December 6, 2020 Baroque Reflections NOTES ON THE PROGRAM BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA Sinfonia in G minor for Strings and Continuo, “Paris,” R. 157 (ca. 1720) Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Vivaldi obtained his first official post in September 1703 at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, one of four institutions in Venice devoted to the care of orphaned, abandoned and poor girls. As part of its training, the school devoted much effort to the musical education of its wards, and there was an elaborate organization of administrators, teachers and associates who oversaw the activi- ties of the students. Part of his duties as violin teacher required Vivaldi to com- pose at least two new concertos as well as other instrumental pieces each month for the regular public concerts given by the Ospedale. The featured performers in these works were occasionally members of the faculty, but usually they were the more advanced students — the difficulty of Vivaldi’s music is ample testimony to their skill. These programs offered some of the best music in Italy, and they attracted visitors from all over Europe. One French traveler, Charles de Brosses, described the conservatory concerts in a letter of August 1739: “The most marvelous music is that of the Ospedali. There are four of them, all composed of bastard girls, or orphans, or of girls whose parents cannot afford the expense of bringing them up. They are reared at the expense of the State and trained only to excel in music. And indeed they sing like angels and play the violin, the flute, the organ, the oboe, the violoncello, the bassoon, the lute; in short, there is no instrument big enough to scare them. They are cloistered like nuns. They are the only executants, and at each concert about forty of them per- form. I swear to you that there is nothing so pleasant as to see a young and pretty girl robed in white, with a garland of pomegranate flowers in her hair, conduct- ing the orchestra and beating time with all imaginable grace and precision.” These young ladies became the object of much attention in Venice, and the most gifted among them were even the regular recipients of proposals of marriage. The beauty and charm of Vivaldi’s music undoubtedly played no little part in the success of the graduates of the Ospedali. There have been souvenirs for as long as there has been travel, and among the most prized remembrances of a trip to Venice for the richest visitors in the early 18th century was some music to take home for their household ensemble back in France or Germany or England. Italian instrumental music, especially that of Antonio Vivaldi, was the most progressive and fashionable and widely distributed of the time (The Four Seasons was first published in Amsterdam in 1725), and a manuscript collection of twelve of his string sinfonias — pieces for strings and continuo without soloist — made its way to Paris sometime around 1730. Ten of these pieces exist in other sources, but two (R. 114 and R. 133) are unique, suggesting that the collection was largely copied from Vivaldi’s library and two new numbers added specially for the French patron. His most likely patron was the music-loving Count Jacques-Vincent Languet, who served as French ambassador to Venice from 1723 to 1731 and sponsored many concerts during his tenure there. Vivaldi’s forty “string sinfonias” share their three-movement form (fast– slow– fast), scoring, short duration (five minutes or so), and engaging style with the overtures for his operas, but were intended for concert rather than theatrical performance. The opening movement of the Sinfonia in G minor (Ryom 157), which was placed at the beginning of the “Paris” collection, is built in the ancient form of a passacaglia, with continuously unfolding lines, tightly imi- tative here, rooted by a short, repeated bass figure. The Largo, with its somber expression and dirge-like dotted rhythms, would be fit music for an operatic lament. The Sinfonia’s dramatic quality carries into the finale, which is in the stile concitato — “agitated style” — whose quick repeated notes and tempestu- ous rhythms were often used for battle or storm scenes in Baroque operas. Sonata duodecima for Violin, Cello and Harpsichord, Op. 16, No. 12 (published 1693) Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) Stewart A. Carter, Wake Forest University professor, Baroque music specialist, and editor of Isabella Leonarda’s Sonatas for modern publication, summarized her life in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: “She came from a prominent Novarese family. In 1636, she entered the Colle- gio di Sant’Orsola, an Ursuline convent, where she remained for the rest of her life.” That Leonarda was born in 1620 in a Piedmontese city thirty miles west of Milan and never left there does not, however, indicate the rich religious and creative life she led during her 68 years at the convent. That the Leonarda family placed a sixteen-year-old daughter in a convent for life was not then an uncommon circumstance in northern Italy. The Leon- ardas were among the local nobility and the custom at that time required that a daughter from such a family bring a substantial dowry into a marriage. If the number of daughters exceeded the family’s financial resources, the ones without a dowry were often committed to a life in a convent. Isabella, one of six chil- dren, was placed in the Collegio di Sant’Orsola, a teaching convent for Novara’s upper classes. The Leonardas were benefactors of the institution and their lar- gess continued after Isabella joined the order, enabling her to live a comfortable life and also undoubtedly helping in her steady promotions within the Collegio until she became its head in 1693. Music, both vocal and instrumental, was thoroughly integrated into church services in Italy throughout the Baroque period, and figured prominently in the lives of the nuns of the Collegio di Sant’Orsola. Many Italian churches at that time had one section for the public and another for the sisters, separated by a partial wall to block them from view but allowing the music they included in their devotions to waft above the partition and across the entire structure. Those sacred concerts drew worshipers and music lovers alike, and their offerings, and sometimes even an imposed admission fee, helped to support the institu- tion. It was for such occasions, as well as an expression of her deep faith in the Church and especially the Virgin Mary, that Isabella Leonarda composed some 200 works throughout her life, including a Mass with instrumental accompani- ment, many solo or ensemble sacred vocal pieces, and twelve sonate da chiesa (“church sonatas”), which were used as post- or preludes or to accompany such non-verbal sections of the Mass as the distribution of Communion. Though Leonarda had not shown exceptional talent as a singer or instru- mentalist early in life, she did have skill as a music teacher and composer, and probably studied with Gasparo Casati, maestro di cappella at the Novara Cathedral, who included two of her sacred pieces in a 1640 publication other- wise devoted to his own compositions; it was her first publication. Enough of her scores were published in Milan and Venice and distributed in manuscript copies that Leonarda gained a regional reputation as one of the finest and most prolific women composers of the 17th century. She came to be known as “the Novarese Muse par excellence.” Leonarda’s twelve Sonate da Chiesa, Op. 16, issued in Bologna in 1693 and dedicated to Cardinal Federico Caccia, who had been appointed Archbishop of Milan that year (such formalized homages solicited financial support for the convent, especially since Federico was born in Novara), are thought to be the first such works by a woman composer to be published. The final number in the set (“Sonata Twelve” — Sonata duodecima) is scored for one violin, cello and harpsichord, the others for two violins, cello and harpsichord. These works are skillfully crafted, idiomatically scored, melodically engaging, and harmonical- ly assured, and follow the structure of several continuous, contrasting sections characteristic of the still-gestating sonata form of the late 17th century. The Sonata duodecima, with its scoring for solo violin, also allows for a certain amount of improvised ornamentation to add some virtuoso flair to the piece. Chamber Sonata No. 1 in B-flat major for Two Violins, Cello and Harpsichord (ca. 1695) Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (1665- 1729) La petite merveille — The Little Wonder — she was called when, at age five, she amazed King Louis XIV and his sophisticated courtiers at Versailles with her harpsichord playing. Louis saw so much potential in the girl that he entrusted her musical and general education to Madame de Montespan, the influ- ential mistress whispered to be “the true Queen of France” by whom he fathered seven illegitimate children. That “little wonder,” Elisabeth Jacquet, was born in Paris in 1665 into a family of musicians and instrument makers and trained from infancy in the art by her father. With the oversight of Madame de Montespan, she received the finest education that France had to offer and was well prepared to make her way in the world as a musician when she left the court at age nine- teen to marry the organist Marin de La Guerre and settle in Paris. Elisabeth — now Elisabeth- Claude Jacquet de la Guerre — quickly established a reputation in the city as a teacher and performer, and became known as a composer when she issued her first collection of harpsichord pieces, in 1687.