Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) - Theory

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) - Hippolyte et Aricie: Act 4 Scene 1 Ah faut il




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N9vJqfWVAA

Jean-Philippe Rameau (September 25, 1683 - September 12, 1764) was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and he is also considered the leading French author of music for the harpsichord of his time alongside François Couperin.

Little is known about Rameau's early years, and it was not until the 1720's that he won fame as a major theorist of music with his Treatise on Harmony (1722). He was almost 50 before he embarked on an operatic career. His debut Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) caused a great stir and was fiercely attacked for its revolutionary use of harmony by the supporters of Lully's style of music. Nevertheless, Rameau's pre-eminence in the field of French opera was soon acknowledged and he was later attacked as an "establishment" composer by those who favoured Italian opera during the controversy known as the Querelle des Bouffons in the 1750's.

Rameau's music had gone out of fashion by the end of the 1700's and it was not until the 20th Century that serious efforts were made to revive it.

Rameau he moved to Paris permanently in his 40's. He was a secretive man and even his wife knew nothing of his early life, which explains the scarcity of biographical information available.

Rameau was baptized on the day of his birth. His father Jean worked as an organist in several churches around Dijon and his mother, Claudine Demartinécourt, was the daughter of a notary.

The couple had eleven children (five girls and six boys) of which Jean-Philippe was the seventh to be born. Rameau was taught music before he could read or write. He was educated at the Jesuit college at Godrans but he was not a good school pupil and disrupted classes with his singing, later claiming that his passion for opera had begun at the age of twelve.

Initially intended for the law, Rameau decided he wanted to be a musician and his father sent him to Italy, where he stayed for a short while in Milan. On his return he worked as a violinist in travelling companies and then as an organist in provincial cathedrals before moving to Paris for the first time.

Here in 1706 he published his earliest known compositions: the harpsichord works that make up his first book of Pièces de clavecin, which show the influence of his friend Louis Marchand.

In 1709, he moved back to Dijon to take over his father's job as organist in the main church. The contract was for six years, but Rameau left before then and took up similar posts in Lyon and Clermont. During this period he composed motets for church performance as well as secular cantatas. In 1722 he returned to Paris for good and here he published his most important work of music theory, Traité de l'harmonie (Treatise on Harmony). This soon won him a great reputation and it was followed in 1726 by his Nouveau système de musique théorique.

He also published two more collections of harpsichord pieces in 1724 and 1729 or 1730.

Rameau took his first tentative steps into composing stage music when the writer Alexis Piron asked him to provide songs for his popular comic plays written for the Paris Fairs. Four collaborations followed, beginning with L'Endriague in 1723. None of the music has survived.

On February 25 1726, Rameau married the 19-year old Marie-Louise Mangot, who came from a musical family from Lyon, and was a good singer and instrumentalist. The couple would have four children, two boys and two girls, and the marriage is said to have been a happy one.

In spite of his fame as a music theorist, Rameau had trouble finding a post as an organist in Paris.

It was not until he was approaching 50 that Rameau decided to embark on the operatic career on which his fame as a composer mainly rests. He had already approached the writer Houdar de la Motte for a libretto in 1727, but nothing had come of it. He was finally inspired to try his hand at the prestigious genre of tragédie en musique after seeing Montéclair's Jephté in 1732.

Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, premiered at the Académie Royale de Musique on 1 October, 1733. It was immediately recognised as the most significant opera to appear in France since the death of Lully, but audiences were split over whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.

Some, such as the composer André Campra were stunned by its originality and wealth of invention; others found its harmonic innovations discordant and saw the work as an attack on the French musical tradition. The two camps, the so-called "Lullistes" and "Rameauneurs", fought a pamphlet war over the issue for the rest of the decade.

Just before this time, Rameau had made the acquaintance of the powerful financier Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière who became his patron until 1753. La Pouplinière's mistress (and later wife) Thérèse des Hayes was Rameau's pupil and a great admirer of his music. In 1731 Rameau became the conductor of La Pouplinière's private orchestra, which was of an extremely high quality. He held the post for 22 years (he was succeeded by Johann Stamitz and then Gossec).

La Pouplinière's salon enabled Rameau to meet some of the leading cultural figures of the day, including Voltaire who soon began collaborating with the composer.

Their first project, the tragédie en musique Samson, was abandoned because an opera on a religious theme by Voltaire, a notorious critic of the Church, was likely to be banned by the authorities.

Meanwhile Rameau had introduced his new musical style into the lighter genre of the opéra-ballet with the highly successful Les Indes galantes. It was followed by two tragédies en musique, Castor et Pollux (1737) and Dardanus (1739), and another opéra-ballet, Les fêtes d'Hébé (also 1739). All these operas of the 1730's are among Rameau's most highly regarded works.

However, the composer followed them with six years of silence, in which the only work he produced was a new version of Dardanus (1744). The reason for this interval in the composer's creative life is unknown, although it is possible he fell out with the authorities at the Académie royale de la musique.

1745 was a watershed in Rameau's career. He received several commissions from the court for works to celebrate the French victory at the Battle of Fontenoy and the marriage of the Dauphin to a Spanish princess. Rameau produced his most important comic opera Platée as well as two collaborations with



Voltaire: the opéra-ballet Le temple de la gloire and the comédie-ballet La Princesse de Navarre.

They gained Rameau official recognition: he was granted the title "Compositeur du Cabinet du Roi" and given a substantial pension.

1745 also saw the beginning of the bitter enmity between Rameau and



Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Though best known today as a thinker, Rousseau had ambitions to be a composer. He had written an opera, Les muses galantes, inspired by Rameau's Indes galantes, but Rameau had been unimpressed by this musical tribute. At the end of 1745, Voltaire and Rameau, who were busy on other works, commissioned Rousseau to turn La Princesse de Navarre into a new opera with linking recitative called Les fêtes de Ramire. Rousseau then claimed the two had stolen the credit for the words and music he had contributed, though musicologists have been able to identify almost nothing of the piece as Rousseau's work. Nevertheless, the embittered Rousseau nursed a grudge against Rameau for the rest of his life.

Rousseau was a major participant in the second great quarrel which erupted over Rameau's work, the so-called Querelle des Bouffons of 1752-54, which pitted French tragédie en musique against Italian opera buffa. This time Rameau was accused of being out of date and his music too complicated in comparison with the simplicity and "naturalness" of a work like



Pergolesi's La serva padrona.

In the mid-1750's Rameau criticised Rousseau's contributions to the musical articles in the Encyclopédie which led him into a quarrel with the leading philosophes d'Alembert and Diderot.

As a result, Rameau became a character in Diderot's - then unpublished - dialogue Le neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew).

In 1753, La Pouplinière took a scheming musician, Jeanne-Thérèse Goermans, as his mistress.

The daughter of the harpsichord-maker Jacques Goermans, she went by the name of Madame de Saint-Aubin and her opportunistic husband pushed her into the arms of the rich financier.

She had La Pouplinière engage the services of the Bohemian composer



Johann Stamitz, which led to a breach between Rameau and his patron. However, Rameau no longer needed La Pouplinière's financial support and protection.

Rameau pursued his activities as a theorist and composer until his death. He lived with his wife and two of his children in his large suite of rooms in Rue des Bons-Enfants which he would leave every day, lost in thought, to take a solitary walk in the nearby gardens of the Palais-Royal or the Tuileries. Sometimes he would meet the young writer Chabanon, who noted down some of Rameau's disillusioned confidential remarks: "Day by day I'm acquiring more good taste, but I no longer have any genius" and "The imagination is worn out in my old head, it's not wise at this age wanting to practise arts that are nothing but imagination."

Rameau had composed prolifically in the late 1740's and the early 1750's. After that his rate of productivity dropped off, probably due to old age and ill health, though he was still able to write another comic opera Les Paladins in 1760. This was due to be followed by a final tragédie en musique, Les Boréades, but for unknown reasons, the opera was never produced and had to wait until the late 20th century for a full staging.

Rameau died on September 12, 1764 after suffering from a fever. He was buried in the church of St. Eustache, Paris the following day.

While the details of his biography are vague and fragmentary, Rameau’s personal and family life is almost completely obscure. Rameau’s music, so graceful and attractive, completely contradicts the man’s public image and what we know of his character, as described -or perhaps unfairly caricatured- by Diderot in Le neveu de Rameau. Throughout his life music was his consuming passion; it occupied his entire thinking; Philippe Beaussant calls him a monomaniac. Piron explained that: “His heart and soul were in his harpsichord; once he had shut its lid there was no one home.”

Physically, Rameau was tall and exceptionally thin, as can be seen by the sketches we have of him, including a famous portrait by Carmontelle. He had a “loud voice.” His speech was difficult to understand, just like his handwriting, which was never fluent. As a man he was secretive, solitary, irritable, proud of his own achievements (more as a theorist than as a composer), brusque with those who contradicted him and quick to anger. It is difficult to imagine him among the leading wits, including Voltaire -- to whom he bears more than a passing physical resemblance -- who frequented La Pouplinière’s salon: his music was his best passport and it made up for his lack of the social graces.

His enemies exaggerated his faults, for example his supposed miserliness. In fact, it seems that his thriftiness was the result of long years spent in obscurity, when his income was uncertain and scanty, rather than part of his character because he could also be generous. We know that he helped his nephew Jean-François when he came to Paris and also helped establish the career of Claude-Bénigne Balbastre in the capital. Furthermore, he gave his daughter Marie-Louise a considerable dowry when she became a Visitandine nun in 1750 and he paid a pension to one of his sisters when she became ill. Financial security came late to him, following the success of his stage works and the grant of a royal pension (a few months before his death he was also ennobled and made a knight of the Ordre de Saint-Michel). But he did not change his way of life, keeping his worn-out clothes, his single pair of shoes and his old furniture: after his death it was discovered that he only possessed one dilapidated single-keyboard harpsichord in his rooms in Rue des Bons-Enfants, yet he also had a bag containing 1691 gold louis.

Rameau’s music is characterised by the exceptional technical knowledge of a composer who wanted above all to be renowned as a theorist of the art. Nevertheless it is not solely addressed to the intelligence and Rameau himself claimed “I try to conceal art with art.” The paradox of this music was that it was new, using techniques never known before, but it took place within the framework of old-fashioned forms; Rameau appeared revolutionary to the Lullystes, disturbed by the complex harmony of his music, and reactionary to the “philosophes” who only paid attention to its content and who either would not or could not listen to the sound it made.

The incomprehension he received from his contemporaries stopped Rameau repeating such daring experiments as the second Trio des Parques in Hippolyte et Aricie, which he was forced to remove after a handful of performances because the singers were unable to interpret it correctly. So the greatest harmonist of his era went unrecognised at the very time that harmony - the “vertical” aspect of music - was taking precedence over counterpoint, which represented its “horizontal” aspect.

By the end of his life Rameau's music had come under attack in France from theorists who favoured Italian models. However, foreign composers working in the Italian tradition were increasingly looking towards Rameau as a way of reforming their own leading operatic genre, opera seria. Tommaso Traetta produced two operas setting translations of Rameau libretti which show the French composer's influence: Ippolito ed Aricia (1759) and I Tintaridi (based on Castor et Pollux, 1760).

Traetta had been advised by Count Francesco Algarotti, a leading proponent of reform according to French models. Algarotti was a major influence on the most important "reformist" composer, Christoph Willibald von Gluck. Gluck's three Italian reform operas of the 1760's, Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste, and Paride ed Elena reveal a knowledge of Rameau's works.

Many of the operatic reforms advocated in the preface to Gluck's Alceste were already present in Rameau's works. Rameau had used accompanied recitative and the overture in his later operas reflected the action to come.

So when Gluck arrived in Paris in 1774 to produce a series of six French operas, he could be seen as continuing in the tradition of Rameau. Nevertheless, while Gluck's popularity survived the French Revolution, Rameau's did not. By the end of the 18th century his operas had vanished from the repertoire.

For most of the 19th century Rameau's music remained unplayed, known only by reputation. Hector Berlioz investigated Castor et Pollux and particularly admired the aria "Tristes apprêts," but "whereas the modern listener readily perceives the common ground with Berlioz's music, he himself was more conscious of the gap which separated them." French humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War brought about a change in Rameau's fortunes. As the Rameau biographer J.Malignon wrote: "...the German victory over France in 1870-71 was the grand occasion for digging up great heroes from the French past. Rameau, like so many others, was flung into the enemy's face to bolster our courage and our faith in the national destiny of France."

In 1894 composer Vincent d'Indy founded the Schola Cantorum to promote French national music. The society put on several revivals of works by Rameau. Among the audience was Claude Debussy, who especially cherished Castor et Pollux, which was revived in 1903: "Gluck's genius was deeply rooted in Rameau's works. (...) a detailed comparison allows us to affirm that Gluck could replace Rameau on the French stage only by assimilating the latter's beautiful works and making them his own." Camille Saint-Saëns (by editing and publishing the Pièces in 1895) and Paul Dukas were two other important French musicians who gave practical championship to Rameau's music in their day. But interest in Rameau petered out again and it was not until the late 20th century that a serious effort was made to revive his works. Over half of Rameau's operas have now been recorded, in particular by conductors such as John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie and Marc Minkowski.

Rameau's 1722 Treatise on Harmony initiated a revolution in music theory.

Rameau posited the discovery of the "fundamental law" of all musical harmony and composition. Rameau's methodology incorporated mathematics, commentary, analysis and a didacticism that was specifically intended to illuminate the structure and principles of music composition scientifically. He attempted to derive universal harmonic principles from natural causes.

Previous treatises on harmony had been purely practical; Rameau added a philosophical dimension.

The composer quickly rose to prominence in France as the "Isaac Newton of Music."

His fame subsequently spread throughout all Europe, and his Treatise became the definitive authority on music theory; forming the foundation for instruction in Western Music which persists to this day.

Further Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Traite de l'harmonie: Preface (1722) (Pages 220-222)

***




[Heinichen's Circle of Fifths,
published in the year before his death...
Der General-Bass in der Composition]

Johann David Heinichen (April 17, 1683 - July 16, 1729) was a German Baroque composer and music theorist who brought the musical genius of Venice to the court of Augustus the Strong in Dresden. Although Heinichen's music is original, rhythmically exuberant and imaginative, it was inexplicably little known for a long time.

Johann David Heinichen was born in the small village of Crössuln, near Weissenfels. His father Michael Heinichen had studied music at the celebrated Thomasschule Leipzig associated with the Thomaskirche, served as cantor in Pegau and was pastor of the village church in Crössuln. Johann David also attended Thomasschule Leipzig.

There he studied music with Johann Schelle and later received organ and harpsichord lessons with



Johann Kuhnau. The future-composer Christoph Graupner was also a student of Kuhnau at the time.

Heinichen enrolled in 1702 to study law at the University of Leipzig and in 1705-6 qualified as a lawyer (in the early 18th century the law was a favored route for composers; Kuhnau, Graupner and Georg Philipp Telemann were also lawyers). Heinichen practiced law in Weissenfels until 1709.

However, Heinichen maintained his interest in music and was concurrently composing operas. In 1710, he published the first edition of his major treatise on the thoroughbass. He went to Italy and spent seven formative years there, mostly in Venice.

In 1717, Heinichen became a colleague of Johann Sebastian Bach at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, then went on to be Kapellmeister to the Elector of Saxony. His pupils included Johann Georg Pisendel. In 1721, Heinichen married in Weissenfels and the birth of his only child is recorded in January 1723. In his final years Heinichen's health suffered greatly and on the afternoon of 16th July 1729, he was buried in the Johannes cemetery after contracting tuberculosis.

His music is enjoying a resurgence of popularity, with some of his masses and his final work, a Magnificat, now receiving some attention in the recording world.

Further Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Johann David Heinichen
Der-General Bass in der Composition (1728)

[8685 G.F. Handel / 8683 Rameau / 8682 Mouret]

Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682-1738) - Rondeau

Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682-1738)

Suite de Symphonies: Fanfare-Rondeau





Jean-Joseph Mouret (April 11, 1682, Avignon - December 22, 1738, Charenton-le-Pont) was a French composer whose dramatic works made him one of the leading exponents of Baroque music in his country. Even though most of his works are no longer performed, Mouret's name survives today thanks to the popularity of the Fanfare-Rondeau from his first Suite de Symphonies,



which has been adopted as the signature tune of the PBS program Masterpiece.

Mouret's father was a prosperous silk merchant of Avignon, an amateur violinist who recognized his son's precocious musical abilities and provided him with a fine education. The elder Mouret generously supported his son's decision to pursue a musical career. As a youth, Mouret proved himself a talented singer while also earning success for his compositions.

Around the age of 25, Mouret settled in Paris. News of his arrival did not take long to spread and he was introduced to Anne, Duchess of Maine, whose salon at Sceaux was a center of courtly society in the declining years of Louis XIV. His genial character strongly assisted him in securing the patronage of the Duchess, who made him her Surintendant de la musique at Sceaux about 1708. At Sceaux he produced operas and was in charge of the sixteen bi-weekly Grandes Nuits in the season of 1714–1715, for which he produced interimèdes and allegorical cantatas in the court masque tradition, and other music, in the company of the most favoured musicians, for the most select audience in France. Mouret thus launched his adult career under highly favorable auspices.

At court Mouret maintained a post as singer, and directed the grand divertissements offered by



the Regent, Philippe II, the duc d'Orléans at his château of Villers-Cotterêts on the occasion of the



12-year-old King Louis XV's coming-of-age in 1722.

In Paris he collaborated with the Académie Royale de Musique. He directed the orchestra of the Paris Opéra (1714–18), composed music and directed the Nouveau Théâtre Italien du Palais-Royal (1717–37) -- for which he composed divertissements that accompanied, for example, the tender comedies of Marivaux, and which, printed, fill six volumes. Concurrently, he was director of the concert series established by the orchestra of the Opéra, the Concerts Spirituel (1728–34), positions which provided a public outlet for his own music and which permitted him to live in affluence. Mouret married and had one daughter. However, his later years were overshadowed by financial and social disappointments. Sinking into poverty, Mouret died in a charitable asylum run by the Roman Catholic Church in Charenton-le-Pont.

Mouret composed mainly for the stage. He contributed to the emergence of the distinctively French genres of lyric tragedy and opera-ballet but his jealousy of the rising star of


Jean-Philippe Rameau led to the bitterness and madness in which he ended his days:

Les fêtes de Thalie opera-ballet for the Paris Opéra, (1714)

Le mariage de Ragonde et de Colin for Sceaux, (1714) (1742 version: Les amours de Ragonde)

Ariane et Thésée (1717)

Pirithoüs Paris Opéra, (1723)

Les Amours des dieux Paris Opéra, (1727), score

Les grâces héroïques (1733)

Le triomphe des sens (1732)

Le temple de Gnide Paris Opéra (1741).

Mouret also wrote airs, divertissements, cantatilles, motets, and instrumental works (sonatas, fanfares). Among his other compositions, the two Suites de Symphonies (1729) deserve special mention. The First Suite, renowned for its Masterpiece theme, is entitled Fanfare for trumpets, Timpani, Violins, and Oboes and dedicated to the son of the Duchess of Maine, the Prince of Dombes. The Concert Spirituel, conducted by Mouret himself, gave the premier performance of this Suite. The Second Suite, scored for violins, oboes, and horns, was first played at the Hôtel de Ville before King Louis XV.

[8683 Rameau / 8682 Mouret / 8681 Telemann]

Georg Philip Telemann (1681-1767) - Oboe

Georg Philip Telemann (1681-1767)

Oboe Concerto in F Minor (c. 1711)

I. Allegro



II. Largo



III. Vivace



Trio Sonata No. 1 (c. 1714)
I. Dolce
II. Allegro
III. Affetuoso
IV. Vivace

Georg Philipp Telemann (March 14, 1681 – June 25, 1767) was a German Baroque music composer, born in Magdeburg. Self-taught in music, he studied law at the University of Leipzig. Often described as the most prolific composer in history[1] (at least in terms of surviving oeuvre),[2] he was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and a lifelong friend of George Frideric Handel. While in the present day Bach is generally thought of as the greater composer, Telemann was more widely renowned for his musical abilities during his lifetime.

Telemann traveled widely, absorbing various musical styles and incorporating them into his own compositions. He is known for writing concertos for unusual combinations of instruments, such as multiple violas or trumpets or oboes or harpsichords.

He held a series of important musical positions, culminating in that of music director of the five largest churches in Hamburg, from 1720 until his death in 1767.

Georg Philipp Telemann was born in Magdeburg, the capital of the Duchy of Magdeburg, in 1681. Telemann’s family was not particularly musical; his great-grandfather had served as Cantor at Halberstadt, but no one else in his direct family had been involved in music.

Telemann’s father died in 1685, leaving his mother to raise and oversee the education of the children. They were an upper-middle-class family, and many worked in the church. Telemann began to discover music at age 10, and quickly showed talent, composing his first opera by age 12. But this talent was not approved of by his family. Fearing that her son would pursue a career in music, Telemann’s mother confiscated all of his musical instruments and in 1693 sent him to a new school in Zellerfeld (1694-1698), hoping that this change would put the boy on a more lucrative career path. However, the superintendent of this school approved of his talents, and Telemann continued to compose and expand his knowledge of music on his own. By the time he completed his studies at the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim, Telemann had learned to play the recorder, organ, violin, viola da gamba, flute, oboe, chalumeau, double bass and bass trombone, almost entirely by himself. His travels had also exposed him to newer musical styles, and the music of Johann Rosenmüller and Arcangelo Corelli became early influences.

In 1701, Telemann entered Leipzig University intending to study law, perhaps at the request of his mother. It was not long before his musical talent was discovered, however, and he was commissioned to write music for two of the city’s main churches. Soon thereafter, he founded a 40-member Collegium Musicum to give concerts of his music. The next year, Telemann became the director of Leipzig’s opera house and cantor of one of its churches. His growing prominence began to anger elder composer Johann Kuhnau, whose position as director of music for the city had been encroached upon by Telemann’s appointment as a cantor. Telemann was also using many students in his opera productions, leaving them less time to devote to participation in church music for Kuhnau. Kuhnau denounced Telemann as an “opera musician”. Even after Telemann’s departure, Kuhnau could not regain the performers he had lost to the opera.

Telemann left Leipzig in 1705 to become Kapellmeister for the court of Count Erdmann II in Sorau (now Zary, Poland). Here he acquainted himself with the French style of Lully and Campra, composing many overtures and suites in his two years at the post. An invasion of Germany by Sweden forced Count Erdmann's court to evacuate the castle. Telemann apparently visited Paris in 1707; and was later appointed as a leader of the singers at the court in Eisenach, where he met Johann Sebastian Bach. The major position of Telemann's life was his appointment in 1721 as musical director of the five main churches in Hamburg, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Here Telemann wrote two cantatas for each Sunday, as well as other sacred music for special occasions, all while teaching singing and music theory and directing another collegium musicum, which gave weekly or bi-weekly performances. Telemann also directed the local opera house for a few years, but this proved a financial failure.

When the position Kuhnau had once held in Leipzig became vacant, Telemann applied for the position. Of the six musicians who applied, he was the favored candidate, even winning the approval of the city’s council. Telemann declined the position, but only after using the offer as leverage to secure a pay raise for his position in Hamburg. When Telemann declined the job, it was offered to Christoph Graupner, who also declined it, paving the way for J.S. Bach. Telemann augmented his Hamburg pay with a few small positions in other courts and through publishing volumes of his own music.

Starting around 1740, Telemann’s output decreased as he began to focus more on writing theoretical treatises. During this time he corresponded with some younger composers, including Franz Benda and Telemann's godson, C.P.E. Bach. Following the death of his eldest son Andreas in 1755, Telemann assumed the responsibility of raising his grandson Georg Michael Telemann, and beginning the future composer’s education in music. Many of his sacred oratorios date from this period. In his later years, Telemann’s eyesight began to deteriorate, and this led to a decline in his output around 1762, but the composer continued to write until his death on June 25, 1767.

The Guinness Book of World Records lists Telemann as the most prolific composer of all time with more than 800 credited works. More recent studies, for example the thematic catalogues of his works published in the 1980's and 1990's, have shown that Telemann actually wrote over 3,000 compositions, many of which are now lost. Some of his pieces, thought lost, were recently uncovered by the musicologist Jason Grant. Many of the manuscripts were destroyed during World War II. (Another composer, Simon Sechter, could be considered more prolific, since he is thought to have written over 8000 pieces, but 5000 of these were short fugues.)

Telemann was highly regarded during his lifetime, and for several decades afterwards; however, by the first decades of the 19th century his works were performed less frequently. The last performance of a substantial work by Telemann, Der Tod Jesu, until the 20th century, was in 1832. Indeed, the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which includes large articles on both J. S. Bach and Handel, does not contain an entry on Telemann.

The revival of interest in Telemann began in the first decades of the 20th century and culminated in the Bärenreiter critical edition of the 1950s. Early music ensembles now commonly perform Telemann's works and numerous recordings of his music are available.

Today each of Telemann's works is usually given a TWV number. TWV stands for Telemann Werkeverzeichnis (Telemann Work Catalogue). TWV is followed by a numeral, a colon, a letter and a number. The first number after TWV indicates the general type of medium, the letter after the colon is the key of the particular work, and the following number is the numbering within that type of work. For example, Telemann's Concerto polonois in Bb Major for strings and basso continuo is TWV 43:B3.

***


The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois," "hoboy," or "French hoboy."

The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca. 1770 from the Italian oboè, as close as possible a representation in that language's orthography of the 17th-century pronunciation of the French word hautbois, a compound word made of haut ("high, loud") and bois ("wood, woodwind"). A musician who plays the oboe is called an oboist. Careful manipulation of embouchure and air pressure allows the player to express a large timbral and dynamic range.

In comparison to other modern woodwind instruments, the oboe has a clear and penetrating voice. The Sprightly Companion, an instruction book of 1695, describes the voice as "Majestical and Stately, and not much Inferior to the Trumpet." Similarly, the voice is described in the play Angels in America as sounding like that of a duck if the duck were a songbird. The timbre of the oboe is derived from the oboe's conical bore (as opposed to the generally cylindrical bore of flutes and clarinets). As a result, oboes are readily audible over other instruments in large ensembles.

The oboe is pitched in concert C and has a mezzo-soprano to soprano range. Orchestras will usually tune by listening to the oboe play a concert A (usually A440, but sometimes higher if the orchestra tunes to a higher pitch). The pitch of the oboe may be adjusted by permanently altering the scrape, removing cane from the reed, or changing the position of the reed in the instrument (although the latter method should only be used as a last resort, because adjusting the position of the reed may cause some notes to warble). Subtle changes in pitch are also possible by adjusting the embouchure.

The baroque oboe first appeared in the French court in the mid-1600's, where it was called hautbois. The basic form of the instrument was derived from the shawm, an instrument widely used in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Musician and instrument maker Martin Hotteterre was responsible for many of the new instrument's early developments, according to one source, while another credits Jean Hotteterre and Michel Philidor, ca. 1657.

The instrument quickly spread throughout Europe (including England, where it was called "hautboy," "hoboy," "hautboit," "howboye," and similar variants of the French name).

It was the main melody instrument in early military bands, until it was succeeded by the clarinet.

The baroque oboe was generally made of boxwood and had three keys; a "great," and two side keys. (The side key was often doubled to facilitate use of either the right or left hand on the bottom holes) In order to produce higher pitches, the player had to "overblow," or increase the air stream to reach the next harmonic. Notable oboe-makers of the period are the German Denner and Eichentopf, and the English Stanesby Sr. and Jr. The range for the baroque oboe comfortably extends from c1 to d3. With the resurgence of interest in early music in the mid 20th century, a few makers began producing copies to specifications from surviving historical instruments.

***




Johann Mattheson (September 28, 1681 - April 17, 1764) was a German composer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat, and music theorist.

Mattheson was born and died in Hamburg. He was a close friend of George Frideric Handel, although he nearly killed him in a sudden quarrel, during a performance of Mattheson's opera Cleopatra in 1704. Handel was saved only by a large button which turned aside Mattheson's sword. The two were afterwards reconciled.

The son of a well-to-do tax collector, Mattheson received a broad liberal education and, aside from general musical training, took lessons in keyboard instruments, violin, composition and singing. By age nine he was singing and playing organ in church and was a member of the chorus of the Hamburg opera. He made his solo debut with the Hamburg opera in 1696 in female roles and, after his voice changed, sang tenor at the opera, conducted rehearsals and composed operas himself. He was cantor at the cathedral from 1718 until increasing deafness led to his retirement from that post.

Mattheson's chief occupation from 1706 was as a professional diplomat. He had studied English in school and spoke it fluently. He became tutor to the son of the English ambassador Sir John Wich and then secretary to the ambassador. He went on diplomatic missions abroad representing the ambassador. In 1709 he married an English woman.

After his death in 1764, Johann Mattheson was buried in the vault of Hamburg's St. Michaelis' Church where his grave can be visited to this day.

Mattheson is mainly famous as a music theorist. He was the most thorough writer on performance practice, theatrical style, and harmony of the German Baroque. In addition to some original work -- particularly on the relationship of the disciplines of rhetoric and music -- he was a compiler of most of the ideas current at the time.

The bulk of his compositional output was vocal, including eight operas, and numerous oratorios and cantatas. He also wrote a few sonatas and some keyboard music, including pieces meant for keyboard instruction. All of his music, except for one opera, one oratorio, and a few collections of instrumental music, went missing with the spoils of war after World War II, but was given back to Hamburg by Yerevan (Armenia) in 1998. This includes four Operas and most of the oratorios. The manuscripts are now located at the Staats and Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, former Hamburg Stadtbibliothek.

Further Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Johann Mattheson
The Complete Music Master (1739) (Pages 217-219)

[8682 Mouret / 8681 Telemann / 8678 Vivaldi]

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678, Venice - July 28, 1741) was baptized immediately at his home by the midwife. It is not known how the life of the infant was in danger, but the immediate baptism was most likely due to his poor health or to an earthquake that shook the city that day. Vivaldi's official church baptism (at least, the rites that remained other than the actual baptism itself) did not take place until two months later. His father, Giovanni Battista, a barber before becoming a professional violinist, taught him to play violin and then toured Venice playing the violin with his young son. Giovanni Battista was one of the founders of the Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia, a sort of trade union for musicians and composers. The president of the association was Giovanni Legrenzi, the maestro di cappella at St. Mark's Basilica and noted early Baroque composer. It is possible that the young Antonio's first lessons in composition were imparted by him. The Luxembourg scholar Walter Kolneder sees in the early liturgical work Laetatus sum (RV Anh 31, written in 1691 at the age of 13) the influence of Legrenzi's style. His father may have been a composer himself: in 1688, an opera titled La Fedeltà sfortunata was composed by a Giovanni Battista Rossi, and this was the name under which Vivaldi's father had joined the Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia ("Rossi" for "Red", because of the colour of his hair, a family trait).

Vivaldi had a medical problem that he called the tightening of the chest (probably some form of asthma). His medical problem, however, did not prevent him from learning to play the violin, composing, or taking part in many musical activities. However, he could not play wind instruments due to his lack of breath. At the age of 15 (1693), he began studying to become a priest. In 1703, at the age of 25, Vivaldi was ordained a priest and was soon nicknamed il Prete Rosso, "The Red Priest," probably because of his red hair.

In September 1703, Vivaldi became maestro di violino (master of violin) at an orphanage called the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice.

There were four such institutions in Venice; their purpose was to give shelter and education to children who were abandoned, orphaned, or whose families could not support them. They were financed by funds provided by the Republic. The boys learned a trade and had to leave at age 15. The girls received a musical education, and the most talented stayed and became members of the Ospedale's renowned orchestra and choir.

Shortly after his appointment, the orphans began to gain appreciation and esteem abroad, too; Vivaldi wrote most of his concertos, cantatas, and sacred music for them. In 1704, the position of teacher of viola all'inglese was added to his duties as violin instructor.

Not long after his ordination, in 1704, he was given a reprieve from celebrating the Holy Mass because of his ill health. From that point onward, he appears to have withdrawn from active practice, but did remain a priest.

In 1705, the first collection (Raccolta) of his works was published: his Opus 1 is a collection of 12 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, still in a conventional style.

In 1709, a second collection of 12 sonatas for violin & basso continuo appeared (Opus 2).

His relationship with the board of directors of the Ospedale was often strained. The board had to take a vote every year on whether to keep a teacher. The vote on Vivaldi was seldom unanimous, and in that same year, he lost his job after a seven-to-six vote.

***

Gloria (1709): I. Gloria





Vivaldi wrote several settings of the Gloria. RV 589 is the most familiar and popular piece of sacred music by Vivaldi; however, he was known to have written at least three Gloria settings. Only two survive (RV 588 and RV 589) while the other (RV 590) is presumably lost and is only mentioned in the Kreuzherren catalogue.

RV 589 is the better known setting of the Gloria, simply known as "the Vivaldi Gloria" due to its outstanding popularity.

RV 589 is more mature and original than its predecessor, however evidence of obvious inspiration (and borrowings) still exist. The first movement's chorus shares similar key modulations to that of the first movement of RV 588, only modified to fit a 4/4 meter instead of the 3/4 meter of RV 588; the orchestral motifs are also shared, including octaval jumps in the primal motives of the piece. The second movement is much more dramatic in RV 589, but nevertheless shares with RV Anh. 23 in that the second movement of both employ the use of incessant and repetitious moving figures behind chord progressions in the chorus. The "Qui Tollis" movement of RV 589 is rhythmically similar to the first few measures of RV 588 (and ultimately RV Anh. 23). The last movement, "Cum Sancto Spiritu," is essentially an "upgraded" version of Ruggieri's original movement -- that is to say, updated to fit the standards of the emerging classical style, with the addition of accidentals that were missing in RV Anh. 23 and RV 588.

Gloria in excelsis Deo (Chorus)
Et in terra pax (Chorus)
Laudamus te (Sopranos I and II)
Gratias agimus tibi (Chorus)
Propter magnam gloriam (Chorus)
Domine Deus (Soprano)
Domine, Fili unigenite (Chorus)
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei (Contralto and Chorus)
Qui tollis peccata mundi (Chorus)
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris (Contralto)
Quoniam tu solus sanctus (Chorus)
Cum Sancto Spiritu (Chorus)


The Glorias remained in a relatively unknown status, until RV 589's revival by Alfredo Casella during Vivaldi Week in



Siena (1939), along with the composer's setting of the Stabat Mater (RV 621). RV 589 enjoys well-founded popularity, performed at many sacred events, including Christmas. It has been recorded on almost one hundred CDs, sometimes paired with Bach's Magnificat (BWV 243), Vivaldi's own Magnificat settings (RV 610-611), or Vivaldi's Beatus Vir (RV 597). RV 588, however, has had little success and has only been published in few albums.

As with many other pieces of the Baroque era, RV 589 (and its lesser known companion RV 588) have been performed in historically-performed instrumentation, even with the use of an all-female choir to simulate choral conditions at the Pietà.

***

After a year as a freelance musician, he was recalled by the Ospedale with a unanimous vote in 1711; clearly the board had realized the importance of his role by then.

In February of that year, Vivaldi and his father went to Brescia, where his setting of the Stabat Mater (RV 621) was played as part of a religious festival. The work reveals musical and emotional depth and is one of Vivaldi's early masterpieces.

A stylistic breakthrough came with his first collection of 12 concerti for one, two, and four violins with strings, L'estro armonico (Opus 3), which was published in Amsterdam in 1711 by Estienne Roger, and was a resounding success all over Europe,

Concerto Grosso in A Minor
(L'Estro Armonico) (The Harmonic Whim)

In 1713, he became responsible for the musical activity of the institute.

In the Venice of the early 18th Century, opera was the most popular musical entertainment and the most profitable for the composer. There were several theaters competing for the public attention. Vivaldi started his career as opera writer in undertone: his first opera, Ottone in villa (RV 729) was performed not in Venice, but at the Garzerie theater in Vicenza in that year.

In 1714, Vivaldi made the jump to Venice and became the impresario of the theater Sant'Angelo in Venice, where his opera Orlando finto pazzo (RV 727) was performed. However, the work did not meet the public's taste, and Vivaldi had to close it after a couple of weeks and replace it with a rerun of a different work already given the previous year.

This period also saw the publication of La stravaganza (Opus 4), a collection of concerti for solo violin and strings.

In 1715, he presented Nerone fatto Cesare (RV 724, lost), with music by seven different composers, of which he was the leader, with eleven arias. This time it was a success, and in the late season, Vivaldi planned to give an opera completely of his own hand, Arsilda regina di Ponto (RV 700). However, the state censor blocked the performance, objecting to the plot: the main character, Arsilda, falls in love with another woman, Lisea, who is pretending to be a man.

Vivaldi managed to get the opera through censorship the following year, and it was eventually performed to a resounding success.

In this same period of time, the Pietà commissioned several liturgical works. The most important were two oratorios. The first, Moyses Deus Pharaonis, (RV 643) is lost. The second, Juditha triumphans (RV 644), composed in 1716, is one of his sacred masterpieces.

It was commissioned to celebrate the victory of the Republic of Venice against the Turks and the recapture of the island of Corfù. All eleven singing parts were performed by girls of the Pietà, both for the female and male characters. Many of the arias included parts by solo instruments -- recorders, oboes, clarinets, violas d'amore, and mandolins -- that showcased the range of talents of the girls.

In the same year, Vivaldi wrote and produced two more operas, L'incoronazione di Dario (RV 719) and La costanza trionfante degli amori e degli odi (RV 706).

Vivaldi was promoted to maestro de' concerti at this time.

***

Opus 5, (second part of Opus 2), four sonatas for violin and two sonatas for two violins and basso continuo (1716).

Opus 6, six violin concerti (1716–21)

Opus 7, two oboe concerti and 10 violin concerti (1716–1717)

***

La costanza was so popular that it was re-edited and titled in 1718 as Artabano re dei Parti (RV 701, lost)

In 1718, Vivaldi began to travel. Despite his frequent travels, the Pietà paid him to write two concerti a month for the orchestra and to rehearse with them at least five times when in Venice.

About this time, Vivaldi was offered a new prestigious position as Maestro di Cappella of the court of the prince Phillip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua. He moved there for three years and produced several operas, among which was Tito Manlio (RV 738). In 1721, he was in Milan, presenting the pastoral drama La Silvia (RV 734, lost) and again the next year with the oratorio L'adorazione delli tre re magi al bambino Gesù (RV 645, also lost). The next big step was a move to Rome in 1722, where his operas introduced the new style and where the new pope Benedict XIII invited Vivaldi to play for him.

Meanwhile, the Pietà's records show that he was paid for 140 concerti between 1723 and 1733.

In 1725, Vivaldi returned to Venice, where he produced four operas in the same year.



The Seasons (1725): Spring: I





It is also in this period that he wrote the Four Seasons, four violin concertos depicting natural scenes in music. While three of the concerti are of original conception, the first, "Spring", borrows motifs from a Sinfonia in the first act of his opera Il Giustino, composed at the same time as The Four Seasons. The inspiration for them was probably the countryside around Mantua. They were a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterised), barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, crying shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties (both from the hunter's and the prey's point of view), frozen landscapes, children ice-skating, and burning fires. Each concerto was associated with a sonnet of Vivaldi's hand, describing the scenes depicted in the music. They were published as the first four of a collection of twelve, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention), his Opus 8, published in Amsterdam by Le Cène in 1725.

***

Mandolin Concerto in D: 2 Largo (arr. Pujol ed. Isbin): 2 Largo (1725) (Guitar)



***

During his time in Mantua, Vivaldi became acquainted with two natives of that city: Paolina Trevisana and her younger half-sister, Anna Giro. Paolina appears to have become his personal assistant, and Anna Giro was to become his student, protégée, and favorite prima donna. Both ladies left Mantua to live with him in Venice and remained close with him to the end of his life. There was some speculation about the nature of his relationship with the two ladies, but never hard evidence to indicate anything beyond friendship and professional collaboration.

***

Opus 9, La Cetra (The Lyre), twelve violin concerti and one for two violins (1727)

Opus 10, six flute concertos (c. 1728)

Piccolo Concerto No. 1: 1 Allegro (1728)



***

At the height of his career, Vivaldi received commissions from European nobles and royalty.

The wedding cantata Gloria e Imeneo (RV 687) was written for the marriage of Louis XV. Opus 9, La Cetra, was dedicated to Emperor Charles VI. In 1728, Vivaldi had the chance to meet the Emperor in person when he came to Trieste to oversee the construction of a new port. Charles admired the music of the Red Priest so much that he is said to have spoken more with the composer in that occasion than with his ministers in two years. He gave him the title of knight, a gold medal, and an invitation to come to Vienna. On his part, Vivaldi gave Charles a manuscript copy of La Cetra; this is a set of concerti almost completely different from the one published with the same title as Opus 9. Probably the printing had been delayed and Vivaldi was forced to gather an improvised collection.

***

Opus 11, five violin concerti, one oboe concerto, the second in E minor, RV 277, being known as "Il favorito" (1729)

Opus 12, five violin concerti and one without solo (1729)

***

In 1730, accompanied by his father, he traveled to Vienna and Prague, where his opera Farnace (RV 711) was presented. Some late operas marked the collaboration with two of Italy's major writers of the time. L'Olimpiade and Catone in Utica were written by Pietro Metastasio, the major representative of the Arcadian movement and court poet in Vienna. La Griselda was rewritten by the young Carlo Goldoni from an earlier libretto by Apostolo Zeno.

Artabano was eventually performed in Prague in 1732. In the following years, Vivaldi wrote several operas that were performed all over Italy.

His modern operatic style caused him some trouble with other more conservative musicians, like Benedetto Marcello, a magistrate and amateur musician who wrote a pamphlet denouncing him and the modern style of opera. The pamphlet is called Il teatro alla moda, and its cover has a caricature of Vivaldi playing the violin. The Marcello family was the rightful owner of the Sant'Angelo theater, and a long legal battle had been fought with the management for its restitution, without success. The booklet attacks Vivaldi without mentioning him directly. The cover drawing shows a boat (the Sant'Angelo), on the left end of which stands a little angel wearing a priest's hat and playing the violin. It is a caricature of Vivaldi. The obscure writing under the picture mentions nonexistent places and names. In particular, ALDIVIVA is an anagram of A. Vivaldi.

***

Opus 13, Il pastor fido (The Faithful Shepherd), six sonatas for musette, viela, recorder, flute, oboe or violin, and basso continuo (1737, spurious works by Nicolas Chédeville).

***

Vivaldi's life, like those of many composers of the time, ended in financial difficulties. His compositions no longer held the high esteem they once did in Venice; changing musical tastes quickly made them outmoded, and Vivaldi, in response, chose to sell off sizeable numbers of his manuscripts at paltry prices to finance a migration to Vienna. The reasons for Vivaldi's departure from Venice are unclear, but it seems likely that he wished to meet Charles VI, who appreciated his compositions (Vivaldi had even dedicated La Cetra to Charles in 1727), and take up the position of a composer in the Imperial Court. It is ever more likely that Vivaldi went to Vienna to stage operas, especially as his place of residence was near the Kärntnertortheater. However, shortly after Vivaldi's arrival at Vienna, Charles died. This tragic stroke of bad luck left the composer without royal protection and a source of income. Vivaldi eventually died not long after, on the night of July 27-28, 1741, of internal infection in a house owned by the widow of a Viennese saddlemaker. On July 28, he was buried in a simple grave at the Hospital Burial Ground in Vienna (the assumption that the young Joseph Haydn sang in the choir at Vivaldi's burial was based on the mistranscription of a primary source and has been proven wrong). Contrary to popular assumptions, no evidence exists regarding Vivaldi's having been buried as a pauper.

His burial spot is next to the Karlskirche in Vienna, at the site of the Technical Institute. The house he lived in while in Vienna was torn down. In part of its place there is now the Hotel Sacher. Memorial plaques have been placed at both locations, as well as a Vivaldi star in the Viennese Musikmeile and a monument at the Rooseveltplatz.

Many of Vivaldi's compositions reflect a flamboyant, almost playful, exuberance. Most of Vivaldi's repertoire was rediscovered only in the first half of the 20th century in Turin and Genoa and was published in the second half. Vivaldi's music is innovative, breaking a consolidated tradition in schemes; he gave brightness to the formal and the rhythmic structure of the concerto, repeatedly looking for harmonic contrasts and innovative melodies and themes. Moreover, Vivaldi was able to compose nonacademic music, particularly meant to be appreciated by the wide public and not only by an intellectual minority. The joyful appearance of his music reveals in this regard a transmissible joy of composing; these are among the causes of the vast popularity of his music. This popularity soon made him famous in other countries such as France which was, at the time, very independent concerning its musical taste.

Vivaldi is considered one of the composers who brought Baroque music (with its typical contrast among heavy sonorities) to evolve into a classical style. Johann Sebastian Bach was deeply influenced by Vivaldi's concertos and arias (recalled in his Johannes Passion, Matthäuspassion, and cantatas). Bach transcribed a number of Vivaldi's concerti for solo keyboard, along with a number for orchestra, including the famous Concerto for Four Violins and Violoncello, Strings, and Continuo (RV 580).

Vivaldi remained unknown for his published concerti, and largely ignored, even after the resurgence of interest in Bach, pioneered by Mendelssohn. Even his most famous. work, The Four Seasons, was unknown in its original edition. In the early 20th century, Fritz Kreisler's concerto in the style of Vivaldi, which he passed off as an original Vivaldi work, helped revive Vivaldi's reputation. This impelled the French scholar Marc Pincherle to begin academic work on Vivaldi's oeuvre. The discovery of many Vivaldi manuscripts and their acquisition by the National University of Turin Library (with the generous sponsorship of Roberto Foa and Filippo Giordano, in memory of their sons, respectively, Mauro and Renzo) led to renewed interest in Vivaldi. People such as Marc Pincherle, Mario Rinaldi, Alfredo Casella, Ezra Pound, Olga Rudge, Arturo Toscanini, and Louis Kaufman were instrumental in the Vivaldi revival of the 20th century. The resurrection of Vivaldi's unpublished works in the 20th century is mostly thanks to the efforts of Alfredo Casella, who in 1939 organised the now historic Vivaldi Week, in which the rediscovered Gloria (RV 589) and l'Olimpiade were first heard again. Since World War II, Vivaldi's compositions have enjoyed almost universal success, and the advent of historically informed performances has only increased his fame. In 1947, the Venetian businessman Antonio Fanna founded the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi, with the composer Gian Francesco Malipiero as its artistic director, having the purpose of promoting Vivaldi's music and publishing new editions of his works.

A movie titled Vivaldi, a Prince in Venice was completed in 2005 as an Italian-French coproduction under the direction of Jean-Louis Guillermou, featuring Stefano Dionisi in the title role and Michel Serrault as the bishop of Venice. Another film inspired by the life of the composer was in a preproduction state for several years and has the working title Vivaldi. Filming was scheduled to begin in 2007, but was canceled and tentatively rescheduled for 2008.

His compositions include:

Over 500 concerti; approximately 350 of these are for solo instrument and strings, and of these about 230 are for violin; the others are for bassoon, cello, oboe, flute, viola d'amore, recorder, lute, and mandolin. Approximately 40 concerti are for two instruments and strings, and approximately 30 are for three or more instruments and strings.

46 operas

sinfonias

73 sonatas

chamber music (even if some sonatas for flute, as Il Pastor Fido, have been erroneously attributed to him, but were composed by Chédeville).

sacred music

His most famous work is 1725's Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons). In essence, it resembled an early example of a tone poem, where he attempted to capture all the moods of the four seasons without the use of percussion to dramatize the effects he sought to portray.

“ The fate of the Italian composer's legacy is unique. After the Napoleonic wars, it was thought that a large part of Vivaldi's work had been irrevocably lost. However, in the autumn of 1926, after a detectivelike search by researchers, 14 folios of Vivaldi's previously unknown religious and secular works were found in the library of a monastery in Piedmont. Some even- and odd-numbered volumes were missing, and so the search continued. Finally, in October 1930, the missing volumes were found to be with the descendants of the Grand Duke Durazzo, who had acquired the property as early as the eighteenth century.

To its amazement, the world of music was presented with 300 concerts for various instruments and 18 operas, not counting a number of arias and more than 100 vocal-instrumental pieces. Such an impressive list of newly unearthed opuses warranted a re-evaluation of Vivaldi's creativity.”

Recently, four sacred vocal works by Vivaldi have been discovered in the Saxon State Library in Dresden. These compositions were improperly attributed to Baldassare Galuppi, a Venetian composer of the early classical period, mostly famous for his choral works.

In the 1750's or 1760's, the Saxon court asked for some sacred works by Galuppi from the Venetian copyist Don Giuseppe Baldan. Baldan included, among authentic works by Galuppi, the four compositions by Vivaldi, passing them off as Galuppi's. He probably obtained the originals from two of Vivaldi's nephews, (Carlo Vivaldi and Daniele Mauro), who worked under him as copyists.

The recognition of Vivaldi's authorship could be made by analyzing style and instrumentation and by recognizing arias from Vivaldi's operas.

The two most recent among these discoveries are two psalm settings of Nisi Dominus (RV 803, in eight movements) and Dixit Dominus (RV 807, in 11 movements), identified in 2003 and 2005, respectively, by the Australian scholar Janice Stockigt.

Vivaldi's opera Argippo (RV 697) premiered in the Palace of Count Spork, Prague in 1730. The libretto was preserved but the music was presumed to have been lost until portions of it (over two thirds) was discovered in the private archive of the Thurn und Taxis house in Regensburg, in 2006 by harpsichordist and conductor Ondřej Macek.

Further Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
J.F.A. von Uffenbach
A Traveler's Impression of Vivaldi (Pages 235-236)

[8681 Telemann / 8678 Vivaldi / 8674 Jeremiah Clarke]

Jeremiah Clarke (c. 1674-1707) - Instruments

Jeremiah Clarke (c. 1674-1707) - Trumpet Voluntary





Jeremiah Clarke (c. 1674 - December 1, 1707) was an English baroque composer.

Thought to have been born in London in 1674, Clarke was a pupil of John Blow at St Paul's Cathedral. He later became organist at the Chapel Royal. "A violent and hopeless passion for a very beautiful lady of a rank superior to his own" caused him to commit suicide by shooting himself. Before shooting himself, he also considered hanging and drowning. Clarke was succeeded in his post by William Croft.

Jeremiah Clarke is now best remembered for the popular keyboard piece attributed to him, the Prince of Denmark's March, commonly called the Trumpet Voluntary and attributed for a long time to Henry Purcell. The famous Trumpet Tune in D, also misattributed to Purcell, is actually taken from the semi-opera The Island Princess, a joint musical production of Clarke and Daniel Purcell (Henry Purcell's younger brother), which is probably the reason for the confusion.

***

The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family.

Trumpets date back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.

There are several types of trumpet; the most common being a transposing instrument pitched in B flat. Older trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.

The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period.

Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder.

The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD.

The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.

In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register, by specialist trumpeters, would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."

***



Pierre Rameau (1674 – 1748) was the French dancing master to Elisabetta Farnese, and the author of two books that now provide valuable information about Baroque dance.

Rameau's first book, Le Maître à Danser (1725, Paris), was a dance manual giving instruction on formal ballroom dancing in the French style. The first part covers posture, reverences, steps, and the ballroom minuet, while the second part is concerned entirely with the use of the arms. His second book, Abbregé de la Nouvelle Methode (c1725, Paris), described a modified version of Beauchamp-Feuillet notation and included several choreographies by Pécour in the new notation. While Rameau's notation was not generally adopted, his information about the shortcomings of Beauchamp-Feuillet notation provides dance historians with clarifications about the execution of the steps.

Further Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Pierre Rameau
The Dancing Master (Pages 197-200)

***


Francesco Scipione, Marchese di Maffei (June 1, 1675, Verona, Italy - February 11, 1755) was an Italian writer and art critic, author of many articles and plays. An antiquarian with a humanist education whose publications on Etruscan antiquities stand as incunabula of Etruscology, he engaged in running skirmishes in print with his rival in the field of antiquities, Antonio Francesco Gori.

He is also known for having written an influential article about the first



pianofortes of


Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731), which initiated the second generation of pianoforte-makers in Italy at that time.

Further Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music of the Western World: A History in Documents
Scipione Maffei
New Invention of a Harpsichord with the Piano and the Forte;
Also Some Remarks upon Musical Instruments (1711) (Pages 238-240)

[8678 Vivaldi / 8674 Jeremiah Clarke / 8668 Couperin]