to him, none of which are considered authentic. These pieces, consistently referred to as "mottetti" in the composer's manuscripts, are actually sacred concertos following the example of Franz Tunder, indicating that these sacred pieces were intended for public gatherings and not for services. Geist's sacred music is comparable to that of Dietrich Buxtehude, but on the whole better than that; these concerti are highly chromatic, bold, and original in style, reminiscent of Biber at times, but realized with far more modest resources. Geist's setting of Vater unser, der du bist in Himmel -- a later work written in Gothenburg -- is basically a chorale fantasia for the strings with a soprano following the melody line only. Dixit Dominus Domino meo is an extremely lively setting similar to some of Georg Muffat's work; Psallite dicite timent Dominum has an extraordinary passage for male voices in its middle section that almost sounds like Monteverdi. Geist was a bass singer himself, and there is a good amount of showy, yet well written, parts for the bass voice that Krisztián Cser dispatches with aplomb on this recording. The sheer directness of the melodic line in Es war aber an der Stätte -- sung effectively by countertenor Péter Bárány -- with its simple, mournful accompaniment, is deeply affecting.
The recording made under the direction of
György Vashegyi and features the Chamber Ensemble of the Orfeo Orchestra and some of the finest talent among Hungary's early music singers. At times soprano
Maria Zádori sounds a little over the top, but the music is literally so, written with an almost impossibly high tessitura, suggesting that Geist must have had access to a good soprano in Stockholm. Overall these are solid but cautious and restrained performances, and one wonders what, say,
Konrad Junghänel, could do with this music. Nevertheless, Christian Geist is a real find; how mainstream Baroque period performance specialists could have missed him is an utter mystery. Don't pass this one up in the bin because the name Geist seems ghostly and unfamiliar; Hungaroton's Christian Geist: Kirchenkonzerte is a real gem.