Stephen Hammer, Priscilla Herreid, Fiona Last, baroque oboe; Todd Williams and John Manganaro, natural horn; Andrew Schwartz, baroque bassoon;; Julie Leven, Edson Scheid, Jane Starkman, Daniel Stepner, Asako Takeuchi, Lena Wong, baroque violin; Anne Black, Laura Jeppesen, baroque viola ~ Marcus Thompson, viola d’amore and baroque viola; Sarah Freiburg, baroque cello ~ Andrew Arceci, violone; Michael Sponseller, harpsichord
Concerto for violin, two oboes, two horns and strings Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
Allegro – Grave – Allegro
Concerto for four violins Vivaldi
Allegro –- Largo –- Larghetto — Allegro
Concerto for viola d’amore Vivaldi
Allegro – Largo — Allegro
Concerto armónico III Unico Van Wassenaer (1792-1866)
Grave sostenuto – da Capella Presto – Largo andante — Vivace
Intermission
Hipocondrie Jan Disman Zelenka (1679-1745)
Concerto for two violins Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Vivace – Largo ma non tanto — Allegro
Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 Bach
(Allegro) –- Adagio — Allegro –- Menuet and three Trios
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
The word “concerto” is one of those fascinating words that has many meanings, some of which seem to be opposites. The root of this confusion lies in its etymological history. The verb concertare in Latin translates as “to contend, dispute, debate,” whereas in Italian concertare signifies “to arrange, get together, agree upon.” This brainteaser is dramatized wonderfully when one contemplates the concertos, say, of Tchaikovsky, Grieg or Liszt as opposed to those of Bach, Vivaldi or Mozart. The later 19th-century composers pit the grand piano against a large orchestra, and part of the rhetoric of their concertos evokes a pitched battle that often ends in a triumphant draw. The earlier composers fashioned smaller-scale compositions featuring one or more instruments in which the soloists seem to emerge from the orchestra for solo passages and then step decorously back into the ensemble – firsts among equals. The English variants of the word (concert, concerted, consent, consort) seem to favor this more consensual aspect. At any rate, both forms evoke the human drama of the individual against the backdrop of the collective, though in dramatically different ways.
To further complicate the issue, the word concerto in Italian might signify a composition, an ensemble, or simply a concert. Bach labeled some of his cantatas “concerto.” He seems to be using the word to signify a musical work designated for specific instruments (as well as voices) as opposed to a more abstract work that might be played by any combination of instruments and/or voices (e.g. Renaissance consort music, or even Bach’s Art of Fugue, or the canons from his Musical Offering).
Concerto grosso signifies a larger ensemble (many instruments doubling the various voices) out of which a smaller ensemble of soloists periodically appears, rendering a chiaroscuro effect, or at very least an arresting sound-color change. The concerti grossi of Corelli, Albinoni, Vivaldi and Handel provided a stimulus for Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti, in which two or more soloists, often of different instrumental types, embellish the larger ensemble’s music as well as taking solo turns. Vivaldi’s prodigious output of concertos for a single instrument heard against a string ensemble similarly inspired Bach’s unparalleled solo concerti for harpishord and violin.
Tonight’s program explores the wonderful variety among works labeled “concerto.” The Bach and Vivaldi concerti (“for several instruments”) that bookend the program are in the same key and feature the same instruments, but they are very different in intent and ethos. Both delight in shifting instrumental colors, but the Bach texture is more integrated and nuanced. The Vivaldi is typically broad-brushed in its approach: clear, athletic, usually featuring one type of instrument at a time, and often indulging in unison passages. The Bach employs the various instruments in mix-and-match combinations, and in a widely varied use of the tutti (larger) ensemble. Bach borrowed his ritornello forms (orchestral refrains framing solo passages) from Vivaldi, but he enhanced them with counterpoint and other complexities; and he rarely has the whole orchestra playing a unison melody, as does Vivaldi.
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It is always astonishing to contemplate the sheer size of Antonio Vivaldi’s output. Among his more than 400 concerti are 244 for solo violin and orchestra (including “The Four Seasons”), 74 concerti for multiple solo instruments, 39 for bassoon, 27 for cello, 17 for oboe, 16 for flute, 8 for viola d’amore, 5 for recorder, and one for mandolin. Then there are hundreds of other works that include sacred vocal works (75), operas (46), secular cantatas (39), sonatas for various instruments (87), sinfonias for string orchestra (56), and serenades (8).
Many of the instrumental works were composed for his female students at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. This institution was one of four in Vivaldi’s home town that took in illegitimate, orphaned or abandoned children. Music had become an important part of the curriculum of the educational arm of the Pietà, and Vivaldi – an ordained priest – joined the faculty in 1703, when he was 22, as maestro di violino, later adding the title maestro di concerti. The regular concerts at the Pietà were already a draw for the Venetians and for foreign tourists alike, and the derived income helped fund the Pietà’s growth. As music director, Vivaldi took the orchestra to a higher level with his voluminous output of concerti for the best of the students. In these works he experimented over the years with both form, meter, phrase-length and orchestration, and their popularity and subsequent publication had a far-reaching effect on the development of Western music. As is well known, for instance, J. S. Bach’s encounter with Vivaldi’s music (while a young concertmaster in Weimar) had a profound effect on his own compositional development.
Vivaldi’s Concerto in F (RV 569) is one of the most colorful of instrumental configurations among Vivaldi’s concerti: two oboes, two horns, solo violin, strings and continuo. The outer movements make use of the full ensemble, usually pairing the like instruments and only occasionally mixing types. The inner movement is more typical of his solo violin concerti – a solo violin accompanied only by strings.
The Concerto in B Minor for four violins (RV 580) remains one of his most popular works; Bach seems to have loved this concerto, too, since he took the trouble to transcribe it for four solo harpsichords, adding counterpoint and tweaking the harmony here and there. For both composers, the work was partly a study in instrumental texture. Vivaldi’s version uncharacteristically features two separate viola parts and some solo work for the first cellist.
The viola d’amore has fourteen strings – seven playable above the bridge and seven strung under the bridge that are also tuned and meant to vibrate sympathetically with the bowed strings. This is what gives it its characteristic resonance and its beguiling soft edge. Like the guitar and gamba family, the edges of the top and back don’t overhang the sides, and the back is flat, not carved with a curve. And like those instruments (as opposed to the four-stringed viola and its siblings, the violin and cello) it may well have had its roots in Moorish Spain and/or northern Africa. “D’amore” seems to have referred to that as much as to its lovely tone. Further evidence of its origins in that sophisticated Islamic culture lies in the shape of sound-holes on either side of the bridge. On the viola d’amore these are traditionally carved in the shape of flaming sword, rather than in the form of the symmetrical F-holes of the violin family or the C-holes of the various sized gambas. The fact that the Venetian Vivaldi composed eight concerti for the instrument attests, perhaps, to the notion that the instrument and its lore had spread throughout the Middle East.
The first known mention of the name “viola d’amore” appeared in the British diarist John Evelyn’s journal of 1679. The instrument was catching on, and many composers from Vivaldi in the 18th century through Paul Hindemith in the 20th have composed for it. Furthermore, many renowned 17th and 18th century instrument makers crafted versions of the instrument. Vivaldi’s concerto performed tonight (RV 394) is one of seven for the viola d’amore, four of which are in the key of D Minor.
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If Vivaldi was one of the most popular composers of his day thanks to the improving technology of music printing as well as his prolific output, Count Unico van Wassenaer was perhaps the most secretive and mysterious of composers. He was a Dutch Nobleman who developed a passion for music and composition as a young man, and between the years 1725 and 1742 composed six intricate concerti à 7 (four violins, two violas and bass instruments in unison), which he called Concerti Armonici. He presented them to his musical colleagues who enthusiastically programmed them and then begged him to publish them, which he refused to do. They convinced him to publish them (in 1755) without attribution, with a named dedicatee and publisher (the friends who had urged him to self-publish), and they caught on and were disseminated widely. Many publishers were not constrained by copyright or other such scruples in those days and the concerti were republished a number of times, naming the original publisher (Carlo Ricciotti) as the composer. In the 19th century someone thought that pieces of such quality must have been composed by either Pergolesi or Handel, despite internal stylistic evidence to the contrary. The concerti were even included in a complete edition of Pergolesi’s works, despite the lack of original materials and proper stylistic analysis. In the late 19th and 20th century a number of other composers were suggested by musicologists. It was only in 1980 that the mystery was solved by Dutch musicologist Alfred Dunning. A manuscript score in The Hague with a note in van Wassenaer’s hand explained away the conundrum. The note explains his reluctance to publish, his acquiescence at the urging of his friends, and the subsequent horror that they were published with so many mistakes. In his middle and later life he was a diplomat – an ambassador to France and then to Germany — and music played second fiddle to his public life. He wrote that he just didn’t have time to correct the many mistakes in the published versions, and perhaps he understood that his claim to have composed these popular pieces might well have been doubted, as he had composed virtually no other music.
All six of the concertos have been popular with string orchestras for two and a half centuries, no matter who was named as composer. Stravinsky paid tribute by using a theme from the Second Concerto in his ballet Petroushka. In the second movement of the Third Concerto played in these concerts, van Wassenaer quotes a well-known Renaissance canon and then elaborates on it. One of the striking qualities of these concerti is that much of the time all voices are playing creating a particularly rich texture.
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The Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka, much admired by Bach and Telemann, worked at the Dresden court and composed prolifically. Relatively little of his music was published during his lifetime and, like Bach, his music was eclipsed soon after his death by newer styles. It was rediscovered in the mid-20th century (more than 100 years after the Bach revival) and is now being heard and recorded with increasing frequency. His orchestral work, Hipocondrie, takes the form of a French overture – a single movement with slow, stately outer sections and a lively central section with fugal writing. Most French overtures to operas or extended orchestral suites are upbeat in mood, especially in operas in which the overture lavishly and symbolically celebrates the composer’s patron. Hipocondrie, by contrast, reflects its enigmatic title. Linguistically-minded musicologists report that the word in the early 18th century might have suggested melancholy, depression, migraine or mania, and not only imagined illness or excessive worry about health. What is striking about the music is the constant shifting between major and minor mode (mood-swings?), and the intricate, inconsistent rhythmic detail (suggesting indisposition), especially in the extended opening section. Bach’s son Carl Philip Emmanuel composed a trio entitled “Sanguineus und Melancholichus” and Marin Marais composed a depiction of his own gall-bladder operation! Perhaps these are all early Enlightenment expressions of a very human predicament.
Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for two violins (BWV 1043) is, with good reason, a perennial favorite. Its outer movements feature sharply etched, athletic themes and elaborate counterpoint, and its inner movement is one of Bach’s most strikingly beautiful, with its lavish accompaniment to its lyric melodies. The whole concerto owes much to Vivaldi in its figuration and harmonic daring, but Bach out-Vivaldis Vivaldi in invention, contrapuntal consistency and, arguably, in depth of feeling.
Bach’s First Brandenburg Concerto (BWV 1046) is the most “orchestral” of the set of six, commissioned by and dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg. Its particular orchestration and four-movement layout (all the others have but three) suggest larger general forces than the others, and perhaps even an out-of-doors performance. The other five Brandenburg Concerti are more chamber-like in intent.
The First’s orchestration is similar to the Vivaldi concerto that opens this program, though there is an added oboe, as well as a bassoon. The counterpoint is typically rich and consistent in the Bach, and the mixing of instruments is more diverse than in the Vivaldi. There is also a simultaneous mixing of triplets and duplet values in the first movement, producing an exhilarating, almost riotous effect. This is something new Bach experimented with now and then. Bach doesn’t indulge in long solo sequences as does Vivaldi, and his themes are more developed. In the haunting slow movement there are several striking dissonances that result from Bach’s characteristically rigorous counterpoint. In the third movement, a sort of rambunctious jig, he makes ingenious use of the solo violin (a “small violin,” tuned a third higher than usual), writing chords that would be very difficult with the normal tuning. In the middle of this movement, there is a humorous, almost catatonic moment in which the tempo slows and the solo violin seems to fall asleep. The orchestra indulges the soloist for a few moments, then impatiently wakes him up with a three brusque chords.
The final movement is a stately minuet with three intervening Trios. The recurring minuet, in ¾ time, features imitative counterpoint between the treble and bass. The first Trio features a trio of two oboes and bassoon. The second Trio, labeled “Polonaise” is in 3/8 time, suggesting a faster tempo. The third Trio (in 2/4 time!) features horns and oboes in a kind of topsy-turvy texture: the three oboes, in unison, play a bass line accompaniment but up an octave, while the horns frolic around them. The minuet proper is heard four times, and its decorous richness, along with its repetitions, gives the movement a courtly, valedictory, even a ceremonial charm.
~Daniel Stepner © 2019
Author
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