October 8 & 9, 2023

baroque perspectives

G. F. Handel
Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No.10

Henry Purcell
“Here the Deities Approve”

François Couperin
Sonade from La Piémontoise

Domenico Scarlatti
Keyboard Sonatas K 201 in G major and K 517 in D minor

Benedetto Marcello
Concerto for Oboe in C minor

J. S. Bach
Selections from Secular Cantatas
With Bryan Murray, Baritone

Sunday, October 8, 3 pm * Round Hill Community Church * 395 Round Hill Road, Greenwich
Monday, October 9, 7:30 pm * Greenwich Historical Society * 47 Strickland Road, Cos Cob

Program Notes

In Italy around 1600, the conventions of Renaissance art music, with its focus on contrapuntal equality between different voices (later called prima practica) began to be supplanted by a new compositional style which stressed engaging a listener’s emotions (seconda pratica/doctrine of affections). The bass voice took on a new role of defining a piece’s harmony and form, freeing higher voices to do whatever it took to hook the listener. For the next 150 years, this dichotomy of melody and bass line, exemplified by the invention of opera in Florence (itself an attempt to revive the declamatory style of ancient Greek tragedy) and its cultivars defined European art music, spreading as far as England, Sweden, Russia, and, via Spanish conquests, the New World. The seeming extravagances of the new style – exploiting contrasts of volume, instrumental color, and pungent harmonies – was considered to be both beautiful and bizarre, analogous to an irregularly shaped pearl (barroco in Portuguese) causing historians to dub the style “baroque.”

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) was one of the Baroque Era’s great entrepreneurs.  Born in Halle, Saxony, he studied and worked in Germany and Italy before arriving in London in 1710, becoming an English citizen in 1727 (and living most of his life in a house later rented by Jimi Hendrix). The twenty-five-year-old Handel had come to England in search of fame and fortune. Fame was quickly found – Handel became a darling of the English aristocracy – but the two Italian opera companies he launched went bust. The ever-practical Handel, following fickle English tastes (ballad opera using popular tunes and sung in English, such as The Three Penny Opera, was all the rage), decided to write large scale, unstaged compositions using English texts based on religious subjects that avoided sets, costumes and, most importantly, by writing primarily for choruses, the pricey singers that helped bankrupt his operatic ventures.

These oratorios (e.g., Messiah) became so popular that Handel saw another opportunity and began to compose music to be played during the oratorios’ intermissions. Capitalizing on the English mania for the music of Archangelo Corelli (1653-1713) - English societies dedicated to playing Corelli’s Concerto Grossi, Op. 6 were rampant – Handel wrote his own Op. 6 Concerto Grossi for those interludes.  These twelve works embodied baroque conventions, with a clear delineation between the bass voice (basso continuo) and the melodic voices that reveled in a freewheeling musical banter. The Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 10 reflects Handel’s peripatetic life, freely drawing inspiration from France (starting with a French style overture), Italy (followed by an operatic “Air”) and, in the remaining movements, Corelli himself.

It took time for baroque conventions to spread from Italy to the rest of Europe. The royalty and clergy who had money to support the arts often were spending it on more pressing matters. For example, for the first several decades of the 17th Century, the English ruling classes were preoccupied with, among other things, civil wars, religious rivalries and persecution, regicide, and Puritan oppression. Patronage for the arts took a backseat, slowing the dissemination and implementation of new compositional techniques from Italy.

The Restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660 (however you may feel about it) brought an era of stability to the kingdom and a resumption of royal patronage for the arts which Charles and his successors used to legitimize their prestige and power as the Medicis had done in Florence (google ‘Sea Triumph of Charles II’).  One beneficiary of this largesse was Henry Purcell (1659-1695).

Born into a well-connected musical family (his father sang at Charles II’s coronation), Purcell was deeply involved in music from a young age.  He trained as a chorister, helped maintain the royal instrument collection, was a music copyist at Westminster Abbey, played organ at the Chapel Royal…. He also studied with England’s best composers – John Blow, Christopher Gibbons and possibly Matthew Locke – and his compositions, using prima or seconda practica techniques, were celebrated for their idiomatic settings of English. When Purcell came of age as a composer, Charles was looking for ways the arts could enhance his image and life at the court. Purcell happily obliged.

Purcell wrote 24 ceremonial cantatas (called odes) celebrating the monarchy, special occasions, or holidays – the king’s birthday, his return to court, weddings, and, most enduringly, St. Cecilia’s Day. Regardless of the quality of the text he was given (the fawning title of Purcell’s first ode - Welcome, Vicegerent of the Mighty King – tells you what you need to know), Purcell set the words to music of the highest caliber. Fortunately, Christopher Fishburn’s text for the ode Welcome to All the Pleasures, written for the first St. Cecilia’s Day celebration on November 22, 1683, was a good one and Purcell responded in kind. The best-known aria from the ode is "Here the Deities Approve" which shows both Purcell’s skill in making English sing and his expertise in composing in the newfangled Italian style. 

Here the Deities approve,
The God of Musick and of Love,
All the Talents they have lent you,
All the Blessings they have sent you,
Pleas'd to see what they be-stow,
Live and thrive so well below.

When François Couperin (1668-1733) was appointed in 1693 as organist of the Chapelle du Roi at Versailles, he faced a very different situation from Purcell’s when Purcell began working at the court of Charles II.  The stable and highly centralized French political and social structures in France, especially during the seventy-two-year reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715), bled into the arts. The Italian transplant Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) used his unrivaled official position in the French court (he had dictatorial authority over all dramatic music) to reject Italian musical influences and establish a distinctly French musical style based on the French language combined with a unique synthesis of French dramatic and dance traditions. Composers who toyed with its conventions did so at their own risk.

Couperin showed that he knew how to use those conventions in his music for harpsichord (he composed hundreds of character pieces with elaborate and specific ornamentation) and organ.  But he was also an admirer of the Italian musical style epitomized by the music of Archangelo Corelli. Indeed, when, around 1690, the young Couperin composed several trio sonatas, he was so concerned that Corelli’s influence was obvious that he released the music under an Italian sounding pseudonym (sadly lost) that was an anagram of his own name.

But, as a lover of both the Italian and French approaches, Couperin’s ambition was to write music that combined them, saying "I have always esteemed meritorious things irrespective of author or nation.” And, later in life when his position at court was secure, he did just that. In 1724 Couperin composed “Les goûts-réünis” (‘The Union of Styles’) which ended with a trio sonata entitled Le Parnasse ou l'apothéose de Corelli, followed in 1725 by the trio sonata entitled L’Apothéoses de Lully, and, in 1726, followed that up with Sonades et suites de simphonies en trio “Les Nations.”  The four Sonades ostensibly depicted four European nations (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and Italy (the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont)) and each Sonade began with one of the Corelli influenced trio sonatas from 1690 followed by a French dance suite.  The fourth Sonade opens with the trio sonata entitled L’astrée, named after the pastoral novel by Honoré d'Urfé (1568-1625). While individual movements have French names, Corelli’s Italian influence is clear on every page.

Many composers earned their keep with side hustles.  Ives sold insurance (he was an industry innovator), Bernstein and Mahler were conductors, and Berlioz was (among many other things) a journalist. The brothers Alessandro (1673-1747) and Benedetto (1686-1739) Marcello both made their living working for the Venetian government while pursuing interests in literature, painting, and, of course, music.

Born to a noble Venetian family, the brothers studied law, were admitted to the Venetian high council, and served in several important (but different) governmental positions. Both were polymaths (Alessandro adorned the family palaces and local churches with his paintings and published poetry, while Benedetto wrote poetry and satirical pamphlets such as Il teatro alla moda, a parody on the state of opera that has never been out of print since its publication in 1720), but are best remembered for their music.

Relations between the brothers were sometimes strained (Alessandro sued his brothers in a dispute over the family boxes in the Teatro San Angelo), and an unintended moment of sibling rivalry occurred with their posthumous reputations. Benedetto composed far more music than his brother and his Estro poeticoarmonico (1724–26), fifty settings of the Psalms of David, were celebrated for decades by composers such as Rossini, Bizet, and Verdi while Alessandro’s music faded into obscurity. However, after their deaths, the most famous piece composed by either brother was the Oboe Concerto in d minor (1715). (J.S. Bach was so taken by it that he transcribed it for solo keyboard (BWV 974), adding melodic ornaments that modern oboists sometimes use when performing the original.) There are two different versions of the concerto, one in d minor, one in c minor, with the more famous Benedetto getting credit for both. However, recent research has shown that the concerto is probably by Alessandro and ironically it is now performed far more than anything written by Benedetto.

It can take time for someone to find out what they are good at.  James Joyce wrote poetry before shifting to prose, Ernest Hemingway was a journalist before writing novels, and Domenico Scarlatti (1685 – 1757) composed operas, religious works, and instrumental sinfonias before penning sonatas for the keyboard.

Born in Naples, Italy to a musical family, Scarlatti trained as a composer and was renowned for his harpsichord playing (Scarlatti supposedly won a friendly harpsichord duel in Rome with Handel). He plied his skills as a composer, teacher, and conductor in Naples, Venice, Rome, Portugal, and Spain for the Catholic Church and various royal patrons, but nothing really took. His earnest efforts at opera were met with indifference and his church music, while accomplished, did not net the results Scarlatti hoped for. But, in 1714 while working in Rome, he became acquainted with the Portuguese ambassador to the Papacy and, in 1719, Scarlatti found himself in Lisbon working at the Portuguese court. Among his many harpsichord students was Princess Maria Barbara (1711 - 1758), who married the Prince of Asturias in 1729.  When the Prince was crowned King of Spain as Ferdinand VI in 1746, Maria Barbera became queen with Scarlatti in tow. He was appointed Master of Music at the court in Madrid, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.

Scarlatti found his compositional groove after arriving in Spain, writing over 500 single movement sonatas for keyboard (mostly for Maria Barbara) which became his most admired compositions. (J.S. Bach, Bartok, Liszt, and Brahms were fans.) While the sonatas contained many new keyboard techniques (e.g., crossed hands, double note passages) and showed the influence of Spanish folk music (e.g., passages suggesting flamenco guitar, folk music scales), it was how the sonatas used new ways of structuring music that pointed towards the classical style of Haydn and Mozart that were their greatest achievement. Rather than using methods emphasizing the bizarre beauty evoked by the image of the Portuguese barroco (pearl), Scarlatti’s technique of contrasting and resolving large scale harmonic differences offered a way for composers to write music that reflected the aesthetic principle of balance cherished during the Age of Enlightenment.

As part of his duties from 1723-1750 as Kantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig (a municipal position!), J. S. Bach (1685-1750) was required to compose music appropriate for church services. He responded by writing (among other compositions) about 300 cantatas that celebrated different days of the liturgical calendar, 200 of which are extant.  (As prodigious as this seems, it was not notable at the time.  Christoph Graupner, who was offered the Leipzig job before Bach, wrote over 2000.) It is some of the best music Bach produced.

As the Italian word cantare (to sing) suggests, a cantata started off simply as a work meant to be sung as opposed to being played by instruments.  Over time, cantatas evolved in response to specific circumstances and needs. For example, the Lutheran cantata in Germany, based on a German (rather than Italian or Latin) text, developed into a complex work, typically employing a chorus, solo singers, and an instrumental ensemble, often incorporating Lutheran chorales in the music. Bach, who (unlike most of the composers on this concert) never left his home turf of northern Germany, enlivened this tradition using Italian operatic techniques he learned by studying and transcribing the works of other composers such as Vivaldi, Torelli, and (see above) Marcello.

From this, it would be easy to assume that all of Bach’s cantatas were sacred.  Far from it! Using the same techniques (sans the Lutheran chorales) Bach wrote secular cantatas for special occasions and explored such subjects as hunting, weddings, commoners, and coffee drinking.

For example, take the cantata Non Sa Che Sia Dolore (One Knows Not What Sorrow Is) BWV 209. The title in Italian alone shows this cantata is different from most of Bach’s other cantatas.  The (ungrammatical) Italian text makes it clear that the work was a tribute to someone leaving, but who, where, or when is unknown. Indeed, because of these questions, some musicologists doubt the cantata is by Bach. But, whether or not Bach composed it, the opening Sinfonia, with its prominent flute part, is a deeply affecting start to a touching homage to a friend.

No one doubts that the cantata Der Streit Zwischen Phoebus und Pan (The Contest between Phoebus and Pan) BWV 201 is by Bach.  The text, by Christian Friedrich Henrici (1700-1764) is based on Ovid’s story The Ears of a Donkey, a retelling of the Greek myth in which Pan and Phoebus (Apollo) debate popular versus learned art. Bach has a lot of fun in the piece (even depicting the braying of a donkey) and the winner of the contest comes as no surprise with Phoebus’ aria “Mit Verlangen drücke ich deine zarten Wangen” (“With Longing I Press Your Delicate Cheek”) besting Pan’s aria "Zu Tanze, zu Sprunge so wackelt das Herz " (“To Dance, to Leap, the Heart is Eager”). Tonight, you get to decide who really won (but be careful not to offend Phoebus).

© Ubaldo Valli

Aria – Phoebus

Mit Verlangen
With longing

Drück ich deine zarten Wangen,
I press your tender cheeks,

Holder, schöner Hyazinth.
lovely, beautiful Hyacinth.

Und dein' Augen küß ich gerne,
And I kiss your eyes with pleasure

Weil sie meine Morgensternesince 
they are my morning star

Und der Seele Sonne sind.
and the sun of my soul.

Aria - Pan

Zu Tanze, zu Sprunge, so wackelt das Herz.
In dancing and leaping my heart shakes.

Wenn der Ton zu mühsam klingt
When music sounds too laborious

Und der Mund gebunden singt,
and the voice sings under control,

So erweckt es keinen Scherz.
then it arouses no fun.