symphonies
piano concertos
requiems
revolutionary music

Mersich & Kiess Musikverlag are now on their own homepage and offering our parts as hire material

Ignaz Joseph Pleyel did not always compose music
for the entertainment of others.
In his late chamber music he entertained himself
by rich contrapuntal writing.

One of the noblest and most sublime sacred compositions of all times
available in the first authentic score edition:
On July 11, 1791, François-Marie Arouet Voltaire's ashes
were transferred in a solemn funeral procession to the Panthéon.
The music appropriate to the memory of this unshakable
free spirit and fighter for religious tolerance was commissioned
to the musical and poetic torchbearers of the French Revolution:

He was consumed by tuberculosis at the age of 24
and left behind only his music as his legacy.
He was France's greatest musical genius and hope,
committed to the ideas and ideals of the Revolution, and to
excellence in form, progress in harmony, and intensity in expression:

His musical career could not have been more normal and typical,
but then the sunrise of a new era
set both his genius and his energy afire
for the nation that welcomed him as its citoyen.
It was his first and last official and ecclesiastical duty
for his deceased predecessor at the Strasbourg cathedral
composed in the key of hope and consolation :

2000 was (Johann Sebastian) Bach's year, celebrated
by scholars and music lovers around the world.
But the tree of the Bach family bore another four musical members, J. S. Bach's sons,
building the base of and the bridge to a new classical style and era.
The "forte e piano" series of music for the fortepiano
proudly presents three clavier concertos by a son of J. S. Bach
in first editions:

Photo taken at the occasion of the Pleyel society's (www.pleyel.at)
100th concert, November 11, 2007, with a manual analog camera:
everything is under control.

...and a plea of tolerance towards those who, for their capabilities, talents, aims, and visions, might not have themselves squeezed into the stays and stereotypes of indolence and dullness -dubbed "normality":

Menschliche Freiheit ist ein hohes Gut, wohl das höchste im Leben. Wir wissen, wie selten sie sich ganz verwirklicht, wie sehr sie von Kritikschwäche und von einer ,,dem Gesetz des Geistes widerstreitenden“ Triebhaftigkeit eingeschränkt wird. Hochbegabte Menschen sind am ehesten zur Freiheit fähig, aber es mögen bei ihnen die dabei auszutragenden Kämpfe am schwersten sein. (Human freedom is a great good, likely the greatest. We know, how seldom it translates entirely into reality, how much it is limited by impotence of critique and animal insticts "clashing the mind’s rule". Highly gifted humans are most likely fit for freedom, but with them the struggles to be fought by that may be the hardest.) (aus/from: Univ. Prof. Dr. med. Hans Asperger (1906 - 1980): Schwierigkeiten Hochbegabter/Difficulties of the highly gifted, undatiert/not dated)

"The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
 (L’arbre de la liberté ne croit qu’arrosé par le sang des tyrans.)"

(Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, member of the French National Convention, 1793)

Last update: April 6, 2010
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