Georg Philipp Telemann Armonico Tributo Austria

Viola di Gamba Lorenz Duftschmid Georg Philipp Telemann Armonico Tributo Austria 09 English ⁄ Français ⁄ Deutsch ⁄ Italiano ⁄ Tracklist Menu To each instrument what is suitable for it by Brit Reipsch1 It was in his autobiography of 1718, enlivened with German verses, quotes, proverbs and Latin and French poems, that Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) first made known his maxim as a composer in these amusing and ironic verses of his own creation: Full knowledge of these instruments is equally essential. For otherwise, sentence will be unclearly pronounced: The violin is treated like an organ / The flute and oboe are felt like trumpets / The viola da gamba follows, trailing / As does the little bass / If only a trill were put over here and there. / No / no / it does not suffice / that we hear the notes / or that you know how to lay out all the paraphernalia of the rules. / Give each instrument / what is suitable for it. / Then he who plays will do so with joy / and you will take pleasure in listening to it.2 Putting this principle into practice contributed to making Telemann’s chamber and orches- 2 tral music some of the most frequently played in the first half of the 18th century. His cre- ations brought him the respect and esteem of contemporary musicians and theoriticians, and he was in touch with the most famous figures of the musical world, such as Georg Friedrich Händel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Heinrich Graun and Johann Mattheson. During his childhood and student years, spent in Magdeburg, his birthplace (from 1681 to 1694), Zellerfeld (1694-97) and Hildesheim (1697-1701), he had begun to learn how to play various musical instruments. He was less concerned with attaining the perfection of virtuoso playing than with mastering the basics of the greatest possible number of instruments. Armed with his knowledge concerning their specific sonorities and techniques, once he had become a composer, he was able to provide idiomatic writing wherein the easy, flowing musical discourse, adapted to each instrument, spoke as successfully to the virtuoso as to the amateur musician. Telemann knew how to compose in extremely varied ways adapted to performers and their particular instrument. 1 Telemann-Zentrum, Magdeburg. 2 1718 Autobiography, published in Mattheson’s Grosse GeneralBaß-Schule, Hamburg, 1731. English We will summarize the path which led Telemann to music, for it is rather unusual. His musical talent declared itself early: at the age of 12, he not only composed an opera, Sigismundus, but also sang the leading role. The young boy had received his first instruc- tion from the cantor of Magdeburg, Benedikt Christiani, who gave him personal support. It was thus that Telemann began studying composition based on Christiani’s works, the master helping him to the point of entrusting this talented student with rather particular homework: we will never know if he had truly authorized Telemann, as he asserts in his autobiography, to give lessons in his place. The opera Sigismundus, on a libretto by Christian Heinrich Postel, was doubtless more of a school exercise whose production was autho- rised by Christiani. At that time, Telemann had a few problems with an unknown organist from Magdeburg who ‘tortured’ him with tablatures to such an extent that the classes did not continue for long. The composer’s father, pastor of the Church of the Holy Spirit, had died in 1685, and his widowed mother had understandable worries for her son whom she hoped to see learn something ‘respectable’ and not become a ‘boatman, tightrope walker, fiddler, or marmot tamer’.3 Therefore, at the urgings of her family, she sent him, when he was 13, to the superintendant Caspar Calvör, in Zellerfeld, who was supposed to pre- pare him for studies, ‘as my grades tyrants perhaps believed that witches from behind the 3 Blockberg did not tolerate music’.4 But Calvör would rightly recognize Telemann’s gifts and encourage them with all his energy. The following stages of his life did not frustrate him in regards to music. In Hildesheim, at the Gymnasium Andreanum, Telemann set school plays and poems to music and also wrote cantatas for the Godehardikirche. Once again, for his mother’s sake, he tried to give up music and, in 1701, decided to enrol in the law school at the University of Leipzig. However, Telemann’s name not being on the lists of students enrolled at Leipzig, we may question the seriousness of his plans. In any event, barely had he discovered some instruments in another student’s room that ‘all my good intentions’, as he himself wrote gracefully in his autobiography, vanished. As of that mo- ment, Telemann would devote himself exclusively to music. He founded a student ‘Col- legium musicum’ and performed his works in churches, at the opera and in concert. His success was such that Kuhnau himself, the old cantor of the Thomaskirche, complained 3 1718 Autobiography. 4 Ibidem. about the competition from this ‘operist’ (a pejorative term aimed at the ‘opera singer’ in Telemann). And yet, Kuhnau was one of Telemann’s models. Appointed organist at the Neue Kirche, the young composer had a fixed position for the first time. During the following years, he worked as a court musician, first for Count Erdmann von Promnitz in Sorau (1705-08), where only French-style instrumental music was performed. He then entered the service of Duke Johann Wilhelm von Sachsen-Eisenach (1708-12) where Telemann had an excellent orchestra at his disposal for carrying out his various tasks which ranged from occasional music for court celebrations to church cantatas, and from chamber music to concertos. Beginning in 1712, he turned his back on court life for good to become a ‘town musician’ in Frankfurt am Main. The abundant musical life of this free imperial city opened up a thousand opportunities to the composer: church music, commissions for solemn occa- sions, not to mention orchestral and chamber music for the ‘Collegium musicum’ of the Gesellschaft Frauenstein as well as for the nearby court of Darmstadt.5 None of that would prevent Telemann from applying for the position of cantor of the Johanneum in Hamburg, in 1721; he took up his new post the same year. In addition to be- 4 ing cantor and musical director of Hamburg’s five main churches, he also became director of the Opera. Telemann would remain faithful to this other free imperial city until the end of his life, the only interruptions being short voyages and a stay in Paris in 1737-38. He wrote a great deal in all areas (amongst others, and particularly, for the opera) and had numer- ous instrumental works and even entire annual cycles of cantatas printed and published. It was only after 1740 that he seemed to distance himself somewhat from musical life. In any event, he put the engraving plates up for sale. Telemann composed sacred music especially, as he had always done, and, around 1755, with the Passion oratorio Der Tod Jesu, entered his final period, made up of impressive works including above all oratorios and secular cantatas on poems by Carl Wilhelm Ramler, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae. As would later be the case with Haydn, in his final works, he went well beyond the music of his time. Telemann died in 1767, at the ripe old age of 86. The viola da gamba was one of the instruments familiar to Telemann as of his earliest 5 [Translator’s note]: This society was made up of a group of wealthy merchants who supported the collegium which had been founded in the 17th century. English years. There is mention of this in his third and final autobiography, published in 1740 by the Hamburg theorist Johannes Mattheson, in his Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte (‘Founda- tion of a Triumphal Arch’), an interesting collection of biographies of contemporary musicians and composers. Looking back on his student days at the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim, Telemann relates how he often made excursions to Braunschweig-Wolfen- büttel and Hannover to attend concerts and opera performances. There he became more familiar with and learnt how to distinguish the French, Italian and ‘theatrical’ styles. Im- pressed by the quality of performances, he also experienced ‘the desire’, when listening to the musicians, to further practise the instruments that he had already studied: ‘the harp- sichord, violin and flute’. Telemann wrote, with a wink, that he would have gladly followed this desire ‘if a more ardent fire had not pushed me […] to familiarize myself more fully with the oboe, transverse flute, chalumeau, viola da gamba, etc., with the exception of the double bass and bass trombone’.6 Throughout his life, from his very beginnings right up to the end, Telemann wrote for the basse de viole (as the French called it) and especially in chamber music. Of course, the viola da gamba also plays an important role in works intended for larger formations, such as concertos and orchestral suites, church cantatas and, lastly, oratorios. According to the 5 custom of the time, Telemann also used the viol in funeral cantatas. Furthermore, he wrote for it as a solo instrument: for example, the Sonata in D major, TWV 40:1, recorded here, or sonatas for two viols or for viol and basso continuo. Unfortunately, none of the twelve solo Fantasies published in Hamburg in 1735-36 have survived. One notices that Telemann curiously continued to include the viola da gamba in his orchestral scores, even when the instrument’s golden age was on the wane. This is the case, for instance, in certain works from his fruitful final period (as of 1755): the instru- mentation of the ‘Midday’ arias of the cantata Die Tageszeiten (‘The Times of the Day’), calls for a viol, and, in the oratorio Der Tag des Gerichts (‘Judgment Day’), the song of one of the ‘Blest’ is accompanied by a viol soloist.

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