On Tuesday afternoon I went to Holy Trinity Church on Central Park West to hear the first of four recitals of Baroque chamber music given each school year by the Juilliard415 ensemble. During the course of each semester the Juilliard musicians focus on the music of one given country or geographical area; for the fall term they are concentrating on the music of eighteenth century France. Accordingly, the program featured works by a number of that country's composers as well as one German whose works had a profound impact on the development of French music.
The recital began with François Couperin's Dances from L'Espagnole, taken from Les Nations (1726), here arranged for flute, oboe, two violins, viola da gamba and harpsichord. It was in Italy that the Baroque musical era truly began in the early seventeenth century, and few figures were as key to its development as Arcangelo Corelli who more or less invented on his own such basic forms as the sonata and concerto. Couperin was one of the few French musicians who possessed enough insight to recognize the importance of Corelli's achievement and to build upon it. It was Couperin who introduced the trio sonata form to French audiences in his L'apothéose de Corelli. Going even further, he sought to reconcile the wildly divergent styles of Italian and French music in a series of works he entitled Les goûts réunis. It's somewhat ironic then that Couperin should have been chosen by Ravel as a symbol of French nationalism in Le Tombeau de Couperin.
The next work consisted of three selections - Overture, Sarabande and Chaconne - from Jean-Marie Leclair's dance suite Première Récréation de musique d'une exécution facile (1737) arranged for two violins, cello and harpsichord. Leclair was a somewhat hotheaded character and in 1737, the year this work was composed, he left France for the Netherlands after having resigned his position as ordinaire de la musique following an argument. It might have been better for him if he had stayed away from France. He was stabbed to death in Paris in 1758.
Following the Leclair was Jacques-Martin Hotteterre's Trio Sonata in E minor, Op. 3, No. 4 taken from Sonates en trio, livre 1, Op. 3 (1712) arranged for oboe, violin, bassoon and theorbo. Hotteterre was nicknamed le Romain for his enthusiastic embrace of Italian music. Though he actually only lived in Rome for two years, his exposure to Corelli's music while there had a lasting influence on his style of composition. In his own time, however, Hotteterre was most famous as a virtuoso flutist. As author of the first instruction manual for that instrument, L'Art de préluder sur la flûte traversière, and as composer of numerous works that featured woodwind instruments, he exerted enormous influence on the development of the flute repertoire.
So far, all the composers featured had been French, but the next work was by the German composer Georg Philipp Telemann, his Concerto à 4, TWV 43:G1 taken from Quadri (1730) arranged for flute, violin, cello and harpsichord. Telemann was the odd man out at Tuesday's recital - the only non-French composer to be featured. At the end of the performance I asked Robert Mealy, the program director, why his music had been included. Mr. Mealy explained that Telemann's music had been extremely popular in France and had exerted a great deal of influence on French music. Part of the reason for Telemann's popularity may have been due to the fact that he consciously strove in the six Quadri for an international style - two of the concertos were in the German style, two in the Italian and two in the French. This internationalism was not surprising since Telemann had written the Quadri in anticipation of his visit to Paris, the only occasion on which he traveled outside Germany, that in the event did not occur until 1737.
Next on the program was a work by one of the best known French composers, Jean-Philippe Rameau. The piece chosen was Premier Concert from Pièces de clavecin en concert (1747) arranged for flute, violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord. Although by the time this piece was written Rameau had become more famous as a composer of opera than of instrumental music, he was still the conductor of a private orchestra and wrote prolifically for the harpsichord. Rameau's music was extremely innovative, and this actually made him a figure of controversy for those who thought he had betrayed the traditions set forth by Lully.
Rameau's predecessor, composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, was featured next. The selections were taken from his music for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670) arranged for two violins, viola, cello and violone. A great deal of Lully's importance derives from his association with Louis XIV who made him first royal composer of instrumental music and then director of the royal violin orchestra. Such patronage from an absolute monarch made Lully the most influential composer in France. His position at court also led to his collaboration with Molière not only at court but also at the playwright's theater in Paris. It was at the premiere of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme that Lully achieved his apotheosis when he danced the part of the mufti in the last act cérémonie des Turcs.
The program concluded with Louis-Gabriel Guillemain's Sonata III in D minor from Six sonates en quatuors ou conversations galantes (1743) arranged for flute, violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord. Guillemain was not nearly so important a composer as Couperin, Rameau and Lully, and I'm not quite sure why his music was chosen to end the recital. Though competent as both a violinist and composer, his greatest achievement seems to have been drinking himself to death.
Tuesday's recital lasted a full hour and forty-five minutes with no intermission. The high quality of the musicianship made it a feast for those with an interest in Baroque music which I feel is best heard when played, as it was on this occasion, on actual period instruments. This is really the only way one can appreciate the music in the same manner as the seventeenth and eighteenth century audiences who first heard it.
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