Juilliard415 and Celebratedand Community
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Juilliard415 Behind every Juilliard artist is all of Juilliard —including you. With hundreds of dance, drama, and music performances, Juilliard is a wonderful place. When you join one of our membership programs, you become a part of this singular and celebrated community. by Claudio Papapietro Photo of cellist Khari Joyner Photo by Claudio Papapietro Become a member for as little as $250 Join with a gift starting at $1,250 and and receive exclusive benefits, including enjoy VIP privileges, including • Advance access to tickets through • All Association benefits Member Presales • Concierge ticket service by telephone • 50% discount on ticket purchases and email • Invitations to special • Invitations to behind-the-scenes events members-only gatherings • Access to master classes, performance previews, and rehearsal observations (212) 799-5000, ext. 303 [email protected] juilliard.edu The Juilliard School presents An Evening of Baroque Chamber Music Programmed and prepared by Richard Egarr with members of Juilliard415 Thursday, November 9, 2017, 7:30pm Paul Hall FRANÇOIS Troisème concert in A Major, from Concerts royaux COUPERIN Prélude (1668–1733) Allemande Courante Sarabande grave Gavotte Muzette Chaconne legere MARC-ANTOINE Sonate à huit (H.548) CHARPENTIER Grave (1643–1704) Récit de la viole seule Sarabande Récit de la basse de viole Bourrée Gavotte Gigue Passecaille Chaconne Program continues on next page Juilliard's full-scholarship Historical Performance program was established and endowed in 2009 by the generous support of Bruce and Suzie Kovner. Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. 1 Cover: Baroque violist Stephen Gost and harpsichordist Caitlyn Koester, photo by Rosalie O'Connor MARIN Suite No. 5 in E Minor, from Pièces en trio MARAIS Prelude (1686–1725) Rondeau Sarabande en rondeau Menuet [i] Caprice Passacaille JEAN-FÉRY Les caractères de la danse REBEL Prélude—Courante—Menuet—Bourée—Chaconne— (1666–1747) Sarabande—Gigue—Rigaudon—Passepied—Gavotte— Sonate—Gavotte—Sonate—Loure—Musette— Reprise—Sonate Performed without intermission Major funding for establishing Paul Recital Hall and for continuing access to its series of public programs has been granted by The Bay Foundation and the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation in memory of Josephine Bay Paul. 2 Notes on the Program by James M. Keller Le Grand Siècle, the great century that marked the high tide of the Bourbon monarchs of France, reached its apex during the reign of Louis XIV. He acceded to the throne in 1643, at the age of 4; assumed personal control in 1661, following a period of regency; and remained king until his death, in 1715—a reign of 72 years. French society was tightly organized during those years, the more so when it came to aspects of government or culture that fell within the direct orbit of the king himself. The names of Racine and Molière in theater, La Fontaine and Mesdames de Lafayette and de Sévigné in literature, Mansart in architecture, Le Nôtre in landscape design, and Poussin in painting speak to the level of artistic achievement during this period of French Classicism, as it is often called. Louis XIV took keen It was certainly a golden age for French music. Louis XIV took keen personal personal interest in court music and dance, even performing sometimes in ballet interest productions. As did the other arts, French music operated under a minutely in court regulated bureaucracy. About 120 staff musicians were kept busy with music and music-making that the king himself would hear, and the operations of these dance, even musiciens du roi were organized into clearly defined domains, most broadly performing through the divisions of the Musique de la Chambre (indoor chamber and sometimes orchestral music), Musique de l’Écurie (outdoor performance, including in ballet military music), and Musique de la Chapelle Royale (sacred music), plus productions. a separate, lofty niche for the Académie Royale de la Musique (opera and ballet). In this concert, Juilliard415 presents music from the first of those spheres through intimate chamber works by François Couperin, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and Marin Marais, and it concludes with a piece by Jean-Féry Rebel that was presented as a ballet under the auspices of the Académie Royale de la Musique (four months before Louis XIV’s death) but can also stand as an unstaged piece of concert music. French music of the 17th and early-18th centuries reveled in formality of style. We hear a consistent vocabulary throughout these pieces, which tend toward concentrated, carefully balanced phrases only occasionally enhanced by contre-parties—contrapuntal lines that, in the grand scheme of things, are rarely very complicated. Melodies unroll within a limited compass of pitch and are enlivened by a wealth of exacting ornamentation. Rhythms usually trace the contours of dances that would have been familiar to anyone who held their own in courtly circles. The focus on carefully defined stylistic norms proved problematic for French music in the long run, but during the Grand Siècle the best composers found plenty of room in which to exercise their originality. Many of them also grappled with international musical advances, particularly with the Italian sonatas of Corelli, which they might acknowledge by emulation, through parody, or by subsuming some of their characteristics into an overriding French idiom. François Couperin (born in Paris on November 10, 1668—as this perfor- mance begins, his 349th birthday is already underway in France; died there September 11, 1733) was the most illustrious member of a musical 3 Notes on the Program (Continued) dynasty that flourished from the 17th century through the 19th. Most were church musicians, and for 173 years one Couperin after another served as organist at the Church of St. Gervais in Paris. Some of them served also as musiciens du roi, including François, who earned the sobriquet “Le grand.” He married into relative wealth, and in 1690 he obtained a royal patent to print and sell music. This enabled him to publish his two organ masses, the first items in a good-sized catalogue that would eventually include numerous motets (and some secular songs and ensembles), a large body of harpsichord music, and many pieces of chamber music. Couperin jumped on the Corellian bandwagon in several of his chamber pieces—usually by The Couperin subsuming Italianate processes into the recognizable French style—but in dynasty his Concerts royaux he displays more national purity. flourished from the These are works from the very end of Louis XIV’s reign. Although the first 17th century four of the Concerts royaux were published in 1722, Couperin wrote them through the in 1714 or 1715, at a time when melancholy increasingly infused the court 19th. Most of the aged, infirm monarch. In his preface, he states that he “composed were church them for the small chamber concerts to which Louis XIV bade me come to musicians, play almost every Sunday of the year.” The score is written on two staves, and for 173 like harpsichord music (though including a figured bass), but the composer years one advises that “they are suitable not only for the harpsichord, but also the Couperin violin, flute, oboe, viol, and bassoon. He names four musicians—a violinist, after another oboist, bassoonist, and viola da gambist—who joined him (as harpsichordist) served as playing them at court. It is left to performers to “orchestrate” them as they organist at the wish, using various combinations of these instruments to navigate in this, Church of the third of the Concerts royaux. It consists of a Prélude (to set the mood St. Gervais and key) followed by a standard succession of dances—the Sarabande is in Paris. here particularly affecting and harmonically pungent—concluding in a “light chaconne” of the chaconne en rondeau type, where the opening passage returns repeatedly to separate contrasting episodes. Like Couperin, Marc-Antoine Charpentier (born in 1643 in or near Paris, where he died on February 24, 1704) emerged from the musical bosom of the church. His career focused on sacred music and intersected hardly at all with the royal court. He engaged directly with avant-garde Italian music, spending three years in Rome studying with Giacomo Carissimi and later writing numerous pieces reflecting his master’s oratorio style. After returning to France, he served as resident composer and high tenor (haut contre) for Mademoiselle de Guise and then held positions at the Jesuit Church of Saint-Louis and then the Sainte-Chapelle, both in Paris. He hoped to gain a royal appointment during a re-organization of Louis XIV’s music staff in 1683, but he withdrew from the auditions due to ill health. The Sonate à huit, a scarce example of his secular instrumental music, was probably produced around 1685 for Mademoiselle de Guise’s circle. (Although undated, the manuscript parts bear physical similarity to other Charpentier works of that time.) It employs a rich grouping of two transverse flutes, two violins, bass viol, five-stringed basse de violon, harpsichord, and theorbo, and it is specific 4 about which instrument plays which line, in contrast to Couperin’s later “unorchestrated” score. Here we find both familiar French dances and movements that reflect Italianate virtuosity, the two récits (one featuring viola da gamba, the other spotlighting basse de violon) being conspicuously in the Italianate mode. The most famous of the French viola da gamba virtuosos was Marin Marais (baptized May 31, 1656, in Paris; died there August 15, 1728). A famous tale has him studying with Jean de Sainte-Colombe, a leading viol player who grew so jealous of his pupil’s facility that he dismissed him—after which Marais continued to eavesdrop on Sainte-Colombe, who would practice The most in a tree house.