Yesterday afternoon, the Baroque musical ensemble Juilliard415 gave the first of two full length recitals that it will perform this spring at Holy Trinity Church on Central Park West. Happily, the group is this term focusing on the music of seventeenth and eighteenth century Germany. A number of that period's most prominent composers were accordingly featured in yesterday's program alongside several whose reputations have not fared so well over the course of time.
The recital began with Heinrich von Biber's Partita No. 1 in D minor from Harmonia artificiosa-ariosa (1696). It is sometimes difficult to think of Biber as a Baroque composer so modern do his works sound. Generally acknowledged as the greatest violin virtuoso of the seventeenth century, Biber's compositions for the instrument broke new ground in their use of multiple stops, polyphony and scordatura. His own abilities as a performer allowed him to achieve finger positions his contemporaries found impossible to emulate. In addition, he added programmatic content to several of his compositions, most notably the Mystery Sonatas that were only rediscovered and published in the early twentieth century. The partita performed here for two violins, cello, violone and theorbo was typical of his work both for its advanced tuning techniques and for the technical demands it placed on the violinists.
The next set of musicians to take the stage performed two sonatas for two violins, cello and theorbo from Sonatae à 2, 3, 4 e 5 strometi da arco et altri (1682) by Johann Rosenmüller, a composer with whom I had been totally unfamiliar. Although born in Germany and employed as an organist at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig where J.S. Bach later served as music director, Rosenmüller was forced to flee to Italy after having been imprisoned for homosexuality. It was in Venice, where he worked as a teacher at the Ospedale della Pietà, the same where Vivaldi later served, that Rosenmüller composed the bulk of his music before finally returning to Germany. As a result, his compositions are in some ways more characteristic of the Italian Baroque than of the German. The two sonatas performed here differ from one another in that in the first, the Sonata seconda à 2 in E minor, the cello forms part of the basso continuo while in the second, the Sonata quarta à 3 in C major, the cello takes its place as a solo instrument.
Another composer previously unknown to me was Jan Dismas Zelenka whose Sonata for two oboes, bassoon and basso continuo, No 4, in G minor, ZWV 181/4, taken from Sei Sonate à due Hautbois, Violino et Basson con Basso Continuo, was next performed. In this case, at least, there was some reason for the composer's obscurity. Zelenka, though Bohemian by birth, spent most of his career at the Dresden court where he held the title of church composer. As the court forbade the copying of musical manuscripts, much of Zelenka's output remained unknown until it was brought to light in the mid-nineteenth century by fellow Czech composer Bedřich Smetana.
Continuing the roster of Baroque composers little known to non-musicians, there followed a Sonata for Flute, Violin, Bassoon and Continuo in D major, FaWV N:D1 by Johann Friedrich Fasch. Although Fasch held several positions relating to music, including Kapellmeister in the town of Zerbst, he is perhaps best remembered for having turned down the position of music director at St. Thomas School in Leipzig, which position was then awarded to J.S. Bach. Although none of his music was published during his lifetime, Fasch was held in high esteem by his contemporaries, including Bach and Telemann, and at least one twentieth century musicologist has seen in his work a bridge between the Baroque and the Classical.
The recital returned to more familiar ground with a Trio Sonata in A major, Wq. 146, H. 570 (1731, rev. 1747) by C.P.E. Bach, second surviving son of the immortal J.S. Although he lived well into the Classical period, the younger Bach was one of the last great German Baroque composers, the standard bearer of his father's music. The genre of the trio sonata was already by the time this piece was written a venerable tradition that had originated with Corelli in the late seventeenth century and had then been further developed by the composer's father. The present piece was in the established instrumentation of two solo instruments, here flute and violin, with cello and harpsichord providing the basso continuo.
The final piece was truly special. If one were to choose a year to mark the division between the Baroque and Classical eras, 1772 might do very well. For this was the year Haydn composed his Op. 20 string quartets, thus giving birth to an entirely new genre. Artistic movements never have their genesis in a vacuum; they are invariably a reflection of political and social upheavals occurring about them. The second half of the eighteenth century was in Western Europe just such a period of turmoil, one that was to culminate in 1789 in the French Revolution. In his excellent biography of Beethoven, Jan Swafford has given a detailed account of the Enlightenment principles, known in Germany as the Aufklärung, that underpinned this transition from a moribund feudal society to the modern era as characterized by the rise of the middle class. The resulting impact of the Aufklärung on the arts was profound and would lead in the early nineteenth century to the rise of Romanticism with its strong emphasis on the individual and the plight of the common man. But already in the mid-eighteenth century there arose a proto-Romantic movement termed sturm und drang whose fevered emotionalism was perhaps best illustrated in Goethe's Werther. Haydn is well known to have been under the influence of this movement though he never explicitly acknowledged his own music's debt to it. It's ironic then that Haydn, perhaps to impose a defining structure on the chaotic emotions unleashed by sturm und drang, should move in the opposite direction from Goethe and instead institute the traditional form of the Classical string quartet. The piece performed at this recital, the No. 3 in G minor. is an excellent example since the use of minor keys was always indicative in the work of Classical composers of strong emotion that is here held in check and disciplined by the work's four movement structure whose careful design imparts to the work an overall unity.
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