Splendour, Drama, Invention

A musical ride through Venice from the end of the Renaissance to the cusp of classicism is what awaits Arion’s audience today, drifting from one inventive artist to another and echoing the magnificent works hanging nearby on the walls of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Throughout these eras, three institutions fostered musical creation in Venice: the church, the theatre, and the orphanages known as ospedale.

Giovanni Gabrieli (ca 1555-1612), nephew of the great Andrea, was organist at St. Mark’s basilica. His remarkable collection titled Sacrae Symphoniae, published in 1597, included 16 purely instrumental canzonas and sonatas. The canzoni per sonar (literally, songs to be played) are nearly identical in form to the sonatas, except that the former are primarily derived from the Franco-Flemish chanson of the Renaissance while the latter, often in longer note values, are closer to the ricercar style, with more elaborate counterpoint.

In his Canzon duodecimi toni in 8 parts divided into two “choirs,” Gabrieli opens with a melody based on the typical canzona rhythm (long-short-short) in close imitation. The piece is identified like the others of the set by one of the twelve “tones,” or old ecclesiastical modes, as opposed to the emerging tonal system. The twelfth one he uses here, equivalent to the modern key of C major, was considered to express victory and triumph. Despite these archaic references, the work is very lively, with splendid sonorities and a very bold spirit that hints to the imminent turn of the century. This spirit is even more evident in the Sonata XXI for three violins and basso continuo. This piece is in fact one of the very first

Arion Baroque Orchestra box-office : 514.355.1825 / arionbaroque.com instrumental works to use a figured bass, with an emphasis on the three “concerting” upper parts in close proximity to one another.

Very little is known of Dario Castello (ca 1590-ca 1630 or ca 1658), except for the thirty works of his that have come down to us. The title pages of his sonata volumes indicate that he directed a group of piffari (brass, winds, and viols) in Venice and that he was a musician at St. Mark’s.

Castello’s sonatas vary in choice and number of instruments. One finds in them both the influence of the canzona associated with Giovanni Gabrieli—with its multiple sections of contrasting tempo and meter—and of the virtuoso improvisers on the cornetto like Girolamo Dalla Casa and Giovanni Bassano— with its quick scale-like passages and rapidly repeated notes associated with the stile concitato. The Sonata decimasesta perfectly illustrates these elements of contrast and variety, which correspond in painting to the chiaroscuro and freely flowing forms of a Tintoretto, for example. Castello’s sonatas met with widespread success in Europe during the first half of the 17th century, with many reprints up until 1658.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was certainly an indefatigable inventor in almost every musical genre of his time, but especially in that of the concerto. As maestro di violino at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, he could count on a fine pool of young female virtuosi. This apparently spurred his imagination in many opuses of concertos, notably L’Estro Armonico, Opus 3 and Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione, Opus 8. These sets of twelve concertos each are among the most famous by the Red Priest. Indeed, it was his first set of concertos, L’Estro Armonico (or “The Harmonic Whim”), that first most contributed to his European fame, and it contains some of his most accomplished works till then. The beguiling Concerto for four violins in B minor is also quite well-known in its transcription for four harpsichords by J.S. Bach.

As for the content of Vivaldi’s Opus 8 (it’s title meaning “The Contest between Harmony and Invention”), it is rare to hear from it any concerto other than those of the Four Seasons. And yet, the Concerto in G minor is a colourful mix of languor and virtuosity, quite the image of The City of Masks.

Born in Burano near Venice—hence his nickname “Il Buranello”—Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785) left his mark mostly in the development of the opera buffa. He worked like Vivaldi in the hospices and as opera composer in Venice, and also at the Haymarket Theatre in London, as maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s, and directed operas in Saint Petersburg under the patronage of Catherine the Great. He wrote relatively little purely instrumental music, mostly limited to keyboard

Arion Baroque Orchestra box-office : 514.355.1825 / arionbaroque.com sonatas and works for small orchestra. The Concerto a quattro aptly illustrates his appealing, handsomely crafted style lying on the brink of classicism.

At concert’s end, from Gabrieli to Galuppi, nearly two centuries of Venetian musical splendour, drama, and invention will have flowed by.

Arion Baroque Orchestra box-office : 514.355.1825 / arionbaroque.com