Selle: Historia der Auferstehung

Selle's History of the Resurrection Thomas Selle, a native of Saxony, willed to the city of Hamburg his Opera omnia, a collection containing his complete musical papers and manuscript copies of most of his sacred works, with most of these also being housed in the Hamburg State and University Library. Selle was educated in Leipzig prior to serving as music director of Hamburg's four principal churches and in other posts beginning in 1641; in this capacity he wrote a significant number of musical histories and settings of the passion narrative in the Gospel of John for the feasts of the church year. The sacred concertos and motets for Easter recorded here together with the History of the Resurrection render apparent the fact that for Selle tone color had an importance ranking with that of melodic, harmonic, and contrapuntal design. In his resurrection narrative Selle aims at an affect-emphasized interpretation of the text reflecting his interest in a modern, dramatic mode of design.