Boston Baroque Notes

Members of Boston Baroque An Afternoon of Chamber Music This afternoon’s program of Baroque chamber music, designed by members of Boston Baroque especially for this Williams College appearance to complement the course “Music in History: Antiquity to 1750,” unfolds a panorama of chamber music-making across Europe during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The newly-born genre of the “sonata”, which first emerged in early 17th-century Italy, forms the backbone of the program. In the Baroque period the term “sonata” (from sonare – “to sound”, as opposed to cantare – “to sing”, from which the term “cantata” derives) generally designated multi-movement works for one or two melody instruments (usually violins, though winds were possible) supported by a continuo group (usually consisting of harpsichord or organ to fill in the harmonies, as well as a low string or wind to reinforce the bass line and occasionally contribute to the counterpoint). The first four pieces on the program trace a century’s worth of attention to this genre through the lens of four national styles – Italian, Austrian, French, and English. After a brief detour into the world of Italian variations based on the repeating harmonic patterns bergamasca and ciacona, the program concludes with two more sonatas, one a solo sonata and the other a trio sonata, representing the heights of the genre in the German-speaking lands at the end of the Baroque era. ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Dario Castello, a composer and wind player active in Venice in the first half of the 17th-century, contributed substantially to the early formation of the genre with two collections of sonatas, totaling 29 works in all. This selection is a trio sonata (two equal melodic lines supported by the continuo group), displaying an array of sharply contrasting, emotionally intense short sections typical of the early sonata. Johann Heinrich Schmelzer was an Austrian composer and virtuoso violinist, a baker’s son, who began his career c.1635 as a rank-and-file violinist in the Imperial Court orchestra in Vienna, but gradually gained the Emperor’s favor, receiving gifts of money and golden chains (a sign of special favor). He was eventually ennobled, and finally promoted to the position of court Kapellmeister in 1679. His enjoyment of the post was short-lived; he died of the plague in Prague just a few months later. His Sonata “Cuckoo,” for solo violin and continuo, shows the same penchant for short contrasting sections seen in the earlier Italian sonata, but ratchets up the level of virtuosity considerably, here in the service of sonic depictions of the cuckoo’s song. Listen for the repetitive calls of “cu-cu”, to the motive of a descending minor third, that appear throughout the movement in various guises. François Couperin “le Grand” was the greatest member of this French musical dynasty, holding a place of eminence akin to Johann Sebastian Bach’s in that German family’s lineage. A composer, harpsichordist, and organist who spent most of his life in the service of King Louis XIV, Couperin likewise delighted in descriptive music. Rather than evoking the natural world as does Schmelzer, Couperin’s trio sonata “L’Apothéose de Lully” describes the god Apollo escorting the soul of Louis XIV’s favorite musician, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), to dwell with the gods on Mount Parnassus. There he meets the great Italian composer and violinist Antonio Corelli, and the two join their French and Italian musical styles to achieve perfection in music. In the original print of 1725, each section is preceded by a short descriptive text; these will be read prior to the performance of each segment. A superabundance of melodic ornaments, or agreements, decorate the musical surface, recalling the style of exuberant French rococo interior design. Henry Purcell’s milieu was the English royal court, where he served a succession of English royalty – Charles II, James II, and William and Mary – as court composer and organist. Most of his music involves voice, in particular sacred and occasional music for the Chapel Royal as well as songs and catches; almost all the instrumental music comes from early in his career, when he focused on composing music for the court violin band and Private Musick, instrumentalists serving in the private chambers of the monarch. His trio sonatas, heavily indebted to Italian models, show an interest in austere counterpoint, in which the low string engages in the contrapuntal conversation along with the two violins. Giovanni Battista Vitali and Giuseppe Columbi knew each other in Modena during the 1670s, where they were both vicemaestro di cappella at the court of Duke Francesco II d’Este. Vitali started his career in his native city of Bologna as a singer and virtuoso cellist before moving to Modena; Columbi was a native of Modena and a virtuoso violinist. Both Vitali’s Bergamasca per la lettera B and Columbi’s Ciacona represent the earliest solo repertoire for the Baroque cello, or violone; they both proceed as increasingly showy variations over a short repeating harmonic pattern. In the case of the Bergamasca, that pattern (I-IV-V-I) is believed to have originated as the accompaniment to a folk tune from the area of Bergamo in northern Italy (hence the name). The Ciacona pattern (usually I-V- vi-V) originated as a triple meter dance in Spain during the late Renaissance. Heinrich Biber came from Bohemia, and made his career in Salzburg, where he enjoyed Imperial patronage. He certainly knew and may have studied with Heinrich Schmelzer, whose descriptive “Cuckoo” Sonata was heard earlier in the program; like Schmelzer, Biber took advantage of the violin’s descriptive powers, turned here to portraying New Testament narrative. The “Crucifixion” Sonata is one of his fifteen “Mystery Sonatas,” each a musical depiction of one of the fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, tracing the life of Christ from the Annunciation and Nativity through to Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Mary’s coronation (in the unique manuscript preserving these extraordinary sonatas, each piece is identified by an engraving of the scene portrayed). Not only are these sonatas remarkable for the breathtaking technical demands they place on the player – Biber was the most renowned violinist of the 17th century – but also for the intensive use of scordatura, the use of alternative tuning of some or all of the open strings, which he used for symbolic purposes in the Mystery Sonatas. Over the course of this “Crucifixion” Sonata Biber evokes the hammering of the nails, Christ’s death, darkness falling, and the earthquake that rent the Temple veil. The program culminates with a trio sonata which, although it bears a number in Bach’s catalogue of works (BWV 1037), is almost certainly not by Bach but by Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, the young keyboard prodigy for whom the Russian ambassador to the Saxon court, Count Keyserlingk, reportedly requested Bach to compose what are known today as the Goldberg Variations. Goldberg probably studied with Bach, who encouraged him in the composition of church cantatas, of which two survive, along with an assortment of works for keyboard. The confusion over the authorship of this trio sonata dates from shortly after Goldberg’s death of consumption in 1756 at the age of 29. The publisher Breitkopf issued the work under Goldberg’s name in 1761, but three years later attributed it to Bach, whereupon it acquired the BWV number it retains to this day. In 1953 musicologist Alfred Dürr argued strongly in Goldberg’s favor, but Bach’s spirit nevertheless hovers in this fine sonata, which adopts the late Baroque sonata structure of four movements alternating slow and fast tempos, and exhibits great contrapuntal dexterity in the triple fugue found in the second movement. Notes by Jennifer Bloxam .

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