MASTERPIECES

BAROQUE

Un merci trs spcial Franois de Tonnancour et Alain Charlebois chez Archambault pour leur implication dans llaboration de ce coffret unique.

CD 1 & 2 Tomaso Albinoni Oboe concertos and violin concertos op. 9

When Tomaso Albinoni was born in June 1671, his home town of Venice already boasted a long and splendid musical heritage. Sacred music had been cultivated there since time immemorial, and had achieved the artistic excellence that is still revered today, through the work of such composers as Adrian Willaert and the Gabrieli brothers at St. Marks Basilica. Secular music has been documented in the floating city since the eleventh century. It was first performed in the palaces of the nobility and the patrician merchant class, before the first opera house in the world was founded in 1637 and all the citizens of Venice were able to pursue their love for music. Giovanni Antonio Albinoni, father of the future composer, may well have been among the audience in one of the many opera houses that were subsequently built in Venice. He had come to Venice as a young man, and had risen to considerable eminence having obtained the rights to manufacture paper and playing cards. The family lived in a wealthy part of the city near St. Marks, and in addition to the education befitting his social status, young Tomaso took music lessons, initially including violin and singing, and subsequently composition. He was not, however, destined for a career in music, because social convention in the early modern age dictated that firstborn sons such as Tomaso would take over their fathers business. Thus, Tomaso Albinoni was initially obliged to lead a dual existence as merchant and composer. He was already established as a composer by 1694, when his first opera Zenobia, regina de Palmireni was performed to great acclaim during the most important of Venices four annual opera seasons, the Carnevale. In addition to working on his compositions, which included operas and some early instrumental works, he joined the familys business at an early age, and correctly described himself on his compositions as a Dilettante - which at the time referred to people who devoted their lives to art and often practised it at a very high level, without making it their main occupation (H. C. Koch). Albinoni did not shed this label until 1709, when he left the family business upon the death of his father, passed his inheritance to his younger brothers and devoted himself entirely to music from then on. At this point, he was already known beyond the borders of his hometown as a composer of operas, and could count on being able to live on the proceeds of the many performances of his works for the new public opera houses were not only temples to the muses, but also tremendous business ventures, in which a composer could earn more money in an evening than in an entire year of service at a renowned church such as St. Marks. Besides composing operas, Tomaso Albinoni concentrated on instrumental music. Thus, in 1694, he not only published his first opera, but also his first collection of instrumental works, the chamber-like Suonate a tre, op. 1. It was in 1700 when Albinoni first devoted his attention to the rather recent style of the concerto, which he applied to the string instruments in the Sinfonie e concerti a cinque, op. 2, and the collection Concerti a cinque, op. 5 (1707). His oboe concertos did not appear until several years later, in the Concerti a cinque collections, opp. 7 (1717) and 9 (1722). They are among the earliest representatives of the genre, and were the first oboe concertos not only to be circulated amongst musicians as manuscript copies, but also to appear in printed form and be available for purchase by anyone a circumstance which facilitated their circulation in the musical world. The background to the composition of these pieces has not as yet been completely researched, but what is known provides a fascinating glimpse into the musical life of the early 18th century. Beyond the traditional homes of musical performance, court and church, a lively secular music scene was developing, bolstered by professional musicians and a growing number of amateurs. Insatiable demand for new music fostered the development of new genres, amongst them the symphony and the instrumental concerto. Even the concept of the ideal sound was in a state of flux: medival-sounding instruments were being replaced by more modern instruments for example, the shawm was replaced by the hautboy, the baroque oboe.

A new era was also beginning for the music publishing world. Publishers from Italy, France, England, and the Netherlands were in competition over the steadily growing market, and were constantly seeking innovations. Estienne Roger, a publisher in Amsterdam, was particularly zealous. In engraving, he made use of a printing technique that was aesthetically superior to those available in Albinonis hometown, and he was not afraid to publish promising works in pirated editions. Already in 1702, shortly after the Venetian first editions of Albinonis early instrumental collection (opp. 1, 2, 3 & 5) appeared, Roger published pirated editions of the same. In those days before copyright law, Albinoni had no recourse against such acts. However, he also benefited from them, as Rogers distribution network reached far and wide: as a result Albinonis music became known and valued well beyond Italys borders, even as far afield as England. The formerly very successful Venetian publishers could not offer such prospects; therefore it is not surprising that Albinoni had his subsequent instrumental music collections directly published by Roger in Amsterdam. Other Venetian composers independently proceeded likewise, including Antonio Vivaldi with his famous collection of concertos, L estro armonico, which appeared in 1711. Albinonis Trattenimenti armonici per camera, op. 6, were the first result of his new collaboration with Roger. Like their predecessors, the works were scored for strings alone; however, the more limited space for improvisation in the slow movements indicates an effort on Albinonis part to accommodate new customers beyond the Alps. Whereas the art of improvisation was well developed among professional Italian violinists, giving them a particular chance to shine during the slow movements with extended ornamented passages and melodic alterations, northern European violinists (especially the amateurs among them) were hardly familiar with the practice of improvisation at all, so Albinoni transcribed the notes more elaborately than in his earlier works. Albinonis next collection, the 1715 Concerti a cinque, op. 7 contained another innovation: concertante works for the oboe. Following the success of Albinonis previous six collections for strings, there was no question that his concertante style appealed to the European audience. It seems plausible that the enterprising Roger encouraged Albinoni to turn his talents toward the oboe as well. This instrument had gained many enthusiasts, especially north of the Alps, since its invention around 1650, but solo concertos were not available a circumstance reversed by the Concerti a cinque, op. 7. In addition to four string works in concerto grosso style (nos. 1, 4, 7 & 10), the collection contained four solo concertos and four double concertos for oboe (nos. 3, 6, 9 & 12 and nos. 2, 5, 8 & 11). Since Albinoni had no immediate precedent for these oboe concertos, the question of their formal structure merits especial attention. Judging by the development of instrumental solo concertos up to that point, it might have been expected that Albinoni would have based the structure of his oboe concertos on that of violin concertos, the predominant model at the time. That would have meant, for example, that the oboe would have doubled the first violins on the melody in tutti sections, and contrasted with them in a technically elaborate fashion during the solo sections. Tomaso Albinoni developed his own way forward, however, drawing from his rich experience as a composer of operas. He shaped the melody of the oboe line similar to the one of the vocal aria, thus exploiting the lyrically expressive capabilities of the instrument. Like other Venetian oboe composers of the time, he avoided the instruments low register, and set the line in a tessitura above that of the violins. For the formal structure, Albinoni used the same division of the concertos, practised by Vivaldi and other contemporaries, namely a division into three movements according to the succession fastslow-fast, and thus contributed to the establishment of this form as the standard. When constructing the individual movements in terms of the order of tutti and solo passages, Albinoni once again reached into his operatic style, especially by using patterns established in vocal arias. This manifests itself particularly in the opening bars of the fast outer movements: like the solo voice in the operatic aria, the solo oboe is silent during the opening orchestral ritornello, and then, in the following section of the movement, leads in with mostly short solo phrases, which are answered by the strings. Solo and tutti passages then alternate in various keys. As the movement continues, the contrasts between the tutti sections and the solo instrument, which now provides an occasional countermelody, increases, until the movement concludes with a coda for the entire orchestra. In the slow movement, Albinoni reverts once more to established patterns. He treats the ensemble writing in a fashion similar to his earlier trio sonatas, devoting it entirely to the accompaniment of the oboe line, which often resembles a through-composed cantilena.

In his concertos for two oboes, Albinoni initially faced the question of how to treat the relationship between the two solo instruments. Instead of establishing a dialogue between the two soloists, as Vivaldi had done, Albinoni usually chose homophonic voice-leading, in which the lines generally run in parallel thirds, with only very occasional contrapuntal figures. In these works, both the choice of key (C major and D major) and the voice-leading of the oboe lines are strongly reminiscent of trumpet concertos of the time, particularly during strongly triadic passages. After the publication in 1715 of the Concerti a cinque, op. 7, Albinoni published a further collection of instrumental concertos in 1722, op. 9, also entitled Concerti a cinque. The most ambitious of his instrumental projects comprises four concertante works for strings, which had evolved into real violin concertos (nos. 1, 4, 7 & 10), and, again, four solo concertos and four double concertos for oboe (nos. 2, 5, 8 & 11 and nos. 3, 6, 9 & 12). While composing these works, Albinoni was able on the one hand to draw on his experience from op. 7, and on the other hand was aware of the best possibilities for performance. The Concerti a cinque, op. 9, are dedicated to Maximilian II Emanuel, prince elector of Bavaria, a great lover of the arts, who was in addition to the serious duties of state, not disinclined toward the sounds of the lyre, according to Albinonis dedication. Maximilian Emanuel kept a first-rate orchestra, which included no fewer than five French oboists, whom he had engaged after his exile in France. Albinonis increased technical demands are evident in several places, not least in the length of the new pieces, which are on average a quarter to a third longer than the pieces in op. 7. In addition, the internal structure of the musical setting, such as the interplay of the musical lines, was now worked out much more elaborately than even only a few years previously, particularly in the inner lines. In view of the dedicatees extensive musical knowledge and the highly international nature of the ensemble led by the Italian concertmaster Evaristo Felice Dall Abaco, Albinoni introduced characteristics of the various European national music styles of the time into his concertos as well as musical allegories. The many repeated notes in the unison string sections in the first movement of the double oboe concerto op. 9, no. 6 in G major are reminiscent of the bass drums in military music of the time, a tribute to Maximilians military pursuits. By contrast, the fast final movement of that double concerto is rhythmically based on the minuet, a courtly dance of French origin. Another musical rendering of courtly life is evident in concerto no. 3 in F major. For the first time in his instrumental music, Albinoni composes in the alla caccia (hunting) style, and lets the pair of oboes sound in the style of natural horns, the traditional hunting instrument of the nobility. Op. 9 concluded Albinonis contribution to the history of the oboe concerto. Until his death in 1751, he devoted himself primarily to opera. Albinonis contemporary, the flautist and music theoretician Johann Joachim Quantz, honoured his contributions to the concerto genre in his monograph On playing the Flute, declaring Albinoni one of the most significant promoters of the instrumental concerto along with Antonio Vivaldi. Further proof of how highly esteemed Albinonis works were by his contemporaries is evident in Bachs adaptations of his works. Further recommended reading on Albinonis life and works includes the writings of the Albinoni scholar Michael Talbot: Albinoni - Leben und Werk (Edition Kunzelmann, 1980, in German) and Tomaso Albinoni - The Venetian Composer and His World (Clarendon Press, 1990, in English).

CD 3 Johann Sebastian Bach Brandenburg Concertos 1-2-3

The surviving orchestral works of Johann Sebastian Bach provide examples of concertos and suites, the two most important orchestral genres in the late Baroque. Bach dedicated his final versions of the six Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-1051) on March 24, 1721 to Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg. Probably each concerto had had earlier performances (at least two - Nos. 1 and 5 - in different versions) in Weimar or Cthen. The Brandenburg Concertos are not solo concertos in the sense in which we understand concertos today, but examples of earlier forms of concerted music. Each of the six features a different combination of solo and tutti instruments, combinations that are highly unusual for the late Baroque. In three of these concertos (Nos. 1, 3 and 6) the orchestra is divided into well-balanced instrumental groups which pass themes from one to another in a lively musical dialogue, comparable to a series of questions and answers. From time to time a solo instrument takes control of the conversation. The three other concertos (Nos. 2, 4, and 5) are typical of the concerto grosso, with three or four solo instruments (concertino) competing with an accompanying group of strings (the ripieno). However, one solo instrument in each of these concertos stands out above the others in the concertino (the trumpet, violin, and harpsichord in Nos. 2, 4, and 5, respectively), thereby creating in effect three solo concertos. Although not conceived as a group, these six works seem to be brought together to demonstrate different ways of writing `concertos for several instruments, as the autograph title-page calls them. The first concerto, in F major, is scored for two horns, three oboes, bassoon, violin (a small violin, called violino piccolo), strings and continuo. This seems to be an unusual ensemble, but one which Vivaldi used (with two oboes instead of three) in four concertos. More unusual is the works structure. At first glance it might appear that Bach has merely added a French-style minuet to the usual three movement concerto. But in fact the genesis of the work is more complicated than that. An earlier version (BWV 1046a) without the violino piccolo and called `sinfonia has only the first two movements and the minuet (lacking the second trio, the string polonaise). Bach could have used this piece for an introduction to a longer work, to Cantata 208, as has been suggested. The new Allegro, the third movement of the concerto in its well-known version, makes the work much more of a concerto. But even the style and structure of this movement point to Bachs secular vocal music rather than to his other orchestral works. Bach did, indeed, use it again as the opening chorus of the secular cantata BWV 207. The music sounds more at home there, with trumpets, drums and four part chorus. The famous Bach scholar Alfred Drr called this unbelievably skilled adaptation of a concerto movement as a da capo chorus `one of Bachs most remarkable achievements. If the first concerto was designed more in the French taste, the other five are more Italianate in structure. The second concerto, in F major like the first, has a solo group consisting of trumpet, recorder, oboe and violin, a very heterogeneous collection of instruments. In its perfect proportions this concerto seems to be the very prototype of a concerto grosso. The trumpet, with its high clarino register, is treated with such virtuosity that the work gives the impression of a real solo concerto. In the melancholy middle movement the trumpet is kept silent, but in the Finale it is put to the forefront again. It announces the jolly main subject and also concludes this dashing piece. The Third Brandenburg Concerto is arranged for three groups of strings, each of which is divided in turn into three parts. The majestic first movement, with its contending melodic forces and the occasional emergence of sombre harmonies in the minor, is full of drama. Bach dispensed with the customary slow second movement. A simple cadence of only two chords provide the performers with an opportunity to improvise a cadenza. The breathtaking Finale sounds like a wild chase among the nine string parts.

CD 4 Brandenburg Concertos 4-5-6

The title page of the autograph score of the Brandenburg Concertos and Bachs dedication (according to the New Bach Reader) reads as follows: Six Concertos with several instruments dedicated to His Royal Highness, Monsieur Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg &c. &c. &c, by His very humble and very obedient servant Johann Sebastian Bach, Capellmeister of His Most Serene Highness, the Reigning Prince of Anhalt-Cthen.

Your Royal Highness,

As I had a couple of years ago the pleasure of appearing before Your Royal Highness, by virtue of Your Highnesss commands, and as I noticed then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the small talents that Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking leave of Your Royal Highness, Your Highness deigned to honor me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my composition: I have then in accordance with Your Highnesss most gracious orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness with the present concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments; begging Your Highness most humbly not to judge their imperfection with the rigor and fine and delicate taste that the whole world knows Your Highness has for musical pieces; but rather to infer from them in benign consideration the profound respect and the most humble obedience that I try to show Your Highness therewith. For the rest, Sir, I beg your Royal Highness very humbly to have the goodness to continue Your Highnesss gracious favour toward me, and to be assured that nothing is so close to my heart as the wish that I may be employed on occasions more worthy of Your Royal Highness and of Your Highnesss service - I, who without an equal in zeal am, Sire, Your Royal Highnesss most humble and obedient servant Coethen, March 24, 1721

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

Although Brandenburg Concertos No.4 and 5 still owe a lot to the concerto grosso, in each of these works one instrument takes the lead as soloist. In No.4 a concertino of violin and two recorders is set against the strings. The second movement, with the violin pre-eminent, has an unmistakable concertante character. Technically, the Brandenburg Concerto No.5 is a concerto grosso with three soloists: flute, violin and harpsichord. It is obvious however, from Bachs treatment of the three solo instruments, that he was thinking in terms of the keyboard concerto. Not only is there a brilliant harpsichord cadenza of no less than 65 bars towards the end of the first movement, but throughout this Allegro and in the Finale too, the harpsichord emerges as the most prominent of the three soloists. The humble harpsichord, whose role in ensembles had mostly been that of supporting other instruments, assumes the proud role of leader. Obviously this work was from the outset intended for the harpsichord and must be considered as the first original clavier concerto ever written. Probably Bach, who played the part himself, was inspired to compose it by the exquisite harpsichord he had bought in 1719 for his Prince in Berlin. The thrilling and dramatic first movement is followed by a melancholic `Affettuoso, played by the three solo instruments only. The Finale has a completely different mood, shaking off the strong introspection of the first and second movement. Elements of the fugue, concerto, gigue and da capo aria have been brought together here in a skilful combination. A sense of bucolic humor prevails in this lightweight gigue-like piece. Brandenburg Concerto No.6 has the most unusual and thinnest scoring of the set, written for two violas, two viole da gamba, cello and continuo. One of the gamba parts may have been intended for Prince Leopold, an enthousiastic amateur on the instrument, because this part offers virtually no technical difficulties. Bach himself most likely played the first viola part. After a brilliant first movement full of polyphonic intricacies the Adagio omits the viole da gamba and gives an expressive and nostalgic melody to the violas. The finale has the same optimistic mood and rhythmic drive as the first movement. Clemens Romijn
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CD 5 Johann Sebastian Bach Concertos for 2 harpsichords & strings

Bach did not confine himself to writing concertos for single solo harpsichord, but also composed concertos for two, three and even four harpsichords accompanied by string orchestra. These works seem once again to be derived from earlier versions. Among the Concertos for two harpsichords and strings one, in C minor (BWV 1062), is based on Bachs own Concerto for two violins in D minor (BWV 1043). A second C minor Concerto (BWV 1060) is probably the transcription of a Concerto for oboe and violin, no longer in existence. In these two concertos the orchestra fully shares in the musical elaboration, and beautiful dialogues unfold between the harpsichords and the strings. The soloists are not always given leading parts. Often one or both of them fulfil the harpsichords original task of serving as filling and reinforcing continuo instrument. Sometimes the left hand of one of the players is entrusted with a middle part, so that the musical texture is enriched. The Concerto in C major (BWV 1061) appears to be an original harpsichord composition. Its two keyboard parts exist in autograph, while the string parts, which mainly provide reinforcement, are not preserved in Bachs own writing. It seems that the work was originally written for two harpsichords only and that the orchestration was a later addition. In the slow middle movement the strings keep altogether silent, and in the Finale too they participate only briefly. Among the Concertos for two harpsichords and strings one, in C minor (BWV 1062), is based on Bachs own Concerto for two violins in D minor (BWV 1043). Clemens Romijn

Pieter Jan Belder

Pieter-Jan Belder (1966) studied the recorder with Ricardo Kanji at the Royal Conservatory at the Hague, and the harpsichord with Bob van Asperen at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory, where he was on the staff between 1990-1995. He graduated in 1990 and has had a career since as a harpsichord and a clavichord player, organist, forte-pianist and a recorder player. He has played at several international festivals, such as the Barcelona Festival de Musica Antiga, The Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, the Berlin Tage fr Alte Musik, The Festival van Vlaanderen, Festival Potsdam Sancoussi, the Sacharov Festival in Nizhny Novgorod and the Leipzig Bachfest . He regularly plays solo recitals. He is also very much in demand as a continuo player with such ensembles as the Radio Chamber Orchestra, Collegium Vocale Gent, Il Fondamento, Camarata Trajectina, the Gesualdo Consort and de Nederlandse Bachvereniging. He has worked with conductors such as Frans Brggen, Ton Koopman, Paul Dombrecht, Philippe Herreweghe, Kenneth Montgomery and Ren Jacobs. Belder also accompanies soloists such as Johannette Zomer, Nico van der Meel, Rmy Baudet and Saskia Coolen. He has made numerous radio and television recordings for the Dutch broadcasting companies, Belgium and German radio. Belder conducts his own ensemble Musica Amphion. In 1997 Pieter-Jan Belder was awarded the third prize at the Hamburg NDR Music Prize harpsichord competition. In 2000 he was winner of the Leipzig Bach harpsichord competition. In 2005 he made his debut as a conductor in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, conducting Musica Amphion He has made many CD-recordings, most of them solo and chamber music productions. In 1999 Belder was invited to cooperate in two important CD recording projects: 10 CDs in a complete Bach recording (Brilliant), and a CD in a Edison awarded complete recording of all the Keyboard works of the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszn. Sweelinck (NM classics) In 2001 he recorded several CDs in a complete Mozart recording (Brilliant), including the KV 107 harpsichord concertos and a CD with variations for pianoforte. Currently Belder is working on a CD project (36 CDs), recording all the harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, a project which will occupy him until 2007, a memorial year of this great Italian/Spanish composer (1685-1757). Recently a complete recording of Telemanns Tafelmusik was released under his baton, as well as a CD focusing on two centuries of recorder music. The recording of Corellis Opera Omnia with Musica Amphion was released in april 2005.

MUSICA AMPHION
Musica Amphion, founded by harpsichordist/recorder player Pieter-Jan Belder, focuses on performing 17th and 18th century music on original instruments. The concertmaster is Rmy Baudet who holds similar posts with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century (Frans Brggen) and the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra (Het Gelders Orkest). All the musicians of Musica Amphion are members of important baroque orchestras of the moment such as The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre and The Academy of Ancient Music. Most of them have successful solo careers as well. Musica Amphion has performed in the Dutch Netwerk voor Oude Muziek , Festival Oude Muziek, The Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Amsterdam Bach Festival as well as many smaller venues. Several concert tours are planned for the coming seasons. Musica Amphion recorded Bachs Musikalisches Opfer, harpsichord concertos by W.A. Mozart, Telemanns Tafelmusik (complete) and the complete works (10cd box) of Arcangelo Corelli. Most recently Musica Amphion recorded two CDs focusing on 17th century music from the Netherlands.

Menno van Delft

Menno van Delft was born in Amsterdam in 1963. He studied harpsichord, organ and musicology with Gustav Leonhardt, Bob van Asperen, Piet Kee, Jacques van Oortmerssen and Willem Elders, in 1988 winning the clavichord prize at the C. Ph. E. Bach Competition in Hamburg. He has given concerts and master classes throughout Europe and the U.S.A, made numerous recordings for radio and television. and performs with many soloists and ensembles including Pieter Wispelwey, Johannette Zomer, Ensemble Schnbrunn, Nederlandse Opera, Al Ayre Espaol, Cantus Clln, Nederlandse Bachvereniging. Van Delfts discography includes J.S. Bachs six violin sonatas, Musical Offering, Art of Fugue and Toccatas, and keyboard works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. This year the first of a series of recordings on important historical clavichords has been released, featuring sonatas and variations by J. G. Mthel on the 1763 J. A. Hass clavichord in the Russell Collection, Edinburgh. He teaches harpsichord, clavichord and basso continuo at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

CD 6 Johann Sebastian Bach Cello Suites 1,3 & 5

One of the happiest periods of Johann Sebastian Bachs life was the seven years (1717-1723) when he lived and worked in Cthen. He subsequently moved to Leipzig with his wife and children, becoming cantor of the Thomaskirche and writing his now world-famous passions and hundreds of cantatas. This is our most familiar picture of Bach. Much of his chamber music, however, was composed in Cthen, where Bach was chapelmaster of the court orchestra of Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Cthen, a fanatical music lover of only 23 years of age. The prince spent no less than a quarter of his court finances on music and often joined his virtuoso musicians on the violin, viola da gamba or harpsichord. We would probably have forgotten the prince entirely had his court not been the setting for the composition of Bachs Brandenburg Concertos, the Well-Tempered Clavier part 1, the Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo, the Suites for cello solo and other chamber music. One of the virtuosos employed by Prince Leopold was the celebrated viol player and cellist Christian Ferdinand Abel. Bach is presumed to have written his six suites for solo cello for him, since the composer makes extreme demands, if not requiring the impossible, of both cello and cellist. Many passages, particularly the many double stoppings, cannot be executed literally. In the Suites for solo cello, as in the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, Bach pursued hitherto untrodden paths. He achieved the very greatest effect with the very smallest means, turning an obstacle race into a display of grandeur. As an instrumentalist to the back-bone, Bach pushed forward the boundaries of performance practice by exploiting to the full the specific possibilities of the cello. These Suites, with their improvisational adventures, strict imitative excursions, rhythmic flair and for the time unequalled virtuosity, are in every sense the equal of Bachs keyboard works of the same period. Furthermore, within his oeuvre they form a group of compositions in their own right, in which he succeeded, with all the means offered by the instrument but without the accompaniment of a basso continuo, in creating genuine polyphony and harmony.
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Bachs suites present an absolute standard, a standard which had to be measured up to by composers including Reger, Hindemith, Ysae, Kdaly, Bartk, Honegger and Ligeti when they composed for solo cello. Unlike the works for solo violin, all six cello suites have a similar structure. They commence with a prelude, followed by an allemande, courante, two French dances (galanteries) and a gigue. The First Suite in G major begins with a genuine prelude with perpetual motion in semiquavers, employing arpeggio and scale motifs. Bach builds the tension up until the very end, culminating in the widely spread final chord with a high g. The prelude is followed by an allemande, pacing forward regularly, and a courante, highly virtuosic despite its single voice. The small-scale sarabande is a fine example of classical structure, with two phrases of eight bars each. After two simple menuets, employing material reminiscent of the prelude, the suite ends with a whirling gigue. In the opening of the magnificent prelude to the Third Suite in C major, a descending scale and broken chords are the broad brush strokes used to establish the key. The exciting semiquaver movement set in motion here culminates in a long pedal point, the bass note G which is repeated for no less than seven bars. The prelude is followed by a beautifully ornamented, noble allemande, followed by a fast pendant in the form of the courante, the French dance which runs along so agilely but surprises us with all sorts of risky melodic leaps. Slow once more is the dignified, striding sarabande with its wonderful double stoppings. Perhaps the most familiar movements are the two bourres, originally French country dances, with their appealing and sweeping melodies. The suite ends with an English jumping dance, the gigue, larded with virtuosic effects and awkward handfuls of notes. More pensive is the prelude to the Fifth Suite in C minor. It is the only prelude of the six to comprise two contrasting halves, first a dark, improvisational section and then a fugal passage which constitutes a wonder of single-part polyphony. In order to accomodate double stoppings and create a particularly dark colour, Bach requires the highest A string to be tuned down to G. Clemens Romijn

The Bach cello suites

What extraordinary lucky people we are! Not only are we in this world to make music, this most powerful art form, we all are at some point in our lives confronted with Bach. I should tell you right now that his music, more specifically his work for solo violin and cello, presents a challenge quite incomparable to any other work we may put on our stands. Not only because we are quite alone without any help from another instrument, but also because in order to perform these suites, we are expected to be architects and storytellers as well. Sometimes I try to convince myself that, after all, Bach is just another composer of baroque music, albeit a very good one. Not very successfully. Before I start on the journey into his world, I see a structure, a building of great beauty and harmony, practically indestructible, because he designed it so well. To continue with this image, it is now my task to try to reconstruct it, and guide you through it with my storytellers skills. And once in a while, to some extent, I succeed. Does this sound over the top? Perhaps, but for me it is crystal clear reality every time I enter his world. Let us come down from this very interesting philosophical hill and give you some facts and figures about our suites. Bach probably wrote the cello suites before the sonatas and partitas for violin, they once were a set, Part I cello, Part II violin. Unfortunately Bachs autograph is lost, we have to content ourselves with four sources: a) Anna Magdalena (his wife), b) Kellner (who copied a lot of Bachs works), c) anonymous, early 2nd half of the 18th century (Collection Westphal), and d) anonymous, late 18th century. Unfortunately none of these sources are precise and credible throughout in their use of articulations (by which I mean slurs, in other words bowing instructions). It is interesting to compare Bachs autograph of the violin pieces with A. M.s copy of the same. Although Bach too was often not very precise, like in his cantatas, the violin pieces he must have prepared for the purpose of printing because there is very little doubt about his intentions when it comes to the use of articulations. Next to his, A.M.s copy looks very sloppy indeed and it seems that her copy of the cello suites shares the same fate. Well, ok, what about the other sources then? In spite of the combined efforts of quite a number of esteemed musicologists, the provenance of the other sources is not clear so there is no way to establish a degree of credibility for any of them. And, as you may have guessed already, they all seem to join A.M. in her sloppiness, although it is my impression that in certain movements the two later sources seem to be pretty tidy.

Why do we make such a fuss about articulations? Nicolaus Harnoncourt once wrote a beautiful one-liner: Before Mozart there was the word, after him there was melody. This is not a precise translation but it puts the finger on an essential point: the word and its musical, rhetorical expression was daily bread and butter for musicians and composers until Mozart. And therefore the use of articulation was considered very important for the understanding of the message in the music. So we find ourselves in a spot of trouble, how to make sense of the different bits of information that have reached us through these four sources? First of all, we have to be clear about one thing, we will never find the truth, the right way, i.e. Bachs way. What then can we do about this? The way that works for me is to start with A.M. in spite of her sloppiness and then try to get suggestions or perhaps even answers from the other sources for the many moments that a question mark appears on my face. Alas!, not even these four combined sources give me enough clarity, so I ask Johann Sebastian himself to come to the rescue and to some extent he does with his autograph of the violin works. There are quite a number of passages which show great similarities with the cello suites and they can give us some clues. Furthermore, I simply read his score and this gives me an impression of his language. He is very clear, does not mind to articulate similar passages in similar ways I hope that through doing this I can present a version that shows respect to his way of thinking. As a last contribution to the solution of our predicament, we realize that Bach did not live on an island. He is firmly rooted in 18th century Germany and this too helps us, because every baroque piece we play increases our understanding of the articulation possibilities of the baroque language. The six suites consist of three groups of two. The first group is determined by the two Menuets after the Sarabande, being replaced in the second group (Suite nrs. III and IV) by Bourre I and II which in turn are being replaced in the last two suites by Gavotte I and II. There is a clear development in scope and complexity: while in the suites I, II and III Bach stays relatively close to the origin of the dances, beginning with the 4th and in particular in the last two suites the original form of some of the dances becomes ever more distant. I do not believe that Bach intended any of his suites to be danced upon, although it has been an illuminating experience for me to work on some of his dances with the input and the movements of a dancer. He used some of the characteristics of the dances as a sort of framework, which he released as he progressed. Further evidence of Bachs continuing exploration of the instrument can be found in his use of a 5-stringed cello for the 6th suite and of scordatura in the 5th, here the top A-string needs to be tuned down to G which changes the resonance of the cello quite drastically. This tuning was not his invention, in the earlier days it was used for instance by Gabrielli in his ricercares for cello solo. Jaap ter Linden, 2006

Jaap ter Linden

The cellist and gambist Jaap ter Linden is one of Europes most prominent interpreters of baroque music. As one of the first specialists in this field he has actively participated in the foundation of many baroque ensembles which now play an important role in our musical life. He was co-founder of the ensemble Musica da Camera and principal cellist of Musica Antiqua Kln, The English Concert and The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Jaap ter Linden has acquired great fame as performer of solo and chamber music repertoire. As chamber musician Ter Linden has played with pianist Ronald Brautigam and David Breitman, violinists Andrew Manze, Elizabeth Wallfisch and John Holloway and cembalists Richard Egarr and Lars Ulrik Mortensen. Ter Linden is also increasingly in demand as conductor of both specialised and modern orchestras. He has guest directed the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, Arnhem Symphony Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Beethoven Akademie, The European Union Baroque Orchestra, Amsterdam Bachsoloists, Amsterdam Sinfonietta and San Francisco Philharmonia Baroque, with soloists such as Andreas Staier, Ronald Brautigam, Julian Rachlin, Pauline Oostenrijk, Suzie leBlanc and Emma Kirkby. He is a regular guest director and soloist with the Arion Ensemble (Canada).

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Ter Linden has recorded numerous cds with specialised orchestras and chamber musicians like Andrew Manze, Richard Egarr, Ren Jacobs, Ton Koopman, Reinhardt Goebel, John Holloway and Lars Ulrik Mortensen. With Manze and Egarr, he has recorded the Violin Sonatas by Rebel and Bach (both awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik). His recording of Bachs Gamba Sonatas was Editors Choice of Gramophone. He also recorded the Oboe concertos of J.S. Bach and sons with Pauline Oostenrijk and Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam, which was nominated for the Edison Prize. With the Amsterdam Mozart Academy he has recorded all Mozart symphonies. Jaap ter Linden is professor at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and he gives courses and master classes throughout Europe.

CD 7 & 8 Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704) The Mystery Sonatas
Heinrich Biber was born in the small town of Wartenberg (now Straz pod Ralskem) near Reichenberg (Liberec) in northern Bohemia, the son of a gamekeeper; he was baptized on the 12th of August, 1644. Nothing is known for sure about his career until the late 1660s, when he is recorded as being in the service of Karl Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, prince-bishop of Olomouc in Moravia, though there is evidence that at some point he worked for Prince von Eggenberg at Graz in Styria. Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn maintained an important musical ensemble in his castle at Kromerz in central Moravia, and it is likely that Biber received much of his musical training there, perhaps from Pavel Josef Vejvanovsk, the Kapellmeister. In any event, Biber left Kromerz in the autumn of 1670, apparently without permission, and shortly afterwards entered the service of Maximilian Gandolph, Archbishop of Salzburg. He remained there for the rest of his life, becoming vice-Kapellmeister in 1679 and Kapellmeister in 1684. In later life he also seems to have been well known at the Bavarian court in Munich and the Imperial court in Vienna; on the 5th of December 1690 he was awarded the title of nobility by the emperor, hence the von often added to his name. Bibers music was never entirely forgotten in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mainly because it had the reputation of being fearsomely difficult. Charles Burney wrote in 1789 that of all the violin players of the last century Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the most difficult and fanciful of any music I have seen of the same period. Burneys knowledge of Bibers music seems to have been limited to the printed Sonatae violino solo (1681). This collection requires a formidable technique, and explores a number of virtuoso devices, though scordatura (the deliberate mistuning of the violin) is called for in only two of the sonatas, and is used in a relatively restrained manner. Burney would doubtless have been even more astonished by Bibers music had he known the 15 Mystery of Rosary sonatas, in which 14 different scordatura tunings are explored. The set is Bibers best-known music today, though it was never printed in his lifetime, and remained unknown until it was finally published in 1905. The Mystery or Rosary sonatas survive in a single manuscript source, now in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. The manuscript is in the hand of a copyist, and is extremely carefully and beautifully laid out. Each sonata, for instance, is prefaced by an appropriate engraving, apparently cut from a devotional book and pasted into the score. The manuscript begins with a dedication to Archbishop Max Gandolph, which has led scholars to suggest that is was a personal offering to his employer, though another possibility is that the manuscript was intended to serve as printers copy for a publication that, for one reason or another, never reached fruition. In any case, the manuscript lacks a title - page, which explains the confusion over the title of the collection: we do not know what formal title Biber gave it, though the sonatas are called Mystery because he closed his dedication with the words I have consecrated the whole to the honour of the XV Sacred Mysteries which you promote so strongly. The 15 mysteries or meditations on the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary are divided into three cycles of five. The Joyful Mysteries are based on episodes in Jesuss early life, from the Annunciation to the finding in the Temple; the Sorrowful Mysteries deal with episodes in the Passion, from the Sweating of blood to the Crucifixion, while the Glorious Mysteries continue the story from the Resurrection to the Assumption of the Virgin and the Coronation of the Virgin. The cycle was used in the traditional Rosary devotions in September or October, in which the faithful
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processed around a cycle of paintings or sculptures placed at strategic points in a church or other building. At each station (equivalent to the more familiar Stations of the Cross) they would have recited a series of prayers, relating them to the beads on the rosary-hence the alternative title the Rosary Sonatas. They would also have listened to appropriate biblical passages and commentaries, and presumably to Bibers musical commentary. As Biber pointed out in his dedication, Max Gandolph was strongly in favour of Rosary devotions, and supported a Confraternity of the Rosary in Salzburg. According to Davitt Moroney, the rooms used by this society still survive, and have paintings of the mysteries around the walls. It was presumably in this building that Bibers sonatas were first performed. In the manuscript the 15 Mystery Sonatas are followed by a Passacaglia in G minor for unaccompanied violin. It is prefaced by a picture of a guardian angel leading a child. The rosary devotions were often associated with the feast of the Guardian Angel, celebrated at the time on various dates in September and October, and Biber makes the work suitable for the feast by basing it on four notes descending from tonic to dominant in the minor mode. This bass pattern is the traditional one associated with the Italian passacaglia, but it also happens to be the first line of a contemporary hymn to the Guardian Angel, Einen Engel Gott mir geben. We do not know when Biber wrote the Mystery sonatas. Most scholars are agreed that the collection as it exists in the Munich manuscript dates from the middle of the 1670s, perhaps from 1676. However, there are signs that not all the works were written at the same time, or for the same set of circumstances. Sonata no. 11 (The Resurrection) is probably the same work as Sonata Paschalis. Surrexit Christus Hodie, indicating that it was intended for Easter rather than the Rosary devotions in September or October, while no.10 (The Crucifixion) exists in a variant version with programmatic titles that relate to the Siege of Vienna in 1683 rather than the Crucifixion. Furthermore, as Eric Chafe has pointed out, a distinction can be made between those sonatas, such as nos.6 (Christ on the Mount of Olives) and no.11, that seem to have been conceived specifically with a programme in mind, and those that are basically dance suites. Indeed, it is possible that Biber assembled the collection at Salzburg partly from suites he had originally composed at Kromeriz, replacing unsuitable dances with newly composed descriptive movements. Biber also used scordatura to make his sonatas suitable for the theme of each of the mysteries. Scordatura is notated as if the violin is tuned normally, so that the written music bears little or no resemblance to what is heard. It has two main effects: it makes playing chords in a particular key much easier than with the normal tuning, and it changes the sonority of the instrument. Thus, the collection can be thought of as a voyage of discovery through exotic sonorities, beginning and ending with works that use the standard g-d-a-e tuning, Sonata no.1 (The Annunciation) and the Passacaglia in G minor. Appropriately, the sonatas representing the rest of the Joyful Mysteries mostly use tunings in sharps that give the violin a bright, open sonority. No.2 (The Visitation) uses a-e-a-e, an A chord and one of the most popular and resonant scordatura tunings. The more withdrawn tuning b-f#- b-d is suitable for the intimate B minor Sonata no.3 (The Nativity), while the D minor Sonata no.4 (The Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple), a ciacona on a two-section ground bass, uses a-d-a-d. The dance suite on.5 (The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple) uses another popular and sonorous A major tuning, a-e-a-c#. By contrast, the five Sorrowful Mysteries mostly use dissonant things that mute the violin. The C minor Sonata no.6 (Christ on the Mount of Olives) uses the extraordinary tuning ab-eb, -g-d, while the F major Sonata no.7 (The Scourging at the Pillar) compresses the tuning of the violin into an octave, c-f -a-c, as does the B flat major Sonata no.8 (The Crown of Thorns), tuned d-f -bb,-d; the A minor Sonata no.9 (Jesus Carries the Cross) is tuned c-e-a-e. Raising the bottom string a fourth or a fifth in these sonatas adds greatly to the sense of strain and tension in the music. Sonata no.10 in G minor (The Crucifixion) returns to a sonorous, open tuning, g-d-a-d; it consists of a Praeludium, in which we seem to hear Jesus being nailed to the cross, and an extended Aria with variations, which ends with a vivid description of the earthquake that followed his death. The five Glorious Mysteries are mostly in sonorous tunings. The G major Sonata no.11 (The Resurrection) is the most extreme of all: the two middle strings have to be crossed over at either end to give the extraordinary re-entrant tuning g-g-d-d. It creates an unearthly sonority, appropriate to the theme, and allows the subject of the central movement, the Easter plainsong hymn Surrexit Christus hodie, to be played on the violin in octaves.

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The tuning of Sonata no.12 (the Ascension) is a C major chord, c-e-g-c, which allow the violinist to imitate a choir of trumpets in the Aria tubicinium; a violone provides the timpani part. The D minor Sonata no.13 (Pentecost) uses another A major tuning, a-e- c#-e, to illustrate the rushing, mighty wind of Pentecost in rapid swirling thirds. The D major Sonata no.14 (The Assumption of the Virgin) uses a-e-a-d, and largely consists of a lengthy aria with variations based on a simple threechord ground bass, while the C major Sonata no.15 (The Beatification of the Virgin) uses the tuning g-c-g-d. As with Sonata no.14, there are no biblical texts to be illustrated, and so the work seems to be a purely abstract sequence of movements ending with a serene sarabande. Peter Holman, December 2000

The Rosary
The rosary is a devotion to, and in honour of, the Virgin Mary. The word comes from Latin and means a garland of roses, the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin Mary. Although it is sometimes said that St. Dominic instituted the rosary (certainly the first Confraternity of the Rosary was founded in 1474 by a Dominican, Jacob Springer, in Cologne), centuries before him, monks had begun to recite all 150 psalms, on a regular basis. As time went on, it was felt that the lay brothers, the conversi, should have some form of prayer of their own, but as they were illiterate and couldnt read the psalms, they needed an easily remembered prayer. The prayer first chosen was the Our Father, which, depending on circumstances, was said either fifty or a hundred times. The conversi, used chaplets of beads to keep count, and these became known also as Paternosters. The term rosary came eventually to mean both the devotion itself and the chaplet used to count the Paternosters and, later on, the recitations of the other two prayers integrated into the devotion, the Ave Maria and the Gloria Patri. Between the introductory prayers and the concluding prayer is the heart of the rosary: the decades. Each decade-there are fifteen in a full rosary-is composed of ten Hail Marys and two prayers, and each is devoted to a mystery regarding the life of Jesus or his mother. When Catholics recite the twelve prayers that form a decade of the rosary, they meditate on the mystery associated with that decade, and it is the meditation on the mysteries that gives the rosary its power. There are fifteen mysteries, divided into three groups of five: the Joyful, the Sorrowful, and the Glorious. With the exception of the last two, each mystery is explicitly scriptural, and although few of Bibers sonatas can be said to illustrate the mystery in a programmatic sense, they were almost certainly played by Biber to enhance the appropriate meditation through the spirit of the music (see p.3). May I suggest to the listener that he or she read the relevant passage before listening to each sonata, both to set the scene literarily and perhaps even to experience, regardless of individual belief, something of the awe that Biber would have wanted his public to feel. Walter Reiter, April 2001

Scriptural references:
The Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38); The Visitation (Luke 1:40-55); The Nativity (Luke 2:6-20); The Presentation of the Infan Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-39); The Twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-51). Christ on the Mount of Olives (Matt. 26:34-46); The Scourging at the Pillar (Matt. 27:26); The Crown of Thorns (Matt. 27:29); Jesus Carries the Cross (Luke 23:26-32); The Crucifixion (Luke 23:33-46). The Resurrection (Luke 24:1-12); The Ascension (Luke 24:50-51); Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4); The Assumption of the Virgin, The Beautification of the Virgin (no reference).

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Bibers Mystery Sonatas: A personal view

The night before we began this CD, we rehearsed in the church in London where the recording was to take place. We had just started the first sonata, (the fluttering of Gabriels wings, holiness descending unto Mary), when from a far corner of the building, a pigeon appeared. My first thoughts were that this could seriously disrupt the recording. However, the pigeon merely circled once around the church, after which it mysteriously disappeared, never to return. Miracle, wonderment, inspiration, holiness: key words, I believe, in the conception and interpretation of these works. For me, the Mystery Sonatas are indeed mystical tone poems, sometimes programmatic, as we imagine the angels wings (1) or the cruel driving of the nails into the cross (10), but more often, seeking to portray in sound the essence of each Mystery. Contrasting sharply with these atmospheric evocations are the dances with their variations, at first hearing perhaps incongruous with what has gone before, but which serve to remind us, possibly, of the human element in this multiepisodic drama, indeed marking out for us the dividing line between the human and the divine. I first heard the Mystery Sonatas in the late sixties, while still infatuated with the playing of Kreisler and Heifetz. I was totally overwhelmed by their power to move, to excite, to shock, to uplift, and by the sheer range of emotions they encompassed (expressed in myriad colours and sonorities), from ecstatic jubilation to utter despair, from spiritual nirvana to unfettered violence. I was dazzled by the audacious eccentricities which make them so utterly unique, and by the speed at which one is propelled from one affekt to the next. Biber uses Scordatura, tuning the strings to a different set of notes for each sonata, both in order to achieve technical feats impossible with normal tuning, and to obtain different sonorities, due to varying amounts of pressure from the strings, thus helping to achieve the desired mood for that sonata. For the violinist, this involves a constant contradiction between sight and sound, for what you see may not be what you hear. A written A, for example, may sound a B, a G, or some other note altogether. The key signature may show an F# at the top of the stave, but an F an octave lowerof course, neither note may sound anything like an F at all! What appears to go up may in fact go down, or it might start by going up and then take a plunge in the middle of a run! Even putting the fingers or the bow on the right string can involve complex mental gymnastics, especially when, as in No 11, the two middle strings are actually crossed over! Just imagine how difficult it must have been for Biber to write, and how much experimentation t must have involved! I am eternally grateful to my colleagues, both the players and the recording team, who worked so hard on this project, to my wife Linda who did everything for me except tune and play, to Jan Hart, of Signum, for the administrative miracles she performed, and to Tony Harrison, the producer, for his friendship, dedication and energy. But this record is dedicated to my teacher Ramy Shevelov, of Tel Aviv, who died while it was being made, and whose inspiration and wisdom have enriched my entire life. Walter Reiter, July 2000

Walter Reiter, violin

Walter Reiter founded Cordaria in 1999, primarily to perform and record the violin repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries, and their first CD for Signum Records, a premier recording on period instruments of Vivaldis Violin Sonatas op 2, was internationally acclaimed. His previous recordings had included the Recreations of Leclair for Addes, France, and sonatas by Mondonville for Meridian. Walter has played solo recitals in France, Germany, Austria, Israel, England and Canada, has given numerous masterclasses, teaches regularly in Israel, and is a tutor in the Early Music project at the University of Birmingham. He is also active as a conductor, and is Musical Director of the Linden Baroque Orchestra and Choir in London, with whom he recorded a CD of music by Fasch. Born in England of Polish-Viennese Jewish parents and brought up on the wild Atlantic coast of Ireland on a diet of Mahler and Irish music, Walter Reiter learned the violin with his mother, who had never studied it, but came from a musical family and knew how it should sound. He studied Music and Drama at Glasgow University, graduated in violin from the Royal Academy of Music in London, and continued his studies under Ramy Shevelov in Tel Aviv and Sandor Vegh in Germany, After working in symphony and chamber orchestra, in a string quartet, a Bluegrass band, contemporary music groups in Paris and a cabaret in Pigalle, and in the Jerusalem Conservatory where he taught a class of talented children, his love for music of the 17th and 18th centuries brought him to the study of authentic performance practice on period instruments, and this has been his passion ever since.
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He has led Les Arts Florissants, the Netherlands Bach Society Orchestra, the Hanover Band, the Sixteen, The Gabrieli Consort, the Kings Consort, and the Symphony of Harmony and Invention, and has directed and appeared as soloist with the Orchestra Barocca Italiana, the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges, the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra, and the Varazdin Festival Orchestra. Since 1989 he has led the second violins in The English Concert, with whom he has toured and recorded extensively.

CD 9 & 10 Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) Concerti Grossi opus 6

His merit was not depth of learning like that of Alessandro Scarlatti, nor great fancy or rich invention in melody or harmony, but a nice ear and most delicate taste which led him to select the most pleasing harmonies and melodies and to construct the parts so as to produce the most delightful effect upon the ear. Geminiani In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Rome was an ideal place for artists, musicians, composers and culture consumers. From the time of Urban VIII (who became pope in 1623), the popes and cardinals at the centre of power were great art lovers, who poured large sums of money into music and set the pace in Roman opera and oratorio, which were the most popular forms of musical entertainment in higher circles. New churches had been built in various parts of the Holy City, dedicated to popular contemporary saints, and astronomical amounts had been spent on decorating the relatively new basilica of St Peter. In secondary schools of the time, mostly Jesuit colleges, new heroes were introduced to provide an example, in the hope that todays youth would become tomorrows churchgoers. Biographies of Carlo Borromeo, Ignatius Loyola and Theresa van Avila headed the book ratings: their lives provided ideal material for annual theatrical events, in which pupils could identify with the many monks and missionaries who, in America and the Far East, as well as in England and Germany, died as martyrs in the fight for the one true faith. In this cultural climate, a major role was reserved for composers of operas and oratorios based on biblical themes, and instrumental church music. Ecclesiastical strategists knew only too well that listeners would be deeply touched by the moving oratorios and spiritual operas of Carissimi, Landi and Alessandro Scarlatti: the texts reached to the depths of the soul, and the music to the heart. This had been the territory of Giacomo Carissimi (16051674), the father of the oratorio, who was followed later in the century by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) from Palermo, the father of the celebrated Domenico Scarlatti. Remarkably, a particular role in the cultural life of Rome was played by a man who composed neither operas nor oratorios, but created heavenly sounds on his violin and composed nothing but instrumental music: Arcangelo Corelli (1653- 1713). At the popular and crowded performances of oratorios in Roman churches, Corelli was a charismatic violinist and orchestral leader. During the intervals in the oratorios he linked the performance up with suitable music, including trio sonatas, violin sonatas and concerti grossi, which he composed and performed himself. Most music-minded Romans were well aware that Corellis pen set the trend in instrumental music between 1680 and 1710. With his trio sonatas, violin sonatas and concerti grossi, this mild and amiable violinist and composer brought about a little velvet revolution in Europe - among those who copied and imitated his music was no-one less than Handel. Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) is sometimes described as one of the most underestimated composers of orchestral and chamber music. He was born a full generation before Bach and Handel, and influenced that younger generation of Couperin, Vivaldi, Telemann, Bach, and Handel so intensely that he was really nothing less than a musical pioneer. At the same time, he remained highly popular until his death and long beyond, in contrast to Vivaldi and Bach, who went out of fashion before they died and were quickly forgotten almost everywhere. It is not without reason that Corelli is often called the founder of modern violin technique, the worlds greatest violinist, and the father of the concerto grosso. In the end, however, Corelli was overshadowed - particularly by his German followers Bach and Handel - and forgotten. He is now a name in books on music history and among insiders rather than a real present-day favourite like his Baroque contemporaries Vivaldi and Bach.
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Corellis influence on the music and musicians of his time, however, was enormous, particularly through the combination of his three qualities as a violinist, violin teacher and composer. His unprecedented skill as a violinist contributed to give the instrument its definitive, prominent place in western musical life. This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that in Corellis time the violin was still quite a new instrument, which he promoted on concert tours of Italy, and possibly of France and Germany too. His popularity as a violinist is sometimes believed to have equalled Paganinis in the nineteenth century. But Corelli was also one of the most widely performed and highly estimated composers of his generation, even though his output - comprising only six opus numbers - was small in comparison with that of Vivaldi, Telemann, Handel or Bach. As a teacher, Corelli not only established a widespread violin school with countless pupils, including Vivaldi and Geminiani, but, directly or indirectly, he also introduced many Italian and foreign composers, such as Handel, Bach and Geminiani, to the Italian style. It is very much the question, for instance, whether Handel could have written his majestic Concerti Grossi op.6 if Corelli had not pointed the way. Corellis career developed under a lucky star. He came from a prosperous family in Fusignano, a village between Bologna and Ravenna, where he was born in 1653. He died in Rome in 1713 as a man of fame, and was buried in a place of honour in the Pantheon. Little is known of his life, and his biography is full of gaps and anecdotes. Corelli studied from the age of thirteen (1666) in Bologna, a flourishing centre of music with eminent composers including Cazzati, Perti, Colonna and Vitali. According to Padre Martini, he was taught by Giovanni Benvenuti and later by Leonardo Brugnoli, both pupils of Ercole Gaibara, the father of Bolognese violinists. In 1670, at the age of seventeen, Corelli became a member of the celebrated Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna. In 1675, he played in Rome in a series of Lent oratorios and at the annual celebration of the feast of Saint Louis of France. According to an anecdote recorded by Rousseau, Corelli played around this time in Paris, but returned to Italy because he aroused the jealousy of the court composer Lully (likewise an Italian!). In succeeding years, Corelli became Romes most eminent violinist and enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili. He performed in oratorios in the church of San Marcello, and at the opening of the famous Teatro Capranica in 1679. At about this time he became a chamber musician to Queen Christina of Sweden, who lived in political exile in Rome and spent enormous sums on the arts. Corelli dedicated his opus 1 to her, and in 1687, in her Palazzo Riario, he directed an accademia per musica under Bernardo Pasquini, with some 100 singers and 150 strings and trumpets. In 1684, together with Alessandro Scarlatti, Corelli became a member of the Congregazione di S Cecilia, which he directed from 1700. In 1684 he also initiated Sunday concerts in Cardinal Pamphilis Palazzo al Corso, the very hub of musical life in Rome. He probably performed his first series of chamber trios there, his opus 2 (1685), which was dedicated to the cardinal. From 1687 Corelli was music master to the cardinal and resided in his palace. Around this time he formed a trio, performing his trio sonatas and concerti grossi with the violinist Matteo Fornari and the Spanish cellist Giovanni Battista Lulier. When Cardinal Pamphili left for Bologna in 1690, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (22 years old!) became Corellis patron; Corelli lived in his palace, the Cancelleria, where concerts were held on Monday evenings. The cardinal and composer were on good terms, and Corelli dedicated his chamber trios opus 4 to Ottoboni in 1694. He directed opera performances in Rome in 1702, played in an opera by Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples and, with Scarlatti and Pasquini, became a member of the Accademia Arcadiana in 1706. This society of poets, musicians and intellectuals had been founded in 1690 by Queen Christina of Sweden. She had abdicated from the Swedish throne, become converted to Catholicism and taken up residence in Rome. After her death, the Accademia Arcadiana became enormously influential in all the arts, particularly in poetry and music, and the society became established in many other Italian towns. In their poems and music its members devoted themselves to uncomplicated love in a setting featuring all the charms of nature, stripped of Baroque opulence and bombast. In effect this amounted to an act of revolt against the predominant and extravagant operatic style of the time. Corelli made acquaintance with Handel at performances in the palaces of Pamphili and Ruspoli, playing in Handels II trionfo del tempo e del disinganno in 1707 and leading the orchestra in two performances of La Resurrezione in 1708. Afterwards Corelli withdrew from public life. In 1711 he completed his last work, opus 6, and in 1712 he rea16

ched agreement on its publication with Estienne Roger of Amsterdam. Corelli died on 8 January 1713; his death was commemorated for many years with performances of his concerti grossi in various Roman churches. Corelli published all his compositions in six volumes, each containing twelve works (trio sonatas, sonatas or concerti grossi). With the exception of his last works, the Twelve Concerti Grossi op.6, he prepared the editions himself, including the correction of printing proofs and other matters. The first four volumes are devoted to the traditional trio sonata for two violins and basso continuo. The continuo was usually played by a low string instrument such as the violone or viola da gamba, plus one or more chordal instruments such as the harpsichord or organ and archlute or theorbo. The harpsichord usually accompanied the sonatas da camera (chamber sonatas) and the organ the sonatas da chiesa (church sonatas). In his opus 6, Corelli presented twelve concerti grossi. Music lovers of the time went wild about this very visual sort of music, in which a complete orchestra and a small group of soloists played a game of questions and answers, launching ideas at each other and trying to surpass one another in original elaborations. This opus earned Corelli a name as father of the concerto grosso, even though he did not invent it. The volume probably contains music written many years before. The eighth concerto has became world-famous: Corellis concerto fatto per la notte di Natale (made for Christmas Eve). Clemens Romijn

REMY BAUDET
Rmy Baudet is Concertmaster of The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century (Frans Brggen, conductor) and the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra. He is active in various chamber music ensembles, such as Musica Classica, Le Zphyre, Musica Amphion and the New Esterhazy Quartet. He played with such groups as Al Ayre Espaol, the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble and Les Tempraments Baroques. He was conductor of the Resonet Ensemble and the Stavanger Symphonie Orchestra. As a soloist he played with many orchestras. He taught violin, chamber music, history and art history at several schools and conservatories. He wrote a study on the history of violin playing.

SAYURI YAMAGATA
Sayuri Yamagata was born in Japan. She studied the violin at Tohogakuen Music School in Tokyo. During her study she became interested in period instruments and started to play the baroque violin and came to The Netherlands in 1984 to study with Lucy van Dael at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She played with all the leading baroque performers like Anner Bijlsma, Gustav Leonhardt, Sigiswald Kuijken, Philippe Herreweghe, Bob van Asperen and others. She performed in many recordings and concerts in Europe, Australia and Japan, as a solo player and in chamber music. From 1985 she is a member of The Orchestra of the 18th Century with Frans Bruggen. Recently she became leader with The Netherlands Bachsociety Orchestra. In 1998 she also started the successful miso factory Ken-Ran with her husband.

MUSICA AMPHION
Musica Amphion, founded by harpsichordist/recorder player Pieter-Jan Belder, focuses on performing 17th and 18th century orchestral- and chamber music on original instruments. The concertmaster is Rmy Baudet who holds similar posts with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century (Frans Brggen) and the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra (Het Gelders Orkest). All the musicians of Musica Amphion are members of important baroque orchestras of the moment such as The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre and The Academy of Ancient Music. Most of them have successful solo careers as well. Musica Amphion has performed in the Dutch Netwerk voor Oude Muziek and the Bach Festival in Amsterdam. Several concert tours are planned for the coming seasons. This year (2005) Musica Amphion will perform among others in the Utrecht Oude Muziek Festival and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Musica Amphion recorded Bachs Musikalisches Opfer, harpsichord concertos by W.A. Mozart, and most recently Telemanns Tafelmusik. Website: www.musica-amphion.nl

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PIETER-JAN BELDER
Pieter-Jan Belder (1966) studied the recorder with Ricardo Kanji at the Royal Conservatory at the Hague, and the harpsichord with Bob van Asperen at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory, where he was on the staff between 1990-1995. He graduated in 1990 and has had a career since as a harpsichord and a clavichord player, organist, forte-pianist and a recorder player. He has played at several inter national festivals, such as the Barcelona Festival de Musica Antiga, The Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, the Berlin Tage fr Alte Musik, The Festival van Vlaanderen and the Leipzig Bachfest. He regularly plays solo recitals. He is also very much in demand as a continuo player with such ensembles as the Radio Chamber Orchestra, Collegium Vocale Gent, Il Fondamento, Camarata Trajectina, and de Nederlandse Bachvereniging. He has worked with conductors such as Frans Brggen, Ton Koopman, Paul Dombrecht, Philippe Herreweghe, Kenneth Montgomery and Ren Jacobs. Belder also accompanies soloists such as Johannette Zomer, Nico van der Meel, Rmy Baudet and Saskia Coolen. He has made numerous radio and television recordings for the Dutch broadcasting companies, Belgium and German radio. Belder conducts his own ensemble Musica Amphion. In 1997 Pieter-Jan Belder was awarded the third prize at the Hamburg NDR Music Prize harpsichord competition. In 2000 he was winner of the Leipzig Bach harpsichord competition. He has made many CD-recordings, most of them solo and chamber music productions. In 1999 Belder was invited to cooperate in two important CD recording projects: 10 CDs in a complete Bach recording (Brilliant), and a CD in a Edison awarded complete recording of all the Keyboard works of the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszn. Sweelinck (NM classics) In 2001 he recorded several CDs in a complete Mozart recording (Brilliant), including the KV 107 harpsichord concertos and a CD with variations for pianoforte. Belder is now halfway on a CD project (36 CDs), recording all the harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, a project which will occupy him until 2007, a memorial year of this great Italian/Spanish composer (1685-1757). Recently a complete recording of Telemanns Tafelmusik was released under his baton, as well as a CD focusing on two centuries of recorder music.

CD 11 & 12 Franois Couperin Chamber Music

The life of Franois Couperin stands in marked contrast to that of J. S. Bach. Whereas Bach was a church musician in an important but provincial German town teaching counterpoint to a devoted band of diligent pupils, Couperin worked as a court musician in that fashion capitol of the 18th century, Versailles, where he taught aristocrats to play the harpsichord and performed weekly for the King himself. Bach was famed for his astounding virtuosity and for his difficult and complex compositions, while Couperin was a known as a trend-setter, the creator of a chic, refined and elegant style where virtuosity was hidden under a shining veneer of good taste. Bach married within his class and raised a small army of children on a cantors salary, Couperin married well, was ennobled and enjoyed the highest success and admiration. And yet in spite of these differences there are many essential similarities between the two composers: both were famous keyboard players whose compositions bear the stamp of their own preferred instruments, both excelled in church and chamber music in an age when opera reigned supreme, and both strove to unite the best elements of the national musical styles of the day into one superlative musical language, which Couperin referred to as the got-rni. Perhaps it is this strange mix of conjunctions and oppositions that makes possible contact between, and the mutual influence of, Bach and Couperin such an attractive idea. The chimerical correspondence of one brilliant composer to another, destined, so the legend goes, to serve as jam jar covers, retains its hold on our imaginations: what could they have said to one another? What would Couperin, the cosmopolitan Parisian, have thought of Bachs Teutonic music? What Bach thought of Couperins music is easier to imagine; for we have pieces by Couperin copied out by members of his circle, as well as his pupil Gerbers claim that Bachs playing style was influenced by the Frenchmans music. Nor was Bach the only composer to learn from the French master, Telemann was clearly influenced by him (they shared a healthy sense of humor and expressed it musically as well) and it seems impossible that some of Handels compositions do not also bear traces of Couperins style.
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If, then, Couperin was esteemed enough to influence three of the most famous composers of the 18th century, one would assume that an abundance of details about his life and personality would have survived. This, however, is not the case and the essentials of his history are quickly told. Born in 1668 into a family of organists, he inherited his fathers position at St. Gervais in Paris in 1689. In 1693 he became organiste de la Chapelle du Roy. In 1717 he officially became ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du Roi pour le clavecin, although he had certainly been an active participant in the royal chamber music before that. In 1722, having already published a considerable amount of keyboard music, he for the first time published chamber pieces, the Concerts royaux. These were followed by the Gots-rnis in 1724. According to Couperin himself, these pieces were originally composed for small chamber concerts to which Louis XIV bade me come almost every Tuesday of the year. Together in the same volume with the Gots-runis he published his tribute to Corelli, a programmatic grande Sonade en Trio entitled Le Parnasse. The sequel to this, his even more ambitious and theatrical tribute to the greatest man of Music, that the last century produced the Concert Instrumental sous le titre dApotheose compos la mmoire immortelle de lincomparable Monsieur de Lully, appeared a year later. 1726 marked the arrival of his Les Nations, trios mixing Italianate sonatas (three of which had been composed long before their publication) with French suites. In 1728 he published two superb suites of Pieces for viola da gamba, his last chamber works. These volumes, together with three sonatas preserved in manuscript and probably written in the late 17th century (La Sultanne, La Superbe and La Steinquerque), form all the chamber music from Couperins hand that has come down to us. In 1730 Couperin resigned his court posts due to failing health. He died in 1733. The differences in style between Couperins early period (the Italianized sonatas in Les Nations, for example) and his later works (for instance the Concert Instrumental) is enormous. Although his early attempts to master the Italian style certainly resulted in masterpieces (La Sultanne), his mature style flows miraculously, seamlessly, between French and Italian influences creating a new musical language that is pure Couperin. For example the Sicilinemovements in Les Gots-rnis owe as much to the French musette as they do to the Italian siciliano, but in their suave melancholy and expressive harmonies they reveal unequivocally the hand of their creator. However, in spite of this new and mixed musical language, Couperin could still compose in a purely French or Italian style if he wished: the dances of Les Nations, masterpieces in which expression and form are one and the same (as in the works of his great countryman Racine), are Frenchier than French, while the duet in the Concert Instrumental in which Lully plays second fiddle to Corelli sounds purely Italian. What can be a greater proof of the composers technical control than this ability to modify the thickness of the accent with which he wished to speak? Couperin gives few indications for the instrumentation of his chamber music, and these mostly have the character of suggestions. For our recording Les Nations we chose that of Charpentiers Sonate pour 2 fltes allemandes, 2 dessus de violon, une basse de viole, une basse de violon 5 cordes, un clavecin et un torbe, and for the other pieces we occasionally added piccolos, oboes and bassoon to spice the basic batter. The tempi on this recording are all based on contemporary metronome indications for French dance and theatre music; some tempi (Pompe Funbre, Le Rossignol-en-Amour, the boures) may seem fast, but before condemning them the listener is kindly requested to take a careful look at the historical evidence. Similarly, marked freedom of tempo is prescribed by Rameau on more than one occasion as being essential to the French style; those who believe that rubato belongs firmly in the 19th century should read the requisite passages in the Code de la musique, Observations sur notre instinct pour la musique and the Erreurs sur la musique dans lEncyclopdie. And for those who are surprised to see the words gavote and gavotte used on the same recording, the unusual spelling and accentuation of the titles reflects that used in the original sources. We felt it would be ungrateful of us to wag our finger at genius; as far as we are concerned, Couperin, having presented us with so many beautiful pieces, may call them what he pleases. Many are the folk who deserve heart-felt thanks for their help with this project: Job ter Haar for suggesting and Pieter van Winkel for supporting the idea, Annelies van Os for taking it apart and Peter Arts for putting it together, Wilbert Hazelzet, Gerhard Kowalewsy and Kate Clark for the lending of instruments, and, most especially, all my colleagues for the playing of them. Jed Wentz

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Jed Wentz
Jed Wentz has been involved with early music since the 1980s as a performer, teacher, researcher and lecturer. He received a soloist diploma from the Royal Conservatory in the Hague after studying with Barthold Kuijken, was a member of Musica Antiqua Koln for nearly 10 years and has performed with major forces in early music like The Gabrielli Consort and Les Musiciens du Louvre. He has published articles on 18th-century performance practice and social customs in respected magazines like Early Music, Concerto and Tijdschrift voor Oude Muziek, and has taught and lectured in the United States and Europe in such well-known institutions as The Curtis Institute, The Oberlin Conservatory, The Royal Academy of Music in London and the National Conservatory of Lyons. For the last 10 years he has led Musica ad Rhenum, with whom he has recorded 20 CDs, two of which were awarded the prestigious Cini Prize Venice. With Musica ad Rhenum he has explored not only 18th-century chamber music but also religious and theatrical vocal music, most recently having recorded 5 Mozart operas which were received with enthusiasm in the international press. He teaches at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

Musica ad Rhenum
Musica ad Rhenum was founded in 1992 and has performed as a chamber music ensemble and a baroque orchestra throughout Europe, as well as in North and South America, recorded more than 20 CDs (several of which have been awarded prizes), and recently performed operas by Mozart and Handel. The groups perfoming style stems from the musicians conviction that the 18th-century audience was at least as lively and emotional as the audience of today; our experience of Baroque music now should be as fresh and envigorating as theirs was then. So, while avoiding anacronisms of style, Musica ad Rhenum hopes to communicate directly with the listener by using the rhetoric and aesthetics of the 18th century. As Dryden put it, they strive to follow nature, not on foot, but mounted on the back of winged Pegasus.

CD 13 S. Ganassi - D. Ortiz Complete Works for Viola da Gamba

Silvestro di Ganassi dal Fontego (Fontego, Venice, 1492 - ca. 1550) was a player and teacher of the recorder and the viola da gamba, instruments for which he published two treatises, Fontegara and Regola Rubertina, both of great technical interest. Diego Ortiz (Toledo, ca. 1525 - after 1570) spent his early years in Spain before moving to Italy in 1553 where he published his own treatise, an essential source of understanding the practice of instrumental diminution or divisions. The madrigal Io vorei Dio damore by Silvestro Ganassi is one of the very few examples - if not the only one in which a vocal monody is accompanied by a solo viola da gamba. The brief work is thus valuable both as a historical document and for its musical charm, and deserves special attention. The vocal part, possibly the upper voice of a pre-existing madrigal, is accompanied by the viola, which provides a sonorous carpet consisting primarily of double and occasionally triple stops. Indeed, Ganassi in his treatise explicitly asks that one avoid fuller chords; evidently his sound ideal was still based on the sustained notes of the lira da braccio with its almost flat bridge, and he was bothered by broken chords played with the bow. In this work, Ganassi requires the player to perform certain acrobatics on even the last frets of the low strings, especially in passages where the viola briefly imitates the upper voice. These passages do not, however, suffice to remove the impression of an essentially monodic compositional style, which to us - rich in our knowledge of music history - almost seems to anticipate the advent of the thorough bass. This impression is even stronger in the ricercares of Diego Ortiz, both in the nine pieces sopra tenores italiani and above all in the six ricercares sopra canti piani (which the composer easily identified with the bass of la Spagna). Indeed, while the harpsichord accompaniment of the tenor is carefully written out by Ortiz in four-voice chords, that of la Spagna consists merely of a bass line with the instructions to accompany it with consonances and some counterpoint which is suitable to the ricercare played by the viola a clear and concise description of the practice of playing basso continuo!

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The simplicity of the accompaniment, the reduction of the function of the harpsichord to harmonic support and, finally, the repetition of the structure, gave Ortiz both the melodic and rhythmic freedom to develop the upper voice entrusted to the viola. To present anew a known and loved composition perhaps even too familiar blurring its outlines in order to give it a new look and a new shine: this is the underlying desire behind the embellishment or ornamentation of a madrigal. It is Ortiz desire in his treatment of two works by Arcadelt and Sandrin, respectively, chosen among the most popular of the time. The fact that both O felici occhi miei and Doulce Memoire were wellknown to contemporary listeners is evident by their appearance in numerous reprints, citations and parodies. Todays listener may find it difficult to follow simultaneously both the polyphony of the madrigal and the embellishments of Ortiz ricercares. We have, nonetheless, thought it useful to precede the latter with the original version of the madrigals, reconstructing, so to speak, the historical memory which lies at the root of this practice. With these eight ricercares on previously composed works, Ortiz becomes a starting point for the entire school of viola da gamba playing in Italy: the divisions on madrigals and canzonas will, in fact, constitute the only Italian solo literature specifically dedicated to this instrument. And, considering that divisions were almost always entrusted to the extemporary improvisation of the virtuoso, these works are also among the few printed testimonies of this practice. The ricercares for solo viola by Ganassi are unquestionably more demanding from a technical point of view, especially those of the Lettione seconda, that is, the second part of his treatise. Notated for the most part in tablature, they go up to number XIV (high E), and make ample use of double stops. In short, they suggest an already advanced level of technique on the instrument which is here investigated and exploited in all its nuances. Ortiz, too, declares a similar intention with his four ricercares for solo viola when he writes: I have written these four ricercares which follow freely and independently in order to exercise the hand. The treatises by Ganassi and Ortiz are clearly didactic in purpose, but it is their musical content which makes them unique and invaluable to our knowledge of the history of renaissance music. They constitute not only the earliest musical collections dedicated entirely to the viola da gamba, but they also provide some of the earliest examples of music dedicated to a specific instrument, and thus initiate that trend of specialization which will spur the development of instrumental compositions in general. Finally, Ganassi and Ortiz are among the few composers who during the Cinquecento set down on paper the products of a performance practice which was essentially and intimately improvisational, and therefore transmitted in words and music the practice which, according to Castiglione, was most suited to a courtier of good judgement. Bettina Hoffmann translation: Candace Smith

CD 14 Francesco Geminiani 6 Cello Sonatas opus 5

Despite his long residence in the British capital and his good contacts among royalty and nobility, as shown by the dedications of his works, Francesco Geminianis excellent reputation has hardly outlived himself. Born in Lucca, Italy, in 1687, like so many of his contemporary fellow countrymen he exchanged his home country for Englandand its buoyant musical life, especially in London. After having been taught at home by his father he had had the opportunity to study the violin with both Arcangelo Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti. As a violinist and as a composer he is unmistakably indebted to the former, who died in 1713. But Geminianis talents as a composer and his superior technical abilities on the violin enabled him to progress a great deal beyond what he had learned from his famous teachers. Not having found the success he had expected in Italy he made the radical move to leave for London in 1714. By then he was already a superb virtuoso on the violin. He performed, taught and composed in England for over 30 years. Unlike his most famous colleague and at the time compatriot Handel (1685-1759) Geminiani confined himself to instrumental music, which did not cause him any loss of public acclaim. On the contrary, he seems to have had a good nose for what audiences liked. Soon after arriving in England he published his Opus 1, a set of twelve Violin Sonatas. The period between 1716 and 1725 has not been documen-ted and remains a complete blank in Geminianis biography.
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In 1726 concerto grosso arrangements of six of his teacher Corellis solo violin sonatas opus 5 followed. This was a stroke of luck which enhanced both Geminianis and Corellis reputations enormously at the same time, making the music by the latter accessible in more than one sense. But then early eighteenth-century London had taken quite a shine to anything Italian and especially to Corellis work. Steadily continuing his activities in London it was probably suggested to Geminiani by one of his students, Matthew Dubourg, who had settled there in 1728, and conducted the orchestra in the Dublin premire of Handels Messiah, to visit the Irish capital. He stayed in this city several times for longer periods. The Earl of Essex took it upon himself to secure the post of Master and Composer of the State Music in Ireland for Geminiani. But the Italian, being a Catholic, would have had to change his religion in order to be able to accept this job and he declined. In 1733 though he opened a Concert Room in Spring Gardens, Dublin, using one floor as an art gallery to exhibit and sell paintings, another passion of his, which reputedly included works by Correggio and Caravaggio. In Dublin his success as a violinist is said to have been phenomenal. Back in London the musician somehow became dissatisfied with his life and started to visit other foreign countries frequently. He regularly travelled to France, Italy (which is only referred to by one music historian), Holland and other countries. A further set of Twelve Violin Sonatas, Opus 4, was published in 1739. He particularly liked the concerto grosso form which allowed him to call upon all his skills for imaginative orchestration, intricate musical textures, and contrapuntal episodes. In total he published four sets of his own Concerti Grossi, but one of his better commercial successes was the reworking of Corellis opus 5 violin sonatas. Geminiani was lucky in securing royal privileges for the exclusive publication of his works both in England (in 1839 for 14 years) and in France (1840 for 12 years). Thus his Pices de clavecin (mainly arrangements of his own works for solo violin, but amazingly re-moulded to French taste) and a further six concerti grossi (arrangements once again of violin works, this time his opus 4) appeared in 1843. Three years later Paris saw the publication of his only set of Six Sonatas for Cello (and continuo) opus 5, and of his last set of original Concerti Grossi, his opus 7. It is unknown whether the cello sonatas were composed with a particular performer in mind. In any case the Parisian school of cello playing may have inspired Geminiani. For quite some time France had been anti-Italian, but this sentiment had gradually waned and musical exchanges took place on a large scale by the 1740s, with Italian cellists playing in France and French viola da gamba players visiting Italy to study. This cello music shows the distinctive Geminiani style which can be found in his (later) violin music as well. These sonatas come elaborated and ornamented, technically demanding and the explicit directions to the performer bear witness to his consciousness of the musical publics (ever changing) taste. They are an intriguing and delicately balanced fusion of Italianate clarity and counterpoint and French lavishness of sonority and gesture. Geminiani recognizably drew on the French viola da gamba repertoire. For in-stance in the first movement, Andante, of the second sonata. The additional complication in the voice leading of the upper against the lower (melody and accompaniment) part when writing for the cello provided the composer with a much appreciated challenge to his contrapuntal skills. He frequently allowed the lines to cross. Apparently he liked the sonority of the two cellos immensely. This is particularly evident in the middle section of the final movement of sonata no. 6. As in most of his other sonatas Geminiani followed in these cello sonatas Corellis number and order of movements: slow-fast-slow-fast. This with the exception of the 6th sonata which lacks the second slow movement. There are four sonatas in a major key, the second and sixth being in minor. Unlike his teacher Geminiani not only applied embellishments in the slow movements of his solo sonatas, but in the fast ones as well. In their entirety these imaginative sonatas represent one of the best sets of baroque cello sonatas. Their expres-siveness is highly attractive and (partly) due to his brilliant figuration. This, however, does not prevent the composer from touching on emotional depths as well, especially in both sonatas in the minor keys. Priska Frank 2007

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Jaap ter Linden As one of the first early music specialists, Jaap ter Linden witnessed the very beginnings of many of the oldest and finest baroque ensembles as co-founder of Musica da Camera and principal cellist of Musica Antiqua Kln, The English Concert and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. From these auspicious beginnings, he moved further into the spotlight, either playing solo concerts and intimate ensemble repertoire with the worlds finest interpreters or at the helm of an orchestra as conductor. He founded and directs the Mozart Akademie (with which he has recorded the complete Mozart symphonies) and is a regular guest director and soloist with the Arion Ensemble (Canada). He has led many period instrument orchestras such as the San Francisco Philharmonia Baroque, Portland Baroque and Amsterdam Bachsoloists and has lent his expertise to modern ensembles such as the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. His extensive discography as player and conductor boasts many award-winning recordings for labels such as Harmonia Mundi, Archiv, ECM, Deutsche Grammophon and more recently Brilliant Classics. In 2006, Jaap released his second recording of the Bach Cello Suites. Most recently, Jaap has dived into the world of opera, conducting Purcells King Arthur with the Stdtische Bhne Mnster and Glucks Iphignie en Aulide with the Royal Conservatory of the Hague.
2007 by Moens Artists

Lars Ulrik Mortensen

Lars Ulrik Mortensen (born 1955) studied at The Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen (harpsichord with Karen Englund, figured bass with Jesper Bje Christensen) and with Trevor Pinnock in London. From 1988 to 1990 he was harpsichordist with London Baroque and until 1993 with Collegium Musicum 90 (leader: Simon Standage). He now works extensively as a soloist and chamber-musician in Europe, the United States, Mexico, South America, Japan and Australia, performing regularly with distinguished colleagues like Emma Kirkby, John Holloway and Jaap ter Linden. Between 1996 and 1999 Lars Ulrik Mortensen was professor for harpsichord and performance practice at the Hochschule fr Musik in Munich, and he now teaches at numerous Early Music-courses throughout the world. Until recently, Lars Ulrik Mortensen was also active as a conductor for modern orchestras in Sweden and Denmark, where especially his activities at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen - a.o. Kunzens Holger Danske in 2000 and Mozarts Marriage of Figaro in 2003 - met with great critical acclaim. In the future, however, he wants to concentrate on work with period instrument ensembles. Since 1999, he has been artistic director of the Danish Baroque orchestra Concerto Copenhagen (CoCo), and in 2004 he succeeded Roy Goodman as musical director of the European Union Baroque Orchestra (EUBO). For the period 2006-07, his busy schedule with CoCo will include performances of Mozarts Clemenza di Tito, Monteverdis L incoronazione di Poppea at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, as well as tours in Holland, Germany, Austria and Japan. Lars Ulrik Mortensen has recorded extensively for numerous labels including DGG-Archive, EMI and Kontrapunkt, and his recording of Bachs Goldberg Variations was awarded the French Diapason dOr. A series of Buxtehude-recordings from the 1990s for the Danish Dacapo-label has met with universal critical acclaim. The first complete recording of Buxtehudes chamber music with John Holloway and Jaap ter Linden received the Danish Grammy-award for best classical recording of the year, another Grammy was awarded a CD with Buxtehudes cantatas with Emma Kirkby, and Lars Ulrik Mortensen became Danish Musician of the Year 2000 for his three CDs with harpsichord music by Buxtehude. These recordings also received the Cannes Classical Award 2001. Furthermore, a series of recordings with John Holloway and Aloysia Assenbaum of violin-sonatas by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber were released on the prestigious ECM-label. Directing Concerto Copenhagen, Mortensen has recorded the complete harpsichord concertos by J.S.Bach for CPO, which has received lavish praise in the international press, and 2004 also saw the release of recordings of Haydn piano concertos (with soloist Ronald Brautigam) on BIS as well as symphonies by the Danish composers J.E.Hartmann, Kunzen and Gerson on CPO. Lars Ulrik Mortensen has received a number of prizes and distinctions, among them the Danish Music Critics Award in 1984, and in 2007 he received Denmarks most prestigious music award, The Lonie Sonning Music Prize.

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Judith-Maria Becker
Judith-Maria Becker (*1975) initially studied Modern Cello in Luebeck, Germany. During her studies she was engaged at the Hamburg State Opera for four years and was famous for her extraordinary sight-reading. At this point of her life she decided to become a baroque cellist. Her studies started in 2001 at The Royal Conservatorium in The Hague with Jaap ter Linden as her teacher and she achieved a Bachelor and Master Degree. Judith-Maria is a frequently asked musician and the whole of Europe is her scene: She is participating in various festivals such as Oude Muziek Festival Utrecht, Trigonale, Austria, Potsdam Sanssouci Festival, Innsbruck and Barcelona, among others. Judith-Maria is a sought-after ensemble musician and Accordone and the Ensemble Aurora are only two of those she is performing with. She was also engaged as soloist by the polish Arte dei Suonatori. At the Johann-Heinrich-Schmeltzer Competition in Melk, Austria she won a prize with the ensemble Quintus. Furthermore Judith-Maria was one of the founding members of the Holland Baroque Society. Apart from her work as a concert musician she has been participating in several recordings with the labels PentaTone, Alpha and Cypres. Whenever she is not playing the cello she enjoys her family life in Sweden with her husband and son.

CD 15 & 16 George Frederic Handel: Chamber Music

Born on February 23rd 1685 in the Eastern German city of Halle in Saxony, Georg Friedrich Handel was the son of a local surgeon. Father Georg had lost his first wife in 1682 and was already sixty when he remarried the daughter of a local pastor. Their first child was to die at birth and Georg Friedrich was the oldest surviving child of three - he was to have two younger sisters (Dorothea Sophia and Johanna Christiana). Father had plans that his son should join the respectable legal profession but his sons organ playing was noticed at the Ducal Court and Handels fate was sealed. Handel subsequently, on his return to Halle, took up lessons with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, organist at the citys Liebfrauenkirche. Handels father died in 1697 and responsibility for his future now was left in the hands of his mother. The composer soon found his way to Berlin where he received the patronage of the court and took up tuition in the organ, harpsichord and violin as well as composition lessons. By 1702, it was clear that things would work out somewhat differently and the young Handel had already enrolled in the local Halle University where it seems he was set for a career in the Law. By now he had fallen under the influence of the composer Telemann and would become probationary cathedral organist in his home town when the previous incumbent, Johann Christoph Leporin, was sacked. The cathedral also had its own oboe consort and it may be at this time that Handel was to compose the six oboe trio sonatas that are generally considered to be Handels earliest compositions - there is however some doubt as to the authenticity of these pieces although it is clear that at this time, the oboe was Handels favourite instrument. The small provincial city of Halle, however, was soon proving to be too constrictive an environment for the young Georg Friedrich and the influence of Telemann and the opera set his sights on a move to the north German metropolis of Hamburg with its public opera house on the Gaensemarkt controlled by the now little known Reinhard Keiser, himself an opera composer in his own right. Just how Handel decided to go to Hamburg is unknown but he had arrived in the city by the summer of 1703 where he gained a post as violinist in the opera house orchestra.; there was even talk of a move to nearby Luebeck to take up the position of successor to Buxtehude as church organist at the Marienkirche. In Hamburg Handel was to meet with the music loving Englishman John Wyche who was to offer him an introduction to a more international scene and perhaps give him his first ideas of a move to the England where he would find later fame. By 1705, Handel was writing his own operas in Hamburg with some varied success and had even managed to fight a duel with his erstwhile colleague and competitor, the English composer John Matheson. The same year saw the first performances of two of his own operas at the Gaensemarkt Theatre - Almira and Nero. Inexperience led him to visit Italy, firstly to Florence at the invitation of Count Ferdinand de Medici before moving on to Rome. He met the Scarlattis in Florence and the Prince of Hanover in Venice, who at the time was looking for a new Kapellmeister. Handels journeys in Italy took him backwards and forwards between Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice and new works of the period included Il Trionfo del Tempo e Disinganno, some church settings and his first Italian opera Rodrigo (premiered in Florence in October 1707).

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By 1710, Handel had decided to leave Italy and to return to his native Germany but nor before the successful premiere of his opera Agrippina in the carnival season of that year. The opera had been seen by diplomats from Hanover and from England and the now feted composer was to be invited by both countries to join their respective Courts. Before accepting their invitations however, Handel moved to the Tyrolean capital of Innsbruck for a short stay - he was on his way again by March 1710. Handel was soon in Hanover where he was offered a salary of 1500 Crowns but he was wary of settling anywhere that might have stopped him travelling freely and thus at the age of only twenty five, he left the city for the Rhineland and Dusseldorf. Ever eager to be on the move, Handel was attracted by the offers from England and by the end of 1710 he found himself in London where the success of his opera Rinaldo premiered on February 24th 1711, and revived the following year, established his name in the English capital overnight. In 1712, Handel returned to Hanover for a brief stay but soon came into the service of the Hanoverian monarch in London and began to write not only operas for the London stage, but also occasional pieces for the Royal family including his anthems and the famous Water Music and Fireworks Music. In 1714, Queen Anne was to die and she was succeeded by the Hanoverian monarch King George the First. But London was also fired by rivalries in the musical world and Handels operas were soon to be marked by the contests of rival prima donnas. Restrictions on performances of stage works began in June 1717 and there was to be no further opera season there until 1720. This led Handel to inaugurate a new style of un-staged music theatre in his Oratorios, the first of which would be Estherwritten sometime in 1718. By 1719, Handel was involved with the newly formed Royal Academy of Music which was to appoint him as master of its orchestra - a paid commission. By 1720, after various visits to Germany he was back in London, bringing with him one of the most famous singers of the time - Senesino - and ready to embark on a new opera season. The next few years saw a return to the successful list of operas composed and presented by Handel, notably Giulio Cesare (1724), Tamerlano (1724), Rodelinda (1725). By 1729, Handels successes allowed him to negotiate a new contract to provide operas at the Kings theatre for five years. This prompted him to travel again to Germany and Italy for the purpose of engaging new stars for his opera seasons - amongst the new operas to be premiered would be Sosarme (1732) and Orlando (1733). At the same time, Handel was composing oratorios such as Deborah (1733) and Athalia (1733). A new opera season began in 1734 with performances at Covent Garden which were to include Ariodante (1735) - also occasioning a royal bounty for the operas of 1000 - and which would conclude with the premiere of one of the most successful of Handels works, Alcina (1735). It was a period where Handel was to become the most significant of all English composers - a journey from Germany through Italy that had finally put Georgian and Hanoverian London firmly on the map as the great capital of opera and oratorio. Handels future in London was now assured but by March 1736 he was reported to be suffering from a very bad attack of rheumatism affecting his right hand, truly a manifestation of a paralysis which took him to Aix les Bains in search of a cure. Despite this, his works continued apace and 1739 saw the completion of his Opus 5 trio sonatas as well as a series of concertos, to continue in 1740. By 1742, perhaps his best known work Messiah was ready for performance but again in 1743, he was reported to be dangerously ill. In 1745, the country was in political disarray climaxing the following year in the defeat of the rebels at the Battle of Culloden - to be commemorated in his new oratorio Judas Maccabeus. Handels final years were marked by illness but nevertheless a continuing of composition of some of his finest oratorios, works which show a depth of feeling such as Jephtha and Theodora. In August 1752, Handel suffered a seizure which left him blind and although he was to live for another seven years, his health was now seriously compromised and he was to die at his London home on 14th April 1759. Clearly, Handels position in musical history as we see it today, rests mainly on his contributions to the fields of opera and oratorio, although this was not always so. It was only in the final decades of the twentieth century that many of his operas and oratorios saw stage revivals often perhaps to the detriment of his orchestral and instrumental works. The present collection groups his chamber works or sonatas together to show that other non-vocal side of the composer in works that despite their brevity show a very fresh side to the composer not always so apparent in the longer works. The works on these discs are all sonatas of one kind or another, ranging from the simple sonatas for a wind or string instrument to the more complex trio sonatas. The term sonata had been used in the sixteenth century for virtually
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any sort of chamber work but came into its own in the Baroque period and is based on the sonata principle of exposition, development and recapitulation in musical form. These works were often composed for a solo instrument (usually a violin or woodwind instrument) with continuo (harpsichord, clavichord etc). The opus numbers of Handels chamber works are confusing and do not necessarily refer to composition dates rather than dates of publication of Handels sonatas. Thus the Opus One group consists of a series of works published in England in the 1730s under the imprint of the publisher Thomas Walsh, all of which were written at an earlier date. Some of these were written for specific instruments such as the treble recorder or the oboe, but usually the choice of solo instrument was left open. These are simple and short works with an accent on melody and typical ornamentation of the Baroque style. The Opus Two collection was published a year later by Witvogel in Amsterdam and contains trio sonatas for recorder and violin in the French and Italian styles current at the time - these are works in free style consisting of maybe four or even five movements and which range from the simplicity of song like adagios to complex three part faster movements. Six of the sonatas date from the period of 1700 to 1720 but were not published in a definitive edition until 1732 when John Walsh again took over the editing. Walsh then produced a second set of seven trio sonatas in 1739 numbering these as Opus Five - although five of these are pastiches from orchestral works from 1717-1735. Many of these sonatas come under the term dubious and their original autographs have been lost, dating too is almost impossible in many cases - one sonata almost certainly comes from Handels fourteenth year (opus 2 No2). Despite these confusions, there is little in the historical facts to deter the listener today from still enjoying these thoroughly enjoyable outpourings of the earlier years of the English maestro who was almost single-handedly to create the glories of the Hanoverian Baroque. Dr. David Doughty

CD 17 Coronation Anthems
George I died at Osnabrck on 11 June 1727, and his successor was proclaimed King as George II on 15 June. The first mention of his coronation was at a meeting of the Privy Council on 11 August 1727. Under normal circumstances it is likely that the music would have been entrusted to the Organist and Composer of the Chapel Royal. But the holder of that position, William Croft, died on 14 August. Maurice Greene, recommended on 18 August by the Bishop of Salisbury as the greatest musical genius we have, was appointed on 4 September. Whether Greene expected to compose the coronation anthems is not known, but by 9 September it was known that Mr. Hendel, the famous Composer to the opera, is appointed by the King to compose the Anthem at the Coronation which is to be sung in Westminster-Abbey at the Grand Ceremony. The King himself insisted that Handel should compose the music instead of Greene. The text of Let thy Hand be strengthened and Zadok the Priest follow the text of the coronation of 1685, which had recently be reprinted. The other two anthems have texts taken directly from the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible. Handel responded to the receipt of the official texts for him to set: I have read my Bible very well, and shall choose for myself . The fact that Handel quotes the Bible references at the head of the three anthems whose opening pages survive suggests that he did indeed do so. The actual performance of the Coronation Anthems did not go smoothly, according to notes of the Archbishop Wake. Apart from the possibility that the Chapel Royal may not have been of a particularly high standard, there are two plausible reasons: confusion between the rival orders of service and poor communication between the performers. They were disposed on two specially-erected galleries, with sight-lines interrupted by the altar. The forces Handel employed for the performance were hugh. An account in the Norwich Gazette (14 October 1727) reads: Yesterday there was a rehearsal of the Coronation Anthems in Westminster Abbey, set to Musick by the famous Mr. Hendall: There being 40 voices, and about 160 violins, trumpets, hautboys, kettle-drums, and Basss proportionable; besides an Organ, which was erected behind the Altar: and both the Musick and the Performance were the Admiration of all the Audience. The Coronation Anthems enjoyed a hugh success and were performed countless times subsequently. Also today they evoke the same excitement and thrill as they must have done at their first performance.
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SIR DAVID WILLCOCKS (1919)

Sir David Willcocks began his musical training as a chorister in Westminster Abbey Choir, under the tuition of Mr. E. Bullock, from whom he also received organ lessons. After WW II he was appointed conductor of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society, organist of Salisbury Cathedral and later Worcester Cathedral, where he organised the Three Choirs Festival from 1950 till 1957. From 1957 till 1974 he was musical director of the world-famous Choir of Kings College in Cambridge, with whom he gained a worldwide reputation. >From 1974 till 1984 Sir David Willcocks was director of the Royal College of Music and conductor of the London Bach Choir. With these choirs he made many recordings with world famous orchestras of the great choral masterworks. In 1977 he was decorated with The Queens Silver Jubilee Honours. For this particular recording Sir David writes the following introduction: It is more than 65 years since, as a boy chorister, I first sang the Coronation Anthems of Handel in Westminster Abbey, where in the year 1727 Handel had conducted the first performance of the anthems at the coronation of King George II and his wife, Queen Caroline. I remember the excitement that I felt as I experienced for the first time the orchestral introduction and first choral entry of Zadok the Priest..and the thrilling trumpet fanfares in The King shall rejoice. That boyhood love of Handels music has remained with me throughout my life, so it has been a special pleasure to participate in the public performances of the Coronation Anthems in Holland with the splendid Stadknapenkoor Elburg and the Dutch Baroque Orchestra, and also to take part in a CD recording and a production for television with the same forces. I wish to express my admiration for the care with which Pieter Jan Leusink prepared the choir and the orchestra.

STADSKNAPENKOOR ELBURG, Pieter Jan Leusink.

Stadsknapenkoor Elburg (Boys Choir Elburg) was founded in 1984 by conductor Pieter Jan Leusink. The choir gives yearly 50 concerts in Holland, and has made several international tours, to Notre Dame in Paris, St. Martin-inthe-Fields in London, Chester Cathedral in Wales, the Festival di Lecco in Italy and the Riga Dom Festival in Letland. The choir performed especially for Queen Beatrix in Elburg. They made recordings of Mahlers 3rd and 8th symphony with conductor Edo de Waart. The choir made several CDrecordings and performs regularly on radio and TV . Each year they perform Bachs St. Matthew Passion, and at Christmas a Festival of Carols and Lessons.

Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king. And all the people rejoiced, and said: God save the king, long live the king! May the king live for ever! Amen, alleluia, amen! 1 Kings 1: 39-40 My heart is inditing of a good matter. I speak of the things which I have made, unto the King. Kings daughters were among thy honourable women. Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen in vesture of gold, and the King shall have pleasure in thy beauty. Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers. Psalm 21: 1,5,3

Let thy hand be strengthened, and thy right hand be exalted. Let justice and judgement be the preparation of thy seat! Let mercy and truth go before thy face. Alleluia! Psalm 89: 13-14 The king shall rejoice in Thy strength, o Lord! Exceeding glad shall he be of Thy salvation. Glory and great worship hast Thou laid upon him. Thou hast prevented him with the blessings of goodness, and hast set a crown of pure gold upon his head. Alleluia! Psalm 45: 1,9,11; Isaiah 49: 23

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CD 20 & 21 George Frideric Handel MESSIAH PART I OVERTURE

RECITATIVE (Accompanied - Tenor) Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem; and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord: make straight in the desert a highway for our God. AIR (Tenor) Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight and the rough places plain. CHORUS And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together;for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. RECITATIVE (Accompanied - Bass) Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: Yet once a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nations shall come. The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. AIR (Bass) But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiners fire. CHORUS And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. RECITATIVE (Alto) Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us. AIR (Alto) and CHORUS O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain: O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold you God! Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. RECITATIVE (Accompanied - Bass) For Behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall rise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee, and the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

AIR (Bass) The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. CHORUS For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. PASTORAL SYMPHONY RECITATIVE (Soprano) There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. RECITATIVE (Accompanied - Soprano) And lo! the angel of the Lord cam upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. RECITATIVE (Soprano) And the angel said unto the, Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people; for unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. RECITATIVE (Accompanied - Soprano) And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying:CHORUS Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, goodwill towards men. AIR (Soprano) Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! behold, thy King cometh unto thee! He is the righteous Saviour, and He shall speak peace unto the heathen. RECITATIVE (Alto) Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. AIR (Alto) He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: and He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. AIR (Alto) Come unto Him, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and He will give you rest. Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him, for He is meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. CHORUS His yoke is easy and His burthen is light.

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PART II CHORUS Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. AIR (Alto) He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: He hid not His face from shame and spitting. CHORUS Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows! He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him. And with His stripes we are healed. CHORUS All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way. And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. RECITATIVE (Accompanied - Tenor) Thy rebuke hath broken His heart; He is full of heaviness. He looked for some to have pity on Him, but there was no man, neither found He any to comfort Him. AIR (Tenor) Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto His sorrow. RECITATIVE (Accompanied - Soprano) He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of Thy people was He stricken. AIR (Soprano) But Thou didst not leave His soul in hell; nor didst Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption. CHORUS Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory. RECITATIVE (Tenor) Unto which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee? CHORUS Let all the angels of God worship Him. AIR (Bass) Thou art gone up on high; Thou hast led captivity captive, and received gifts for men, yea, even for Thine enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among them. CHORUS The Lord gave the word, great was the company of the preachers. AIR (Soprano) How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things.
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CHORUS Their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words unto the ends of the world. AIR (Bass) Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and who do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against His Anointed. CHORUS Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yokes from us. RECITATIVE (Tenor) He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; the Lord shall have them in derision. AIR (Tenor) Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potters vessel. CHORUS Hallelujah: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever. King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah! Part III AIR (Soprano) I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy this body yet, in my flesh shall I see God. For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep. CHORUS Since by man came death, CHORUS By man came also the resurrection of the dead. CHORUS For as in Adam all die, CHORUS Even so in Christ shall all be made alive RECITATIVE (Accompanied - Bass) Behold, I tell you a mystery; We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. AIR (Bass) The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. RECITATIVE (Alto) Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written; Beats is swallowed up in victory! DUET (Alto and Tenor) O death, where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.

CHORUS But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. AIR (Soprano) If God be for us, who can be against us? who shall lay anything to the charge of Gods elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who makes intercession for us.

CHORUS Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom,and strength, and honour, and glory and blessing. Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, nd unto the Lamb, for ever and ever. Amen.

CD 22 Leonardo Leo, Cello Concertos

Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore di Leo was born in the present day S. Vito di Normanni in the province of Brindisi (at that time S. Vito degli Schiavi in the kingdom of Naples) on the 5th August in 1694. In the morning of the 31st of October in 1744 he was found dead, sitting at his harpsichord, in front of him the newly begun version of his Commedia Amor vuol offerenze. He was buried next to his great colleague Alessandro Scarlatti who died in 1725. Leo came from a well-off family, several of his relatives being doctors and clergymen. One of them provided for the costs of Leos studies and initiated the fifteen-year-olds entry into the convent of the Neapolitan music academy S. Maria Della Piet di Turchini. There Leo studied voice, counterpoint, the violoncello and the harpsichord. His most important teacher was the royal music director Nicola Fago, born 1677 in Tarent, whom he succeeded in office in 1741. After only three years of studies he was offered a respectable composition assignment: the setting of a Dramma sacra, one of those religious but operatic pieces popular at the time. L infedelt abbattuta became a great success and had to be repeated at the royal palace. It was the beginning of an exceedingly prolific period of composition, particularly as he was asked to write for numerous occasions in Rome, Venice, Bologna and Turin. Thus he created more than 56 operas, mostly of the type of the opera seria within a few decades; also the then new genre of the Neapolitan Commedia musicale was expanded to more than 20 pieces. Another considerable share well worth mentioning was the composition of religious vocal music (cantatas, masses and other liturgical pieces). With 6 cello concertos, one violin concerto, a few trio sonatas, 6 overtures and 14 harpsichord sonatas Leos instrumental pieces only form a proportionately small part of his musical works, which, however is surprisingly rich in stylistic variation. The characteristics of Neapolitan music between the baroque and the classical period are especially valid for Leonardo Leo. On the one hand it is the recalling of G.P. da Palestrina (1524-1594) and his style, trying to orientate to eternal order, searching for heavenly melodiousness, e.g. his Miserere, written in the style of the contrappunto osservato (strict counterpoint), an a-cappella piece wellknown and highly regarded by Verdi and Wagner. On the other hand the expression of humanity in its worldly existence with conflicts and emotions is at stake. It evokes the need for an expansion of traditional sounds and musical structures, of new chords and hold treatment of dissonances, well found in the cello concertos. In those years Naples was a cradle of musical inspiration, the instrumental and vocal impact of which not only reaches Rome and the north of Italy, but inspired the musical life of Mannheim, Vienna, Dresden, London and Paris, covering both musical theory and terminology. It is true then that Naples shows a peaceful, but very lively coexistence of different forms of musical expression: the stile moderno is being discussed, in contrast to the stile antico, meaning the style of Palestrina, others talk about the religious, the chamber or the theatre style, or about the gallant and sensitive style. Just as with his contemporaries Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, N. Fago, J.A. Hasse, F. Durante or G.B. Pergolesi, that is the whole school of Naples, Leonardo Leos work shows both elements of the stile antico and the stile moderno, often unified in the same piece. The same is true for the subsequent generation, E.G. Leos students N. Jommelli and N. Piccini. Leonardo Leos Six cello concertos are a representative example of the Neapolitan school. The composer attached the following dedication : Per il solo servizio di Sua Eccellenza Sig. Duca di Madalona They were an assignment of the Duke of Madalon, who stayed in Rome between 1730 and 1740. He was an excellent connoisseur of music,
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who had already been master and above all patron of the young composer and conductor G.B. Pergolesi (18101736), who wrote only one piece for the cello (Sinfonia in F). Strawinsky refers to this piece in his PulcinellaSuite resp. the Suite italienne. Before 1700 the cello was rarely used as a solo-instrument, its task was the accompaniment as part of the basso continuo. Vivaldis cello concertos, which, by the way, did not go beyond the 4th position, were also composed for a noble patron, and Vivaldi was not likely to have played them himself. The technically and artistically quite demanding solo-part of Leos concerto proves the Duke to have been quite an able cellist, who probably looked for a good cellist as a composer. However, it is open to conjecture if the remark solo serviziomeant the Duke or the composer. The manuscripts come from the library of the academy S. Pietor a Maiella di Napoli, where Dr. Christian Speck and Julius Berger also discovered Luigi Boccherinis concerto in E flat minor. Leonardo Leos concertos with the exception of No. 6 are dated 1737 and 1738. No. 3 is headed Sinfonia Concertata di Violoncelle e Violini, but it does not vary in form, compared to the other concertos. The other five are titled con violini. Apart from the first, the concertos have four movements headed as follows: Andante - Allegro - Largo - Allegro. No. 1 has an additional second-to-last movement, an artistic double fugue, which only differs from the stile antico by its exact cycles (4 resp. 8 bars). The second movement of No. 3, however is a fugato, not very strict in regard to counterpoint. Leos arrangement of parts is often repetitively polyphonic, sometimes in sixth-parallels or chromatic, especially in the slow movements, thus approaching the sensitive style of the pre-classical period. From the 3rd concerto on, the Largomovements are in Sicilian-style, i.e. in three-four time, melodically with a dotted rhythm. The fast final movements are also in three-four time. Overall a tendency towards a dualistic contrast of theme and motif can be stated, and five movements show a definite sonata form (exposition, enforcement, recapitulation). All first movements start with tutti-introductions before the first solo-entry, which take up about a fourth of the movement. The instruments used consist of two groups of violins - mostly playing unisono (the fifth concerto even makes a distinction between ripieni and soli) and the basso continuo. The alternation between solo and orchestral parts as well as the frequent unisono parts could be inspired by Vivaldis concert principle. However, the higher demands on the solo instrument (expanded range, numerous double stops), the expressive melodic pattern and the dualistic sonata form with its motive potentialities are an indicator of a new ear and a change of style. Thus the precious little concertos are not only landmarks of the - unfortunately not very extensive - history of the solo cello, but of the history of music.

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CD 23 & 24 Pietro Locatelli 1695-1764) Flute Sonatas VI Sonate a Tre Op. 5; XII Sonate Op. 2 CD 25 Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764) LArte Del Violino
Pietro Antonio Locatelli was born on 3 September 1695 in Bergamo (Lombardy) of a family of affluent means. His early musical training took place in his home town, most likely with teachers working at and around the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. By the age of fifteen he was already playing in the instrumental ensemble of the Basilica, and was soon appointed third violinist. The quality of his talent must have already been outstanding when in 1711 he asked his superiors for permission to go to Rome: very plausibly he felt that his abilities had developed to the point that he needed to continue his studies with the great Arcangelo Corelli, the New Orpheus of our days, notice of whose fame may well have reached him. No document, however, survives to attest an apprenticeship with the great master and besides, Corellis health in 1712 was already precarious (in fact he died in January of the following year). But the notion is more easily credited if we attribute a broader meaning to the term school. After obtaining the necessary authorisation to study in Rome, Locatelli is next found playing in the various instrumental ensembles supported by Roman aristocratic patronage more specifically, those of Michelangelo I Caetani, prince of Caserta, Cardinal Ottoboni and Monsignor Camillo Cybo, major-domo to the Pope and illustrious dedicatee of the twelve Concerti grossi Op 1, published in 1721. This collection, an open act of homage to Corellis genius, shows that Locatelli was fully capable of assimilating the essence of the Corelian legacy even if he was never a direct pupil. Moreover, while serving a nobility and clergy that patronised the arts on such a lavish scale (as a means of boosting their status and power), Locatelli would have had ample opportunity to refine his violin playing through his contact with musicians of the Corellian entourage, such as Giuseppe Valentini, or other eminent violinists such as Antonio Montanari and Domenico Ghilarducci. The last recorded testimony of his stay in Rome is dated 1723, the year in which his last patron, Monsignor Cybo, also left the city. During the twelve years spent in Rome, the humble but eminently gifted third violinist of the Basilica of Bergamo had thoroughly consolidated his talent and acquired all the attributes of a great violinist. The next we hear of him, he was performing as an itinerant virtuoso in the various cities of Europe. The years between Locatellis departure from Rome (probably in 1723) and his decision to settle in Amsterdam in 1729, are known as his years of errancy. Perhaps it is precisely his mobility that explains why this period is so poorly documented, though his talent was of such magnitude that echoes of his prodigious virtuosity did occasionally issue from the main centres of culture. In 1725 Philipp, landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt and Habsburg governor of Mantua, acknowledged his genius by appointing him virtuoso da camera, though his presence in the city is attested in no Mantuan document of the day. The situation regarding Venice is also vague, for the composers dedicatory letter to the patrician Girolamo Michiel Lini, introducing the edition of the concertos of the Arte del Violino, Op. 3 (1733), allows us merely to date his stay in the city very approximately to an unspecified moment or period between 1723 and 1727, and to attribute the actual composition of the Arte del Violino to his Italian period. This dedication nonetheless has a certain importance, not only for its bearing on the events of Locatellis life, but also as an aid to reconstructing the performance practice of the Op. 3. After referring to his stay in Venice, during which he had always been benevolently welcomed to the (Lini) household, Locatelli goes on to proffer deferential words of gratitude to the Venetian patrician, since Your Excellency (.) had (.) deigned to come and listen to them (the concertos) and tolerate them when, at those celebrated functions and with that excellent and matchlessly plentiful Orchestra, I performed them, While the mention of functions(fontioni) suggests that the first performances of the concertos took place in a Venetian church, his definition of the Venetian orchestra is perhaps equally revealing if we consider the large ensembles Locatelli had been familiar with in contemporary Roman celebrations. In around 1725 the Venetian orchestra would number some twenty strings, and even though it was customary to augment the instrumental forces on particular occasions, it is nonetheless strange that no documentation has survived of such an extraordinary event.

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After this, all the evidence of Locatellis activities points north of the Alps. In June 1727 he was in Munich, at the court of the prince-elector Karl Albert: here his playing earned him a dozen gold florins. In the following year a report by Wilhelm Stratemann, ambassador of Brunswick to the Prussian court, attests his presence in Berlin at the Palace of Monbijou, where together with Johann Gottlieb Graun he performed before Queen Sophia Dorothea. Insufficiently documented, on the other hand, is his presence in Dresden, at the court of the elector of Saxony and King of Poland his conjecture is supported merely by the discovery of some of his music in the archive of the musical chapel. Tradition also has it that it is was from Dresden, as a member of the elector Augustus the Strong, that Locatelli arrived at the court of Frederick William I of Prussia, where he allegedly performed on two occasions and received from the monarch the generous gift of a sehr schwere goldene Dose mit Ducaten. Two further witnesses date Locatellis movements in 1728: first, we have his signature in an album belonging to a certain Hendrik van Uchelen, a Dutch merchant then residing in Frankfurt am Main; second, towards the end of the year we track him down in Kassel, where he received 80 imperial thalers from the court of Landgrave Carl von Hessen-Kassel in return for some otherwise unspecified service. Just as the brilliance of the musical scene in early-18th-century Rome had acted as a magnet for the young Locatelli, in the same way the music publishing trade flourished in Amsterdam must have held an irresistible appeal for a composer universally acclaimed by the courts of Europe and with a brilliant career as a virtuoso already behind him. With their advanced technology and efficient distribution network, the citys music publishers had all that was required to guarantee a wide diffusion to his works. Indeed, for any composer, the fact of publishing ones music in Amsterdam was in itself a means of guaranteeing an international reputation. Locatelli took up residence in Amsterdam in the autumn of 1729. His arrival can be dated with reasonable precision thanks to a letter written by the composer to Prince Maximilian von Hessen in December 1729: in it he reports that he had been in the city for about four months and expresses his intention of making it his home for a certain period. As it turned out, he stayed till the very end of his days. Gradually he retired from all concert activity until eventually he restricted himself to a concert he held at his house every Wednesday for the benefit of a select circle of amateurs (professional) musicians not being admitted). Instead, he directed his energies towards the painstaking revision of works that he had probably carried around with him during his travels and which, in certain cases, dated back to his Roman days. It was a corpus of exclusively instrumental music sonatas and concertos that he proceeded to organise into nine opus numbers (the ninth has not survived). In Amsterdam Locatelli resumed his collaboration with the publishers Roger-Le Cne (already begun, as we saw above, with the Concerti Grossi Op. 1 of 1721) by issuing two further orchestral works (Opp. 3 and 4); the Op. 7, on the other hand, was published by Adriaan van der Hoeven of Leiden. The sets of chamber music (Opp. 2, 5, 6 and 7), which were less costly to print, were printed by Locatelli himself at his own expense and sold directly at his house on the Prinsengracht. His skill at managing his affairs, as demonstrated by such careful planning, is confirmed by the fact that in 1731 he succeeded in securing a special privilege from the States of Holland and Western Frisia. It had a duration of fifteen years and protected his music not only from unauthorised reprints but also from the importation of similar publications into the two provinces; the privilege was renewed in 1746. That she shrewd management of his affairs actually bore fruit is testified by the inventory of the possessions left in his house at this death in 1764. Included were many works of art as well as a large quantity of old books (a field in which he would even seem to have traded).

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Locatelli VI Sonate a Tre Op. 5; XII Sonate Op. 2 About the program
The musical virtuoso has been a catalyst of aesthetic controversy ever since music critics and enthusiastic fans have, with opposing intentions, put pen to paper in defence of their muse. Idolized by a grateful public willing to be swept away by the power and brilliance of his playing, censured and ridiculed by those critics whose taste is more inclined towards the intimate and the refined than the grand and sublime, the virtuoso has taken center-stage in Western music history from the late 17th- century to the present day, and the judgement passed upon him has varied with the taste and whims of the times. No 18th- century performer better illustrates the place of the virtuoso in this furious battle for Parnassus than Pietro Locatelli, an Italian violinist of extraordinary capabilities who, after astounding audiences throughout Europe with his unparalleled technical prowess and his often violent performance style, settled in Amsterdam in the late 1720s in order to devote himself to composition. A hero to lovers of Italian music and a model to players hoping to imitate his exciting virtuosity, Locatellis performances moved his supporters to eulogistic ecstasies in which nothing less than the very forces of nature, even earthquakes, were considered grand enough to describe the effects of this playing. An English visitor to Amsterdam lucky enough to hear him performing some of his most difficult music wrote rapturously to a friend:Locatelli must surely be allowed to be a Terre moto.Quel Feu! Quelle Vitesse! He plays his Laberinthe & another piece, which he has lately composed 50 times more difficult, with more ease than I can hum ye Black Jake; and what is more extraordinary, he never pulls off his Coat to play it, as I have observed most other great musicians do. For my part, I look upon him be as great a Player Handel, though this latter be so much bigger and taller. He plays with so much Fury upon his Fiddle, that in my humble opinion, he must wear out some Dozens of them in a year : Mr. Smith ye Bookseller here, who is Master of a great stock of Learning in all ye Arts & Sciences, told us, that he (Locatelli) never was known to play one note out of Tune, except once, when in performing ye difficult piece he has lately composed, he thrust his little finger thro ye Bridge of ye Fiddle & could not get it out again. Praise and panegyrics, however, were not always showered upon Locatellis performances. Many critics were less than enthusiastic, not only about his own style, but about acrobatic Italian music in general, which, as one Frenchman, lamented chopped and pulverized la moderne, rushes on like a hail-storm or a whirlwind, a charivari or a witches Sabbath. The aesthetic standpoint taken by Locatellis crititics, who in general professed to prefer a singing to a springing compositional style, is well represented by a remark made by his contemporary J. W. Lustig, who, although forced to praise the virtuosos power to captivate his audience, could not resist the urge to censure his violence: His playing on the violin was very harmonieux, and left almost no audience unmoved, but at the same time so brutal that sensitive ears found it unbearable. Yet this image of Locatelli as a wild, passionate and even excessive virtuoso, should not blind us to his ability to compose, when he wished, in a very different, highly fashionable and easy style; a style in which virtuosity is seamlessly interwoven with graceful melodies and in which a respectful bow is made towards learned counterpoint. The best examples of this approach to composition are Locatellis trio sonatas for two flutes or violins and basso continuo opus 5, which hold a special place in his opera omnia. When compared to the virtuoso flute sonatas opus 2, or the even more astonishing pyrotechnics of the L arte del Violino opus 3 (which earned him the nickname Paganini of the 18th century), Locatellis trios opus 5 show the composer in a new, gentler and more sensitive guise. In them he entirely avoids technical display for its own sake, and his earthshaking, according to some contemporaries even fiendish, performance style is abandoned. Rather, these sonatas reveal him to be a master of the singing style, of that sweet instrumental cantabile for which, by the 1730s, his Italian contemporaries Tartini and Geminiani also came increasingly to show a preference. In them his musical pen draws, with few but masterly strokes, a phantasmagorical landscape inhabited by the representations of human passions, a musical painting in which varied and complex emotions alternate like the sliding colours in a kaleidoscope. This kind of fantastical soundscape, meant to stimulate not the admiration but rather the imagination of the audience, seems to have been the particular property of the post-Corelli generation of Italian violinists. No longer contented with those specific imitations of nature which had made Vivaldis Four Seasons so popular, the composers of the 1730s turned inward towards less specific but therefore purer musical representations of what they called the passions. They no longer attempted to compose musical descriptions of either natural or mythological
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events, but rather to describe the human emotions which those events unleashed (it is interesting to note that Locatelli did not call the famous of his orchestral works by the name Ariadne in Naxos, nor even Ariadne Abandoned, but instead chose the more emotional title The Tears of Ariadne). To do so they even went so far as to allow themselves to be inspired by musics sister arts; Geminiani, for instance, meditated on paintings or on scenes from literature before playing and composing in order to awaken within himself the emotions he wished to portray, while Tartini went so far as to write suggestive lines of poetry in secret code above the violin parts of his music, so that he would remember the exact verses which had been his inspiration without making them known to others. Contemporary music critics recognized Locatellis music, when it was not wholly given over to virtuosity, as belonging to his school. For instance, the French music critic and composer Charles Henri de Blainville praised the compositions of Locatelli, Tartini and Geminiani for their faithful, life-like expression of the passions and for possessing the important quality of verit or realism: Realism in music consists of a melody so natural that it leaves nothing to be desired in terms of expression, a melody whose innocent and nave turns please by their very simplicity. It is also to be found in certain instrumental pieces, so life-like that they seem to suggest speech or images of passion, of statues or of painting This expressive and chameleon-like style, which was to reach its cul-de-sac in Berlins Empfindsamkeit, was not approved of by all. The respected and knowledgeable critic Buffon expressed his distrust of this Italian extravagance in his Spectacle de la Nature: The gesticulations of a mime, though they be wordless, make themselves understood. We know intuitively why he laughs or why he laments. We understand his motivations, what makes him hasten or retard his steps; something attracts him; he flies from danger; one sees the intention and no one thinks him mad because they are motives, correspondences and logic in all his movements, which are nothing more than the representations of his thoughts. But no one can approve of a mind which passes from sadness to fits of laughter, from chatter to grave looks, from tenderness to anger and even rage without the slightest object for either his laughter or his annoyance. Yet does this not perfectly describe sonatas and other kinds of (Italianate) music? They are to music what marbled paper is to painting. In fact, the more passionate they are, the less reasonable they seem. Buffons critical remarks well describe the style of Locatellis opus 5, although today we tend rather to praise than condemn the imaginative and lively qualities of the trios. Their capricious and unpredictable character, in which emotions jumble and jar like the swirling colours of marbled paper, is the result of a freedom of form quite revolutionary for the 1730s combined with a preference for sweet melody over learned counterpoint. For instance, the opening andante of the first sonata in G major is a kind of fantasia held together formally only by the return of the opening material at the end of the movement. In between these two structural pillars it seems indeed as if a mime were performing a play without words: just as Buffon describes, joy turns to tears and back to laughter again, the music is caressing, agitated and languid by turns and is even suddenly interrupted by the sound of trumpets and drums. This theatrical approach to composition would have seemed quite avant-garde to a public used to the well-constructed trios of Telemann, Handel, or the beloved but oldfashioned Corelli. This is by no means the only example of progressive music in the opus 5, which, not only in its larger structures, but also in its melodic, harmonic and even rhythmical details, betrays Locatellis adventurous creativity on almost every page. For instance, in two of the sonatas Locatelli composes movements in which the various instrumental parts are notated in differing meter signs. Both the first and third sonatas contain siciliano-type movements which are notated in 12/8 in the upper parts and in 4/4 in the bass, resulting in a bizarre, restless and passionate affect. (Locatelli was not alone in composing this kind of experimental piece, for similar bi-metrical effects also appear in contemporary works by Geminiani and Handel). Recent recordings (and even scholarly published editions!) of these trios have improved Locatellis text, by changing the bass part to 12/8, so that it matches the upper parts. Such radical changes would seem to be justified by the assumption that his unusual notation was either the result of a printing error, or that Locatelli intended that the opposing rhythms he notated should be adjusted by the players in order to conform to rather than conflict with one another. However, there are legitimate objections to be raised to both of these assumptions. Firstly, it seems highly unlikely that Locatelli could have overlooked so gross a printing error when he personally corrected the engraved plates of the opus 5 prior to publishing. When he published in 1736, after being subjected the composers painstaking review, the first edition of the sonatas was almost flawless and it is therefore difficult to accept that such glaring rhythmical discrepancies could have escaped the composers notice. It is also perhaps worth mentioning here that not only the
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second authentic Amsterdam edition, but also the contemporary Paris and London editions, as well as several anonymous manuscript copies dating from the 18th century all retain Locatellis original bi-metrical notation. Secondly, it seems unlikely that the composer would have notated the bass part in 4/4 while tacitly intending it to be adjusted by the player to 12/8, for in the pastorale of the fifth sonata, which is also a siciliano-type movement, Locatelli notated all three parts, not in varying meter signs, but simply in 12/8. If Locatelli had intended all three of these siciliano movements to be performed in the same way, then why would he have notated them differently? Surely differing notation for similar movement types within a single opus points, not to adjustment and conformity, but rather to differentiation and diversity! And, most importantly, surely the brooding and melancholy affect of the unconventionally notated siciliano movements was intended to contrast with the joyous and easy simplicity of the conventionally notated pastorale. Unwilling to assume that Locatelli didnt understand the art of notation, we have, for this recording, chosen to be faithful to the composers intentions, and to perform these movements as he wrote them. Indeed, these extreme examples of risky rhythms are by no means the only such remarkable passages in the opus 5; many of the sonatas contain contrasting rhythms, with dotted semiquavers, quavers and triplets jostling one another in lively conflict. This rhythmical diver sification exemplifies Locatellis departure from the high Baroque idiom typical of his Concerti Grossi opus 1 towards a more modern Rococo style. Equally remarkable is the last sonata in the set, a bizarria which is old-fashioned and learned while yet remaining avantgarde and la mode. It is a trio sonata in canon, which combines a fashionable sweetness of melody and lightness of touch with the most rigorous use of counterpoint, and in which not only the upper parts and the bass, but also the harmonies of the basso continuo realisation, are all in canon. A trio sonata for six players (!), it is remarkable for the richness of its sonorities, which, thanks to the full harmonies played by two harpsichords (we have here chosen to use copies of Flemish instruments, since Locatelli owned a Ruckers), close to the opus 5 in suitable magnificence. The proper performance of works so unusual in both form and content requires a special style. Although we know few details of Locatellis own playing, we do know a great deal about his contemporaries Tartini and Geminiani, both of whom advocated sweetening the violin tone with vibrato and an expressive use of tempo. Especially the latter expressive device, the correct use of rubato both within and across bar lines, was considered to be an art only to be understood by the noblest, innermost part of the man whom nature and experience have educated . This is not to say that breaking or stealing time was left entirely to the whim of the performer. Numerous 18th- century authors, French, German and Italian, described the proper use of rubato, whether to reinforce harmonic progressions, to heighten rhetorical structures and effects, or to express a passion. Yet especially this latter use of rhythmical freedom was considered to be the exclusive domain of the mature and experienced artist: Blainville noted that in order to present a realistic representation of an affect it was often necessary either to hasten or retard the tempo, but these are situations which only those who possess good taste can fully appreciate. Locatelli certainly could claim to be such an artist, such a man of refined taste: a collector of rare books, drawings and prints who possessed an immense library; an enthusiastic amateur ornithologist and dabbler in science; a man who had met, and played with, whose music was known by and had influenced, famous and progressive musicians like Bach, Leclair, Graun and Quantz; who corresponded with Padre Martini; who had moved with ease in upper-class and aristocratic circles and who was friends with the fashionable society painter Troost; he would have been aware, not only of the historical background of the arts and sciences of his day, but also of those latest changes in style which made musical and artistic life in 18th - century Europe so tremendously exciting. That he chose to present himself in his opus 5 not as the extraordinary virtuoso, but as the up-to-date man of taste, should therefore not really surprise us. After all, the Terre moto could play with ravishing sweetness, for as Blainville remarked: Locatelli, when performing the first adagio of the fourth sonata by Corelli, was able, by his style of playing, to make a caged song bird fall from its perch in a swoon of pleasure. Locatellis 12 flute sonatas form an extravagant and exuberant opus. He published them in 1732, soon after he took up residence in Amsterdam. In the years directly preceding his arrival in Holland Locatelli had travelled throughout Europe, displaying his considerable skills as a virtuoso violinist to kings, princes and the wealthy upperclasses. It therefore seems the more astonishing that one of the greatest and best-known fiddle-players of his day should make his chamber music publishing debut with a collection of sonatas, not for his beloved violin, but for flauto traverso and basso continuo. However, the existence of earlier violin versions of several of these sonatas in manuscripts pre-dating the 1732 edition indicate that Locatellis opus 2 at least partially consists of transcriptions, and not wholly of works specifically composed for the flute. It is therefore probable that the sonatas in the collection include at least some of the repertoire in which Locatelli
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presented himself as a soloist and composer during his pan-European travels. One can imagine the astonishment which these idiosyncratic offspring of an avant-courier of the Rococo taste must have aroused in conservative circles in the late 1720s! Capricious, contradictory and full of fantastical special effects, these sonatas illustrate Locatellis swerve away from the high baroque style of his concerti grossi op. 1 towards the more personal, quixotic style that succeeded it. The opening andante of sonata no. 1 in C major is a good example of his characteristic and rhapsodic style; its super-abundance of distinctly differentiated rhythms, its striking and sometimes even weird harmonies and its amorphous and indeterminate emotional content all show that Locatelli had resolved on opening his opus 2 with a bold presentation of the new, Rococo style. Many of the sonatas in the op. 2 display these Rococo traits, ranging from the asymmetrical and whimsical da capo arias of sonata no. 9, to the rhythmically jarring bimetrical movements in sonatas no. 6 and 7. Some of the sonatas, however, are more traditional, and several contain movements based on dance forms: passepieds in sonatas no. 1 and 2, sarabands in no. 3 and 4, and hornpipes in no. 5 and 6. We have chosen to delineate the differences between Locatellis extravagant style and his more conservative writing in our performances, through ornamentation, agogic accents and most particularly by variations in the basso continuo realization. Contemporary descriptions of performances as well as authoritative sources such as Quantz make clear that, in the 18th century, cellists playing the basso continuo part were not obliged to confine themselves to the notes printed on the page, but rather could make extensive use of ornamentation and even harmonic realizations in order to enliven the dialogue between the upper parts and the bass. In contrast to the lively and extempore character of the bass part, the right hand of the harpsichord part was kept simple, in order to clarify the harmonic structure without confusing the soloist with unexpected ornaments. Indeed, the continuo sources of the period repeatedly condemn the indiscriminate use of trills, arpeggios, scales and other ornaments in the right hand of the keyboard, except in specific cased where the simplicity of the upper part permits a more complicated continuo realization. Then the harpsichord was free to work out realizations of great complexity in order to enrich the musical whole. A good example of the use of his recording of alml of these continue techniques is the minuetto from sonata no. 10. Here is a progression from the simplest of accompaniments to highly complex realizations intended to clarity and strengthen the affect of each individual variation. Thus the movement as a whole becomes a kind of passionate portrait gallery in which sweet innocence is followed by grim rage, and in which a gentle serenade gives way to a wild folk dance. Surely this is what Marpurg means when he says a musician must alternately play a hundred different roles, must take on a thousand different personalities, according to the composers intentions; surely this is agreement with his praise of that endless variety in the tones themselves necessary to a good performance.their loudness and softness, and whether they are to be played sostenuto or staccato, tenderly, roughly or sharply, whether they ought to be drawn out or dragged along, whether they must skip or leap, or whether they should be enchanting, witty, loitering, muffled, raging etc.? And finally, a word must be said about the last and most extraordinary of the sonatas. This piece, in which both the bass and upper parts are in canon, is an artful, baroque oddity which mixes the immiscible: learned counterpoint and Rococo grace. Heavy-handed, then with a delightful lightness of touch, clumsily lumbering forward, then as supply retreating, it shows Locatelli exercising all his wit and Protean invention within the confines of a strict canonic form. And would it stretch the imagination too far to see this sonata, which crowns and closes the op. 2, as a portrait of the four elements (a theme still much loved in musics sister arts during the 18th century); to hear in the first movement the gentle lapping of waves, in the second to recognize the solidity and compactness of earth, in the third to shiver as all forty winds rush at once form Aeolus cave, or in the last to spring back from the sparkling and flickering, enigmatic fire? Be that as it may, Locatellis op. 2 testifies, three hundred years after his birth, to the composers skill, ingenuity and fantasy. Using only those techniques described in 18th-century sources as the property of that master of skill and passionate expression, the virtuoso, we have attempted to restore to these musical miniatures their glowing colours, to 57 re-tell their jokes with wit and to relate their tragic tales with pathos. Without turning our backs on the philosophers lights, we have taken Marpurgs advice to heart and tried to enflame rather than to explain. If in this we have not succeeded, may those whose hearts are warm enough and minds are bright enough to appreciate the beauties these sonatas contain judge us gently; it is for them alone that we have made the attempt. Jed Wentz

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Jed Wentz
Jed Wentz has been involved with early music since the 1980s as a performer, teacher, researcher and lecturer. He received a soloist diploma from the Royal Conservatory in the Hague after studying with Barthold Kuijken, was a member of Musica Antiqua Koln for nearly 10 years and has performed with major forces in early music like The Gabrielli Consort and Les Musiciens du Louvre. He has published articles on 18th century performance practice and social customs in respected magazines like Early Music, Concerto and Tijdschrift voor Oude Muziek, and has taught and lectured in the United States and Europe in such well-known institutions as The Curtis Institute, The Oberlin Conservatory, The Royal Academy of Music in London and the National Conservatory of Lyons. For the last 10 years he has led Musica ad Rhenum, with whom he has recorded 20 CDs, two of which were awarded the prestigious Cini Prize Venice. With Musica ad Rhenum he has explored not only 18th century chamber music but also religious and theatrical vocal music, most recently having recorded 5 Mozart operas which were received with enthusiasm in the international press. He teaches at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

Musica ad Rhenum
Musica ad Rhenum was founded in 1992 and has performed as a chamber music ensemble and a baroque orchestra throughout Europe, as well as in North and South America, recorded more than 20 CDs (several of which have been awarded prizes), and recently performed operas by Mozart and Handel. The groups perfoming style stems from the musicians conviction that the 18th-century audience was at least as lively and emotional as the audience of today; our experience of Baroque music now should be as fresh and envigorating as theirs was then. So, while avoiding anacronisms of style, Musica ad Rhenum hopes to communicate directly with the listener by using the rhetoric and aesthetics of the 18th century. As Dryden put it, they strive to follow nature, not on foot, but mounted on the back of winged Pegasus. Jed Wentz, flauto traverso; Marion Moonen, flauto traverso; Norbert Kunst, bassoon; Manfred Kraemer, violin; Balzs Mt, violoncello; Marcelo Bussi, harpsichord; Ulrike Wild, harpsichord Recording: Doopsgezinde Kerk Utrecht, The Netherlands, February 1995 Producer: Leo de Klerk

LArte del Violino

Among the multitude of Italian composer-violinists populating the 18th-century musical scene, Locatellis prominent position is guaranteed not so much by the extent of his surviving oeuvre, as by the technical innovations introduced in these works: the tangible reflection of his transcendental technique as a violinist. In this respect, he is truly the pioneer of modern violin virtuosity. Despite a manifest link with the Italian tradition above all of Corelli, but also of Vivaldi and Tartini it was the musics innovative features that brought him success and fame, as it attested by the reception of the two collections that show these qualities most conspicuously: the Arte del Violino, Op. 3 and the XII Sonate Violino Solo Basso Da Camera, Op. 6 (1737). These two sets were followed by a stream of unauthorised reprints, issued by the French publishers in particular, that continued right up until the end of the 18th century (at least as far as the Op. 3 is concerned). The Arte del Violino, published by Le Cne in Amsterdam in 1733, is one of the volumes that most strongly influenced the development of violin playing in the 18th century. It consists of twelve concertos for solo violin, strings and continuo, all in three movements in evident conformity with the Vivaldian model. But within the two outer movements of each concerto Locatelli inserted a capriccio, a kind of written-out cadenza to be played ad libitum: thus the canonical number of twenty-four. By inserting a capriccio before the final ritornello of the tutti, Locatelli radically upsets the formal plan of the solo concerto, with its three movements internally articulated by regular tuttisolo alternation. But while at one level these extraordinary capricci (which, ranging as they do form 80 to 190 bars in length, are complete pieces in themselves) manifestly stand apart from such classic concerto movements, at the same time their inclusion in such an orthodox formal framework also puts them in another perspective. The last four concertos are unusually scored, with the parts distributed between solo violin, violins I and II, violas I and I and II, solo cello and bass. Other works in which two violas are featured are his Concertos VII and VIII of the Op. 1, Concerto XI of the Op. 4 and Concerto VI of the Op. 7 (the remarkable Pianto d Arianna)). Like Johann Sebastian Bachs Die Kunst der Fuge, the Arte del Violino belongs to a category of artistic testament
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that was highly favoured in the 17th-18th centuries: that of the Kunstbuch. In this case the subject-matter is violin virtuosity (in its various facets) and the limits of the violins resources, an area that entailed the exploration of technical possibilities hitherto unfathomed and, in all likelihood, accessible to Locatelli alone! They include: very high pitches (seventeenth position in no. 22, surpassed only by the twenty-second position of the Capriccio Prova del Intonazione at the end of Sonata XII, Op. 6), extreme stretches for the left-hand fingers (no. 21), trills (no. 16), polyphonic chords (nos. 4 and 18) and the expansion of chordal technique (no. 23), double and triple stops, legatostaccato (with unusually taxing demands on the right arm, as in no. 2 and 8), etc. Such experimental cataloguing (though it was cataloguing without a strict logical plan) had a natural corollary: that of conceding centre-stage to the interpreter, who was now expected to astonish the listener and provoke applause. Such suggestions of the Romantic virtuoso ante litteram are confirmed by the testimony of two English gentlemen on their return from their Grand Tour in 1741. After hearing Locatelli play at one of his private concerts, Thomas Dampier and Benjamin Tate made the following report to their compatriots at a club in Geneva: He plays his Laberinthe & another piece, which he has latterly composed 50 times more difficult with more ease than I can humm ye Black Joke () He plays with so much Fury upon his Fiddle, that in my humble opinion, he must wear out some Dozens of them in a year; Mr. Smith () told us, that he never was known to play one Note out of Tune, except once, when in performing ye difficult piece he has latterly composed, he thrust his little Finger throye Bridge of ye Fiddle & could not get it out again. Further on we read: I have heard him Play that Concerto, which is so prodigiously difficult. He told me himself, that the Laberinth was quite easy in comparison of this Spavento; which he calls his Quee de Vache. There is a Caprice in it of seven Sides of very Large Paper wrote very close; there is not a Rest in the whole Caprice, where he could possibly Turn over a Leaf; so that He is obliged to Stick those seven sides of Paper together in Length, which makes near two yards; from whence it derives its Name of Quee de Vache! Locatellis experimentalism was thus genuinely provocative and his ars a matter of trial or challenge, as is explicitly inferred in the motto placed at the head of the Laberinto armonico (Capriccio no. 23, the first of Concerto XII): Facilis aditus, difficilis exitus. Unfortunately, it is precisely this attitude that has damaged the collections reputation and called into question the aesthetic validity of many of the capricci, leading critical opinion to overlook not only the artistic, but also the historical significance, of the work. An example of this viewpoint together with an acknowledgement of the unspeakable difficulties of the cappricci is found in the words of Carlo Luigi Benvenuto, Count Robbio di San Raffaele: The long and very difficult Capricci with which he has deformed his concertos (though intending to embellish them) are well known as reefs for a thousand shipwrecks. It is as if the Composer had wished these works to assemble all that could discredit the player and weary the listener. With one difficulty hard on the heels of the next, one hurdle in hot pursuit of the next. To the extent that no matter how many musicians attempt to venture through them, they all end up with the wings of Icarus or in Phaethons chariot. Nonetheless, the collection succeeded in preserving a certain charisma, as well as exerting a fundamental influence on the development of the violins technical resources: traces of that influence are found, above all in the French didactic literature, right up until the early 19th century. And though there is no tangible evidence to confirm that Locatellis works were ever known to Nicol Paganini, the progressive nature of his technical conquests clearly points forward to the art of a man who approached music in the same spirit of spectacular progragonism. Luisella Molina (translated by Hugh Ward-Perkins) The twelve concertos that comprise Locatellis Arte del Violino have had so few public performance that I think it is safe to assume that they are unknown to most listeners. Why the paucity of performances? The most obvious reason lies in the transcendental difficulty of the concertos and the capriccii contained within them. Who would want to invest the time and study to master just one of twelve concertos that most present day ensembles would not be inclined to want to present to an unknowing and very likely dubious (or positively disinterested) public? But, in truth, there are other reasons as well. The gymnastic element that characterizes the capriccii can easily tend to demean any underlying musical values they might otherwise be found to contain. Likewise, in the concertos themselves, the obvious impossibility of much of what transpires can easily lead the listeners attention not towards the music but away from it. Thus, the interpreter is left in the unenviable position of having to solve each pieces set of technical puzzles in a way that discovers and reinforces the underlying music rather than doing so at the musics expense. In short, these remarkable pieces only work if they are played as music and not as the sort of arcane and
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ultimately self-indulgent exercises they can so easily become when approached with the primary goal of simple survivalA! The capriccii also deserve an additional word of explanation here. They are most definitely not cadenzas! I have seen more than one review in which the reviewer fails to make this essential distinction. Whereaas the cadenza is an opportunity for the soloist to flex his imaginative and technical muscles by offering what amongst to musical commentary or exploration of the materials contained in the movement he has all but completed, Locatellis capriccii are, with only a single exception, independent excurisions not based motivically or thematically on the materials included in the concertos themselves. Each concerto contains two capriccii. It can be argued I will argue here that the level of compositional and technical complexity ascends gradually through the course of the twelve concerto, culminating in the grandiose and puzzling capriccii that grace Concerto XII, whose first movement capriccio bears Locatellis inscription Laberinto armonico: Facilis aditus; difficilis exitus. (Harmonic Labyrinth: Easy to enter; difficult to escape!) Seen on paper, the notes appear not so much complex as physically impossible. What is required here is not that one play what is written, but that one extract Locatellis abstract code into a language of hands and fingers addressing the violin. The capriccio calls for solutions that are elusive at best. This capriccio, like the others, has served as a puzzle for generations of violinists across the better part of three centuries. The most common solution, at least in previous recordings that can be auditioned, has been to cut the difficulties out of the capriccii entirely or, at the least, to simplify them unmercifully, depending upon the fact that the listener has no access to the music that would embolden him to say Thats not what it says here! (The new edition of Arte del Violino, forthcoming shortly from Schott and edited by Prof. Albert Dunning, will make this abundantly clear to any who care.) Mela Tenenbaums approach to the capriccii has been to assume that, if Locatelli could play them as the reports say he could, then they can be played. This has led her to countless insights about the use of both hands: bowings that are infrequently encountered and more infrequently applied, fingerings that raise questions about the structure of the hands themselves. Ms. Tenenbaum actually plays these works, with their capriccii intact, in concert! My hope would be that, one day, we might perform them for you in the hope that you would share our wonder and pleasure in Locatellis unique contribution to violinists, to musicians and to all who still have the capacity to listen and be awed. Richard Kapp (December 1998)

Mela Tenenbaum
Mela Tenenbaum was born and raised in Chernovtsy, a small city in the Carpathian Bukovina region which has produced an inordinate number of leading musicians now working as soloists and in leading orchestras around the world. At the age of 16, she moved to Kiev for further study with a series of fellowships and awards. Her career in the former Soviet Union was based in Kiev where, after receiving her advanced degrees from the Kiev State Conservatory, she performed as soloist with the Kiev Chamber Orchestra and Kiev State Philharmonic from 1979 to 1989. In addition she was also concertmaster and frequent soloist with Perpetuum Mobile, an innovative chamber orchestra based in Kiev and held relatively free from political involvement by virtue of its association with the Ukranian Union of Composers. With Perpetuum Mobile she premiered numerous works written for her by Russian and Ukrainian composers. Indeed, the repertoire Ms. Tenenbaum has performed in concert is remarkably extensive: it includes virtually all of the bread-and-butter violin concertos, solo and chamber music repertoire as well as an immense body of orchestral repertoire which she had led as concertmaster. In addition, she remains active both as a violist and as an exponent of the rarely encountered viola damore. Ms. Tenenbaum managed to leave the Ukraine with her husband (also a violinist) and her children several years after the Chernobyl disaster. She emigrated to the United States in 1990. She first appeared with Philharmonia Virtuosi as a viola damore soloist and was appointed concertmaster of that ensemble in July 1993. She appears regularly as a soloist and in chamber music performances with members of Philharmonia Virtuosi and at numerous American festivals. She is performing all twelve of the Locatelli concerti in public with the orchestra, along with fourteen other concerto appearances within the past two years with works ranging from Vivaldi and Bach to Bartok and Klebanov. Her recordings of Bachs sonatas and partitas and Paganinis 24 Caprices for solo violin on the acclaimed General Kyd Stradivarius.

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CD 26 Pietro Nardini (Livorno, April 12, 1722 Firenze, May 7, 1793) Sonatas for strings Pietro Nardini
Based in Livorno for the first forty years of his life, Nardini is known to have traveled Lucca on several occasions between 1735 and 1744 to play at the feast of Santa Croce; between 1734 and 1740, he also spent several limited periods in Padova to take master classes with Tartini. The year 1760 marked the beginning of a brief international career: in the second half of that year, Nardini played first in Parma and then in Vienna, at the wedding of Joseph II of Austria and Isabella of Bourbon-Parma. By 1762 Nardinis fame had become widespread in musical circles; this prompted Jommelli to personally accompany him to the ducal court at Stuttgart, where he was named Konzertmeister the following year. In March 1765, Nardini left this post; after a number of engagements at other German courts, he returned permanently to Tuscany at the end of 1767. From July 1769, he played at the grand ducal court in Florence and was named its musical director in 1770; he was to keep this position until a year before his death. In the late 1760s, Nardini played in the so-called Quartetto Toscano with his students Cambini e Manfredi and with Boccherini; he also accompanied the recitals of Corilla Olimpica, the improvising poet later immortalized by Madame de Stel. On April 2, 1770 Nardini played with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the Poggio Imperiale villa (the Mozarts, however, had already heard Nardini play in Ludwigsburg in 1763). From the point of view of musical language, these works by Nardini can be seen as examples of late baroque writing in at least the following aspects: the modified repetition, rather than elaboration, of motifs; the presence the figured bass, monothematic and bipartite forms, and tonal uniformity of movement. Moreover, since Nardini was a violinist of the Tartini school, ornamentation is a determinant feature that can be considered a substitute for thematic elaboration even though it does not, in this case, attain the level of complication of the sonatas published by Decombe. However, some pieces distance themselves from this Baroque framework, tending toward the Galante style often found in other authors from the same period; for example, Nardinis Sonata for Violin and Violoncello obligato in C major, at San Francisco University, where the tonal sequence of the movements is C A minor C (in the Paris Trio, it is A - D - A) and the first movement is in a forma-sonata with contrasting and a certain elaboration of motifs, while in the first two tempos the cello takes on the role of an obbligato instrument, like in the Baroque sonata a tre. The same can be said for the harpsichord sonata, not just for its use of Alberti basses, but above all because the first movement is a small forma-sonata with two different themes (the first energetic and brilliant, the second cantabile) and the variations are disposed in a progressively virtuosistic sequence. Certainly, while using stylistic and formal aspects when attempting to date music written during transitional periods does involve some risks, it remains possible that when works feature more modern aspects, it is because they, indeed, are later works. In any case, Nardinis position in musical history was well described as early as 1790 by Giovanni Battista Rangoni in his Saggio sul gusto della musica: clear ideas, sustained style, good taste, correct modulations and expressive and natural sentiments, but especially a very close relationship between between Nardinis compositions and his great ability as a violinist. Nardini was considered by his contemporaries to be the best product of Tartinis school: The great numer of accidentals, of graces, of passages, of trills, of chords and arpeggios, while making this music completely expressive and harmonic, also makes it the most difficult. In other words, Nardinis virtuosity played a substantial role, but in the name of good taste and measure, he stayed away from excess and showiness. Trio per due Violini e Basso. / Del Sig.r Pietro Nardini in La magg. (Tracks 1, 2 and 3). The presence of this manuscript in Paris (Bibliothque Nationale, D. 11043) seems to confirm Pffflins statement (Pietro Nardini seine Werke und sein Leben, 1936), that the Parisian publishers Peters and Miroglio had acquired the publishing rights for two Trios by Nardini. This composition is basically a sonata for trio, with a violoncello obbligato part in the second movement.

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SIX SOLOS FOR A VIOLIN with a Bass for the HARPSICHORD OR VIOLONCELLO COMPOSD BY Sig.r PIETRO NARDINI, London, Printed for I. Walsh in Catharine Street in the Strand: SONATA III in Re min. (Tracks 4, 5 and 6,); SONATA IV in Do magg. (Tracks 22, 23 and 24) The score used here is from the library of the Conservatoire royal de Musique de Bruxelles; its date of publication is uncertain, but believed to precede the publisher Walshs death in 1766. These compositions also appear in three manuscript collections of twelve sonatas by Nardini (number 8 and 7, respectively) conserved in the sterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna and in the Genova and Naples conservatories (with some parts missing in the Naples copy). All these collections seem based on the same source because they contain the same works, in the same order and with minimal variations. A fourth manuscript collection is believed to be Dresden, but has not been found. The six sonatas published by Walsh correspond, albeit in different order, to sonatas number 7 to 12 in the manuscripts/ Walshs edition also includes three of the seven Nardini sonatas published several times by Decombe in Paris between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries (number 4 corresponds to number 1 in Decombe, while number 2 corresponds to 2, and 6 corresponds to 3). Sonata IV also exists in two manuscripts at Berkeley (It. Ms. 299 e It. Ms. 300) and one in Bergamo. These two compositions had a curious destiny in the 19th and 20th century. The finale of the third sonata, with the adagio and the finale of the fourth, became, in a revision by Zellner, a sonata for viola and pianoforte; the same movements were later re-elaborated by Hauser in the so-called Concerto in E minor for violin. Hauser also re-elaborated the adagio as Andante cantabile per violino o clarinetto e pianoforte, while Becker readapted it for violoncello and pianoforte. Moreover, the adagio of the third sonata, together with the three movements of the fifth sonata in Walshs edition, became a Sonata for violin and pianoforte by Moffat, and a sonata for violin or violoncello and pianoforte by Salmon - to name only a few examples. Six SONATAS OR DUETS FOR TWO VIOLINS COMPOSD BY Sig.r NARDINI and FERARI Opera Seconda, London. Printed for I. Walsh in Catharine Street in the Strand. Six DUETS for two Violins never before Published Composed by SIGNORS Nardini Pla & Galleotti. Selected for the use of his Scholars by NARDINI, LONDON Printed and Sold by Longman Luckey & Co. N. 26 CHEAPSIDE: Sonata I in Re magg. (Tracks 7 and 8); Sonata II in Mi bemolle magg. (Tracks 17 and 18). Nardinis sonatas or duets are the first and second pieces in both collections. In Walshs edition (we refer to the copy at the library at the Conservatorio di Napoli). The author of the other sonata is probably Domenico Ferrari perhaps another student of Tartinis. In the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin copy of the Longman edition, the third piece is by Galeotti (described as Antonioand of Leghorn: however, only Salvatore and Stefano Galeotti are known to have been active in London at that time, and only the latter was possibly from Livorno). The remaining compositions are probably by Jos Pl. The note on the title page is interesting, as it indicates that Nardini was directly involved in curating the whole collection, and that teaching was its main purpose. This edition is thus part of the vast production of pedagogical duets for violin that appeared in the second half of the 18th century. The Nardinis first duet is also found in manuscript at the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris; both duets are in two manuscripts in the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik. The Dictionnaire historique des musiciens by Choron e Fayolle (Paris, 1811) mentions a Florentine edition of six duets for violin which has, however, gone lost. According to Pffflin, the Walsh edition dates back to before 1766, while the Longman edition dates back to between 1771 and 1778; however, considering changes in the publishers business name, sometime between 1769 e 1775 would be more probable. FOURTEEN NEW ITALIAN MINUETS FOR Two Violins & a Bass Composed by Sig. or Nardini, LONDON Printed for John Cox at SIMPSONs Musick Shop in Sweetings Alley: n. 2, n. 5, n. 6, n. 13 (Tracks 25, 9, 16 and 15). The copy referred to is in the British Library (b.57.b); another is conserved at Cambridge. Clara Pffflin dates its publication to sometime before 1747, the year of Coxs death; on the other hand, the simplicity of these pieces suggests that they may be examples of Nardinis early works. (Sonata in Mi bemolle magg. per clavicembalo), in Sonate per Cembalo / di / Diversi Autori (Tracks 10 and 11) . This is the thirtieth and last piece in a handwritten anthology dedicated to Italian authors at the British Library (Add. 31589); the authors are Benedetto Marcello, Galuppi, Merola, Giuseppe e Domenico Scarlatti, Alberti, Modonesi, Pietro Guglielmi, Mei, Pampani and Vento. All
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of Nardinis harpsichord compositions known today are conserved in British libraries and in a number of anthologies (one sonata in the ms. Add. 31656 at the British Library; one minuet with variations by Domenico (?) Corri in A Select Collection of Choice Music for the harpsichord or Piano Forte, Edinburgh, Corri & Sutherland, ca. 1790; and two lessons in Volume II of The Harpsichord Miscellany, London, R. Bremner, ca. 1762-1765, also in some library collections in the United States. Sonata for Violin e Violoncello obligato by Nardini in Do magg. (Tracks 12, 13 and 14) The manuscript is in the Frank V . de Bellis Collection at the San Francisco State University Library(M2.5v.39). SONATE Enigmatique pour un Violon seul atribue NARDINI in Fa magg., in L ART du Violon ou Division des Ecoles choisies dans les Sonates Itallienne; FRANOISE et Allemande PAR J.B. CARTIER Chez DECOMBE Paris, n. 148, 149, 150 (Tracks 19, 20 e 21). This Sonata appears on the last pages of the third edition of Cartiers popular anthology from ca.1800 1806; we here refer to the copy at the Venice Conservatory Library. The third edition, like the previous two, includes seven other sonatas by Nardini. The scordatura to be applied is indicated under the title (Dal grave: Do, Fa, La, Mi); this enables the violinist to also play the accompaniment (Par le moyen de cet accord lon se fait la basse), as indicated on a lower pentagram in bass key, to be played one octave higher. Thus, the notes are transposed when played on the two lower strings. The technique of giving the violin a different tuning, which allows the player to execute difficult passages more easily with the same positions as with regular tuning, was used especially by German and French violinists; if Nardini is indeed the author, he would probably have learned this technique from Tartini. Scordatura continued to be used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although a footnote on the first page states: Le Manuscrit est la bibliothque Nationale, no trace of it has been found. On the third page, a note states: Cette SONATE na jamais t Grave (this sonata has never been printed.) Notes by Federico Marri We would like to extend our warmest thanks to the Istituto Musicale Pietro Mascagni in Livorno for permission to consult copies of Nardinis compositions, as well as to the following institutions: Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello in Venice, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di S. Pietro a Majella in Naples, the British Library in London, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the Library of the Conservatoire royal de Musique in Brussels, the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris, and the San Francisco State University Library for their kind permission to consult and use materials in their collections. Translation Francesca Zaccheo The Ensemble Ardi Cor Mio, whose members have often played a leading role in events dedicated to the rediscovery of 17th and 18th century Italian composers, was formed with the intent of reproposing important pieces of ancient music long forgotten. With this CD, the Ensemble Ardi Cor Mio wishes to reacquaint the city of Livorno, on the occasion of its 400th anniversary, with a collection of chamber music written by the great Livornese violinist Pietro Nardini, whose works are today almost completely absent from recordings and concerts.

Ensemble Ardi Cor Mio

Renata Sfriso, Violin Maurizio Cadossi, Violin Caroline Boersma, Cello Gabriele Micheli, Harpsicord

Instruments
Violins: Mathias Thier 1785; Klotz ca. 1790 (R. Sfriso); Salf la ville de Venise 1798 (M. Cadossi); Cello: Anonymous, ca. 1700 Bows: Period Copies Harpsichord: Copy by Giusti, ca. 1680, kindly lent by the Istituto Musicale di Alta Cultura Pietro Mascagni in Livorno.

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CD 27 Pergolesi Stabat Mater Cantatas

Over the centuries religion has inspired numerous artists including many composers. In western music there are multiple examples of works based on Christian subjects. Especially the major (liturgical) feasts with Easter in front have generated a flood of music. This mainly consists of passions based on the story of the Crucifixion as recorded in the Gospels. A second genre linked to Easter is the Stabat Mater (short for Stabat mater dolorosa, Latin for Sorrowfully his mother stood and referring to Maria standing next to the cross after the crucifixion) based on a poem used in Roman liturgy as a sequence and a hymn. The text probably has a 13th-century Franciscan origin and was first set some two centuries later. Apparently it was not intended for the Mass. Before 1700 many composers set the text to mainly polyphonic music: e.g. Josquin, Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso. The best-known (later) example is Pergolesis Stabat mater, apparently composed to replace the one by Alessandro Scarlatti which had been performed annually at Naples. Unlike most contemporary Stabat Maters from Rome which employ a chorus and an orchestra next to vocal soloists his work has a far more sparse instrumental accompaniment of two violins and continuo to the vocal parts by soprano and alto typical for music at the time not originating from Rome. Pergolesis Stabat Mater, completed shortly before his premature death in 1736, was an instant success and was reprinted many times during the eighteenth century. Very often these concerned improved versions with for instance added oboe parts. Even today authentic performances are rare. On this recording the original version can be heard. Priska Frank

The four cantatas by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi recorded here were published in Naples around 1736 in an elegant and carefully prepared edition entitled: Quattro cantate da camera / La prima per Cimbalo /e / Tre con varii Recitativi, Violini, e Violetta obbligata / di / Giovan Battista Pergolesi / raccolte /da / Gioacchino Bruno / Contrabasso della Real Cappella di Napoli / Per Divertimento a Dilettanti di Musica / Opera seconda in Rame. / Si vendono nella libreria di Giovanni e Giuseppe Palmiero a Fontana Medina (Four chamber cantatas, the first for harpsichord, and three with various recitatives, violins and obbligato violetta, by Giovan-Battista Pergolesi, collected by Gioacchino Bruno, contrabass of the Real Capella of Naples, for the amusement of musical amateurs, op. 2, [engraved] in copper. Sold in the book store of Giovanni and Giuseppe Palmiero at the Medina Fountain ). A short while later, perhaps in 1738, Bruno published a new edition of the cantatas. At a time when the diffusion of music was entrusted almost exclusive to manuscripts, the fact of the two publications following in short succession testifies to the singular interest which the chamber works of the very young composer from Jesi, who had died in 1736, aroused in Italian and European musical circles. Their long lasting success is confirmed, moreover, by the successive collections by Bremer (ca. 1770), Preston & Son (1790) and others, as well as by the vast numbers of eighteenthcentury manuscripts preserved in libraries all over the world (in one of these manuscripts the original Italian text has even been substituted by a sacred parody in Latin). Bibliographical or documentary information which might establish the exact date of composition of these works is lacking. A stylistic analysis, however, would place the last two cantatas in Pergolesis late period, together with such masterpieces as the Olimpiade, Flaminio, the psalm Laudate Pueri Dominium, Salve regina in C minor, and the Stabat Mater. It is interesting to note that one of these cantatas was composed for the Service of the Most Serene Signora Princess of the Asturias, Maria Barbara of Braganza, for whom Domenico Scarlatti wrote most of his harpsichord sonatas, and to whom Padre Martini dedicated his Storia della Musica in 1757. All of the cantatas are written for soprano. While the accompaniment of the first is for harpsichord alone (in concertato style), the other three call for a string quartet, which is joined by the harpsichord for the realization of the basso continuo. The formal structure of the first cantata employs the usual alternation of Recitative/Aria/ Recitative /Aria. The third cantata begins and ends with an Aria, while the central section presents an extremely interesting progression, resulting from an analytical exploitation of the expressivity of the text, from an unaccompanied recitative to an arioso, returning to another recitative, simple at first and finally accompanied. The fourth cantata, as apposed to the others, is a character monologue (hence its title Orfeo in many eighteenth-century sources). It opens with an accompanied recitative, in closed form, in as much as it is introduced and terminated by the same instrumental motif. It
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continues with an aria which includes frequent recitative-like interjections, and ends, after an unaccompanied recitative, with an aria in echo, particularly dynamic and varied in design and expression. The arias are all da capo, but the composer employs the ternary form freely, taking at times remarkable liberties with regard to stylistic precepts. The musical writing in these works reflects a complete adherence to the new pregalante style, developed in Naples by the generation following Alessandro Scarlatti (Leonardo Vinci, Leonardo Leo, Francesco Durante, Johann Adolph Hasse). It does not, however, fail to recall certain characteristics of the baroque: the supple richness of the melodic lines, the use of chromatics at moment of heightened dramatic intensity, the adoption of majestic dotted rhythms, the dense harmonic language. In the stylistic synthesis of Pergolesis writing, each element becomes part of the smooth harmoniousness of the form, with that character of spontaneity, naturalness and perspicuity which was, already in the eighteenth century, a typical emblem of his art. Even the use of complex technical procedures, such as enharmonics, drawn from the illustrious example of Scarlatti, does spoil the steady flow of the music. In the words of Jean Jacques Rousseau: On peut voir dans le premier recitatif de lOrphe de Pergolse un exemple frappant et simple des effets que ce grand musicien sut tirer de lEnharmonique, et comment, loin de faire une modulation dure, les transitions devenues naturelles et faciles intonner, donnent une douceur nergique toute la declamation. A melodic sense of exquisite elegance blends with an extremely dynamic and varied contrapuntal treatment of the parts. As is typical of the late works of Pergolesi, the music is developed not only through the dynamics, with sudden contrasts between complementary melodic and rhythmic phrases; it aspires, instead, without abandoning its transparent clarity, to a very logical and consistent formal articulation in the polyphony, based on the imitation and continuous response in the inner parts of short thematic nuclei, which confer upon the composition a profound organic unity. The principal melody, entrusted to the voice, arches in all its sensuous plasticity above the splendid lustre of the strings, and participates itself at times in this circular game of refraction among the parts. Yet the musical form, while endowed with its own autonomous beauty, acquires its full expressive significance and structural motivation only in relation to the text, which it recreates in a new dimension of meaning, rendering its most hidden implications. Pergolesi brings to the cantata as well a new intuition for psychological realities, in the sense of dynamic transformation and fluctuating chiaroscuro unveiling of emotions. Although in the relationship between music and words one still recognizes the observance of the rhetorical dictates rooted in renaissance and baroque musical cultures, Pergolesi goes beyond the frozen categories proper to the theory of affects. As in his dramatic compositions (and particularly in the case of the intermezzi), here, too, the psychology of the personage portrayed in the music has internal dynamic and expressive connotations which are vastly rich and varied: melancholy and affective pathos, chaste lyricism, clear and delightful Arcadian idyllic moments, accents of serene vitality and playful gusto, and even irony and subtle, biting humour exercised upon the mannered and occasional debatable principles governing love presented in the text. The vocal style is equally rich, spanning from the most intense manners of expressive singing to the most airy and abstract virtuosic flourishes. As is fitting to chamber music, and in accordance with rococo attitudes, the writing tends toward precise graphic descriptions - tiny and incisive wordpainting -on miniature scale. The influence of opera is also felt (particularly evident in Orfeo), and not merely in the superficial sense of stylistic elements belonging to musical drama inserted into a chamber form - a procedure, moreover, typical in the history of the cantata during the first decades of the eighteenth century. Here, instead, each musical factor possesses such expressive wealth, and such a power to evoke imagery, that it naturally takes its place in the background on an ideal scene, a scene endowed with its own colour scheme and its own particular emotional lighting.

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Francesco Degrada
In all musical prints up to the late nineteenth-century, and in many manuscript sources, the indication regarding forces (in our case, Violini e Violetta obbligata) do not necessarily imply the number of instruments used, but instead leave open the choice between a chamber performance (with one instrument to a part) and an orchestral one. As Monteverdi himself explained (Ballo dellIngrate), the dimension of the venue in which the performance took place determined in each case whether to double the parts or entrust them instead to single instruments. In the case of these four cantatas by Pergolesi, only the fourth bears the indications Solo-Tutti in the violin part. This work is, indeed, the most theatrical, and presents a more marked characterization of the protagonist (Orpheus). In my opinion, this represents an exception to the normal performance practice of one instrument to a part. Considering that the availability of an entire orchestra was, in any case, rare, I believe that Pergolesis indications regarding this cantata, as well as those occasionally found in the music of his contemporaries, were meant to signify a less common performance practice, since the more usual one would have been otherwise assumed. My decision to perform Pergolesis instrumental cantatas with a string quintet grew out of a desire to create that sort of Chamber Theatre to which this music alludes, and to cast upon the characters that intimate light so dear to the eighteenth-century world, where the privileged elite passed precious moments of leisure hosting such musical entertainments in their salons. Roberto Gini

9. Sancta Mater, istud agas, Crucifixi fige plagas Cordi meo valide. Tui nati vulnerati, Tam dignati pro me pati, Poena mecum divide. Fac me verum tecum, pie, flere, Crucifixo condolere, Donec ego vixero. Iuxta crucem tecum stare, Et me tibi sociare In planctu desidero. Virgo virginum praeclara, Mihi iam non sis amara Fac me tecum plangere. 10. Fac, ut portem Christi mortem Passionis fac consortem, Et plagas recolere. Fac me plagis vulnerari, Fac me cruce ine briari, Et cruore Filii. 11. Inflammatus et accensus Per Te, Virgo, sim defensus In die iudicii. Fac me cruce custodiri, morte Christi prae muniri, confoveri gratia. 12. Quando corpus morietur, Fac, ut animae donetur Paradisi gloria. Amen. 12. Quando corpus morietur, Fac, ut animae donetur Paradisi gloria. Amen.

9. Holy Mother! pierce me through; In my heart each wound renew Of my Saviour crucified. Let me share with thee His pain, Who for all my sins was slain, Who for me in torments died. Let me mingle tears with thee, Mourning Him who mourn'd for me, All the days that I may live. By the cross with thee to stay, There with thee to weep and pray, Is all I ask of thee to give. Virgin of all virgins best, Listen to my fond request Let me share thy grief divine. 10. Let me, to my latest breath, In my body bear the death Of that dying Son of thine. Wounded with His every wound, Steep my soul till it hath swoon'd In His very blood away. 11. Be to me, O Virgin, nigh, Lest in flames I burn and die, In His awful Judgment day. By in Thy Cross may I be guarded Meritless - yet be rewarded Though Thy grace. O living Way. 12. While my body here decays, May my soul Thy goodness praise, Safe in Paradise with Thee.

Dalsigre, ahi mia Dalsigre, quale inumana tigre, qual perverso destino in altre arene viver lungi t sforza a me che tamo, a me che per te vivo in pianto, in pene? Torna, deh torna, o cara; e se non senti miei singhiozzi e sospir con cui ti chiamo, glinsensati lamenti odi almen di quei tronchi e i muti orrori, segretari gi un tempo, or messaggeri de nostri onesti, appassionati amori. Itene dunque, o fidi, ite a ridire a lei, chamo e deso, il mio martire; Dite chogni momento dessa chiamo e rammento e nel pi grave duolo non ho per mio consolo chil solo lagrimar. E se riposo brama dare a miei lumi intanto, torni a chi ognor la chiama: ed avr tregua il pianto, termine il sospirar. Se piet non vi muove, almen vi sproni

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CD 28 - 31 Henry Purcell Chamber Music Dido and Aeneas ..a great deal of Art mixed with good Air which is the Perfection of a Master.
The death of Henry Purcell on November 21st 1695, the eve of St Cecilias Day, at the tragically early age at thirty six devastated the musical world of England for which he was one of the most celebrated Masters of the Science of Musick in the Kingdom and scarce inferior to any in Europe. He was buried in solemn splendour in Westminster Abbey to the sound of his own music, composed only eight months previously for the obsequies of Queen Mary, in a ceremony which was more or less a state funeral itself. In his commemorative ode, John Dryden described how like other birds fall silent and listen to the nightingale so ceasd the rival Crew when Purcell came/ They Sung no more, or only Sung his Fame./Struck dumb they all admird the God-like Man and had his contemporaries been asked to describe the music they associated with the British Orpheus, the chances are it would have been vocal or dramatic (or both). For in his short and prolific career, Purcell composed more than sixty anthems, twenty five Odes and Welcome Songs, over forty five hymns, psalms and sacred songs, nine secular cantatas, six operas (or semi -operas) of which Dido and Aeneas can lay claim to be the first (and for a long time, the last) throughcomposed opera in English, incidental music for forty three plays and over two hundred songs for various combinations of voices (many collected by his widow Frances and published in two volumes entitled Orpheus Britannicus). It is unlikely however that many then or indeed today, would have chosen purely instrumental music since although, as this collection will show, Purcell was a worthy heir to the rich heritage of English keyboard and consort music, musical fashion and royal taste steered him towards ceremonial and theatrical composition. Purcell was born in 1659 on the eve of the Restoration which placed Charles II on his throne and restored music, both sacred and secular, to its former place as an accompaniment to public ceremony and pleasure. Music was a family tradition in the Purcell family. Henry followed both his father and uncle, Henry and Thomas Purcell (although the records are ambiguous to which was actually which) to become one of the twelve choristers in the then recently re-established Chapel Royal where he was taught by Henry Cooke (known from his period as an officer in the Royalist Army as Captain Cooke) and after Cookes death, Pelham Humphrey. He left the Chapel in 1673 when his voice broke and became a keeper, maker, mender, repayrer and tuner of the royal instrument collection as (unpaid) assistant to John Hingston, probably through the influence of his uncle (or father) Thomas Purcell who held various court positions including gentleman of the Chapel Royal, composer for the violins, and groom of the robes. The following year he took on the role of organ tuner and copier of organ music at Westminster Abbey which also gave him the opportunity to continue his studies with the Abbeys organist John Blow (who had succeeded Humphrey as Master of the Children at the Chapel). In 1677 he was appointed, like his father and uncle before him, as a composer of the violins (filling a vacancy left by the death of Matthew Locke) and the following year Blow, obviously impressed by the talents of his young protg, stood aside to allow Purcell to become organist at Westminster Abbey, a position he held to the end of his life.

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CD 28 The Sonatas
By 1683 he had composed several anthems for the Chapel Royal, three royal Welcome Odes and the incidental music for Theodosius but his only published compositions were the songs which had appeared in various volumes of John Playfords Choice Ayres and Catches. However in May 1883 Playford placed an advertisement in the London Gazette informing those who had subscribed to the proposal by Mr Henry Purcell for the printing his sonatas of three parts that the works were now complete and could be collected from a number of specified locations including Purcells own house. The published price was ten shillings, rising to fifteen for non-subscribers (the equivalent of about 100 today) and such subscription schemes were a not uncommon method of assessing potential demand for works before the cost of their printing was incurred: the publication of the sonatas going ahead shows that there must have been a ready market for them. Although a subsequent notice in the Gazette referred to them as new Musical compositions called Sonatas suggesting an unfamiliarity with the term, Purcell was not the first English composer to write in this form - Henry Butler and William Young had preceded him by some thirty years (although both lived and worked abroad and their works were not in general circulation in England) and John Jenkins had also produced a set of sonatas in 1660. The handsomely engraved set of parts came complete with a portrait of the composer (looking in his full wig rather older than his twenty-four years) a dedication to Charles II and Preface to the ingenious Reader in which Purcell gives some interesting background to the composition of the sonatas. Although the preface refers to the Author in the third person and Playford often wrote the introductory material to his publications, it is likely that these are Purcells own words or at least his sentiments: he has faithfully endeavourd a just imitation of the most famd Italian masters, principally to bring the seriousness and gravity of that sort of Musick into vogue and reputation among our Countrymen whose humour, tis time now, should begin to loathe the levity and balladry of our neighbours. The identity of the famd Italian masters and the maligned neighbours has the subject of much speculation. Corellis highly influential Op 1 sonatas which had been published in 1681, may not have been available to Purcell when he was composing his own but there was no shortage of other candidates. Italian sonatas were circulating in England, both in manuscript, such as those of Lelio Colista, whom Purcell singled out for praise in The Introduction to the Skill of Musick, and in published form, such as the printed consorts of Giovanni Batista Vitali and Maurizio Cazzati. Another Italian, the virtuoso violinist Nicola Matteis who had been in the country since the early 1670s, included a number of works in sonata form in his Ayres for the Violin published between 1676 and 1685. According to Roger North, an assiduous chronicler of the musical history of the period, Matteis was the means of settling Italian music in England and nothing in town had relish without the spice of Italy. The masters began to imitate them - witness Mr Purcell in his noble set of sonatas. It is a possible that the reference to his Italian models was simply a ploy by Purcell (or his publisher) to add his own spice to the newly published works but given his habit of studying other composers, often by copying out their work (a practice he recommended to the students of music) it is probable that they did exist. His use of Italian tempo markings, whose meaning he felt it necessary to explain to the English Practitioner does suggest a concession to fashion as Purcell did not generally use them in his autograph scores, preferring English terms such as Brisk, Slow and Drag. The recommendation to reject the levity and balladry of our neighbours is often taken as a dig at the French, although given the professed partiality of Charles II, the sonatas dedicatee, to French music and his less well-advertised close political ties with Louis XIV , it is unlikely that an overt anti-French sentiment was intended (or would have been wise). In the preface to Dioclesian of 1690, Purcell commented that English music which was in comparison with poetry and painting still in an immature state, enjoyed the beneficial influence of both Italian and French music, the latter providing somewhat more of Gayety and Fashion. He may have changed his mind since 1683 or more probably, the earlier vague reference was simply designed to provide a contrast with the seriousness of the Italian style he wished to promote. The twelve sonatas published in 1683 are scored for two violins, gamba and continuo for harpsichord (or organ), but were issued as Sonatas of Three parts, thus discounting the continuo as a discrete part after the Italian fashion. Purcells original intention, as he mentions in the preface, had been not to print the continuo part at all, and his change of mind on this point resulted in a delay in the publication. The downgrading of the continuos role in the
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1683 sonatas may represent another attempt at Italianisation since the identically scored set of ten sonatas, posthumously published in 1697, were issued as Ten Sonatas of IV Parts. Eight of the 1697 group appear in the autograph manuscript which contains the pavans and fantasias, securely dated to the early 1680s, and so it is probable that they were also composed around this time. The Four Part works do not therefore represent any development in his approach to the sonata form over those he had selected for earlier publication and may in fact predate them. Great care had been taken in the arrangement of the Three Part set - each minor key sonata is paired with one in the major a third higher, in a pattern which first ascends by thirds and then, with the major work now a third below, begins to descend in the same intervals (although the scheme is not fully worked out ). The Four Part set, other than the first two which are also a minor/relative major pairing, shows no sign of conscious patterning on this scale, and although they are not in exactly the same order as they appear in the 1680s manuscript, there is nothing significant in their printed sequence. In both sets the bass part contributes to the musical argument on a more or less equal footing with the violins with the keyboard continuo having a semi-independent role from it. However in certain passages, notably the Largo of the fifth sonata of the 1683 group (Z794), the continuo becomes fully independent as a fourth part which is curious if it really had been Purcell s intention not to provide the player with a written out part. The sonatas show Purcells fascination with contrapuntal technique which he elaborated in his contribution to the 12th edition of Playfords The Introduction to the Skill of Musick of 1694. His comment that it embodies a great deal of Art mixed with good Air, which is the Perfection of a Master neatly sums up his own achievement. He employs the full range of contrapuntal devices - augmentation and diminution (the lengthening or shortening of the subjects note values across the parts), inversion and reversion (note for note reversal of the subject) - see Z735 for single and double augmentation, Z739 for inversion and augmentation in the opening section, Z743 for single, double and triple augmentation at the it conclusion and Z810 (the so called Golden Sonata) for triple invertible counterpoint in the final movement. He generally follows the format of the sonata da chiesa (church sonata) in the alternation of slow and fast movements, rather than the sonata da camera (chamber sonata) with its looser sequence of dance movements (but he neither adheres to the strict four movement structure of the former or excludes the dance rhythms of the latter). The number of movements varies but the 1697 group usually have five with a fugal canzona in second place, apart from the sixth (Z807) which consists of a single long Adagio in the form of a chaconne. This is based on an irregular five measure ground bass from an Italian song Scocca pur by a Mr Baptist once thought to be Jean-Baptiste Lully but possibly Giovanni Battista Draghi (organist to Charles IIs wife, Catherine of Braganza and music master to his nieces, the Princesses Mary and Anne). The Italian tempo markings which mark off the sections or movements were explained in the preface in very broad (and for the interpreter rather unhelpful) terms as: Adagio and Grave which import nothing but a very slow movement, Presto Largo, Poco Largo or Largo by itself a middle movement and Allegro and Vivace a very brisk , swift or fast movement so there may not be as much subtle variation in the tempi as the range of different markings suggests.

CD 29 Pavans, Chacony, Overtures and other instrumental music

The Pavans, which are slightly earlier in date than the fantasias, also look back to a vanished age. The earliest surviving English pavans (the name is derived either from pavo the Latin for peacock or padovana relating to the town of Padua) date from the 1540s and they flourished as accompaniment to the stately court dances of the Elizabethan era. The form lived on in the Jacobean and Caroline period in the consort suites of Lawes and Jenkins and was briefly revived after the Restoration by Matthew Locke in his Broken Consort suites of the early 1660s. The influence of Locke is apparent in the four Three Part Pavans (Z748-51) but unlike Lockes, each of which head a suite of dance movements, Purcells pavans are independent pieces. However the Four Part Pavan in G minor (Z752) is followed in the autograph by three blank pages and so may originally have been intended as a prelude to a suite (and the existence of another fragmentary pavan followed by a dance movement may indicate that Purcell had contemplated incorporating the pavan form into a larger structure). Z752 (c1678) is conceived on a larger scale than the others and is in three contrasting sections the third of which is modelled on John Jenkinss 1652 Lyra Consort and the work may in fact be intended as a tribute to Jenkins following his recent death. As with the fantasias, Purcells attempt to breathe life into an antique form did not bear fruit as he was probably the last composer for over two hundred years to write music in this form.
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The Three parts on a Ground (Z731) is the first of Purcells ground-based compositions and can by played in D on strings (in an identical scoring as Z752) or as in this recording, in F on recorders (the form in which it may have been originally conceived). The opening chaconne is developed in four episodes of strict canon and displays elaborate counterpoint of dazzling virtuosity including passages of inversion and reversion which Purcell takes care to indicate in score either to aid the players understanding or simply to draw attention to his ingenuity. The four part Chacony in G minor (Z730) has become one of Purcells best known instrumental works. Its eighteen variations on an eight bar descending ground shows the influence of Robert Smiths three part chaconne published in 1677 and may have been composed for Charles violin band. The Suite in G comprises an overture followed by four movements, Air, Borry, (bouree) Minuet and Jig which do not correspond to the usual number or sequence of dance movements in suites of this period, but this appears to have been a deliberate choice on Purcells part as the work is preserved in this form in his autograph. The Staircase Overture so called because of the rapidly ascending scales in the opening section, is probably the earliest example of Purcells instrumental music to have survived and was probably also written for the Charles Twenty-four violins. It came to light in a manuscript in Tatton House in Cheshire into which it had been copied by the 18th century scholar Philip Hayes who obviously did not have access to a complete set of part books as the bass part is missing (the continuo part was almost certainly added by Hayes himself as it employs naturals which did not come into use until the 1700s). However a copy of the part book containing the missing part survived separately in a manuscript now in America and the reuniting of the two scores permits the overture to be heard as Purcell intended. It is heavily influenced by Matthew Lockes incidental music for a version of The Tempest staged in 1674, particularly its opening movement and the Storm Music of the Curtain tune (the equivalent of the overture). The opening alamand is followed by a minuet-like movement and a B flat final section whose relationship to Robert Smiths New Years Day Suite, performed on January 1st 1676 points to a composition date in 1677. The other overtures may have originated as instrumental preludes to vocal music. The Overture in G (Z770) is a version for string consort of the opening sinfonia to the Welcome Song Swifter Isis swifter flow of 1681 (Z336). This was the second court ode commissioned from Purcell probably to mark Charles IIs return to London from Oxford where he had summoned a session of Parliament in order to isolate his political opponents from their London power base, and then immediately dissolved it. The Overtures in D minor and G minor (Z771 and Z772) may also have been attached to no longer surviving odes and Z772, which shares its five part string scoring with the 1689 Birthday Ode for Queen Mary, Now does the Glorious Day appear (Z332 ) and Draghis influential St Celica Ode of 1687, may indicate a later date for it than the other overtures. Purcells name has become inextricably linked with the a work for trumpet that he did not write the so called Trumpet Voluntary (actually The Prince of Denmarks March by Jeremiah Clarke) but his association with the instrument began relatively late in his career. Although the sixteen royal trumpets had long been available to the court composers, it was only in the 1690s that Purcell began to make frequent use of them. Although one might have expected to hear them in the 1687 Welcome Ode Sound the trumpet beat the drum, this work is scored for strings alone and it was in the Yorkshire Feast Song Of old when heroes thought it base (333) of 1690 in which trumpets first made their presence felt. The Sonata for Trumpet and Strings (Z850) may have originated as the sinfonia for the lost New Year Ode of 1693/4, a setting of Light of the World and ruler of the Year whose libretto suggests the inclusion of a trumpet part (although as the 1687 ode shows, music and text do not necessarily go hand in hand). The trumpet appears in the first and third section where it contributes to the thematic material rather than simply providing flourishes and fanfares with the contemplative inner section scored for strings and continuo alone. The Cibell for Trumpet and Strings is an example of a type of work that enjoyed popularity in England from 1690 to 1710. The tune is based on the melody of a chorus which accompanies the Descente de Cybelle in Lullys 1687 opera Atys and Purcells version, with its sprightly trumpet tune over and running bass figures, became the model for several other Cibells including one by Jeremiah Clarke. The Prelude in D minor (Z773) also exists in a G minor version for violin and the Sonata in G minor (Z780) dating from 1683-4 survives in an incomplete version and was originally thought to be for solo violin and continuo. However it is generally thought (believed???) that the continuo lacks sufficient material to harmonise adequately with violin line, and there have been various attempts at
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reconstructing the missing part (including in a version for gamba by Thurston Dart) in order to turn this work into a true trio sonata. In this recording however the inner harmonies are supplied by the bass line derived solely from the manuscript. David Moncur Musica Amphion, founded by harpsichordist/recorder player Pieter-Jan Belder, focuses on the performance of 17th and 18th century orchestral- and chamber music on original instruments. The concertmaster is Rmy Baudet who holds a similar post with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century (Frans Brggen) The musicians of Musica Amphion are all members of important baroque orchestras such as the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Netherlands Bach Society, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and the Academy of Ancient Music. Most of them enjoy successful solo careers as well. Musica Amphion has performed as part of the Dutch Netwerk voor Oude Muziek, the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, the Festival Classique in den Haag, the Bach Festival in Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and many smaller venues in Holland and abroad. Several concert tours are planned for the coming seasons. Musica Amphion has recorded extensively during the last few years. Among their recordings are Bachs Musikalisches Opfer, harpsichord concertos by W.A. Mozart, Telemanns Tafelmusik (complete) and the complete works (10cd box) of Arcangelo Corelli. Recently Bachs Brandenburg Concertos were released as well as the concertos for 2,3 and 4 harpsichords by Bach. A recording for the Quintone label with keyboard concertos by Bach family members was received very enthusiastically by the press. It was awarded a 10 in the CD magazine Luister, being described as the most appealing baroque CD in a very long time (Kasper Jansen, NRC) Pieter-Jan Belder (1966) studied recorder with Ricardo Kanji at the Royal Conservatium of the Hague, and harpsichord with Bob van Asperen at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatorium. He graduated in 1990 and since then has persued a flourishing career as a harpsichordist, clavichord player, organist, forte-pianist and recorder player. He has played at several international festivals, such as the Barcelona Festival de Musica Antiga, the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, the Berlin Tage fr Alte Musik, the Festival van Vlaanderen, the Klara Festival, the Festival Potsdam Sans Souci, the Sacharov Festival in Nizhny Novgorod and the Leipzig Bachfest . As a continuo player he played with such ensembles as the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, Collegium Vocale Gent, Camarata Trajectina, the Gesualdo Consort and the Netherlands Bachsociety. He has worked with conductors such as Frans Brggen, Ton Koopman, Paul Dombrecht, Philippe Herreweghe, Kenneth Montgomery and Ren Jacobs. Belder has also accompanied soloists such as Johannette Zomer, Nico van der Meel, Harry van der Kamp, Sigiswald Kuijken, Wilbert Hazelzet, Kate Clark and Saskia Coolen. In 1997 Pieter-Jan Belder was awarded the third prize at the Hamburg NDR Music Prize harpsichord competition. In 2000 he was winner of the Leipzig Bach harpsichord competition. In 1999 Belder was invited to participate in two important CD recording projects: 10 CDs as a part of a complete Bach recording (Brilliant), and one CD in an Edison-awarded complete recording of all the Keyboard works of the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (NM classics) Since 1999 Belder has been working on his integral recording of the Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, which has recently been released. Rmy Baudet studied at the Conservatory of Amsterdam where he obtained highest acclaim by winning the prix d exellence as a student of Mark Lubotsky in 1981. He was immediately invited to join the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century founded by Frans Brggen on their first tour. By that time he had already finished his studies history at the Groningen University. He went to Milano to further develop as a chamber musican with the the legendary Quartetto Italiano. He was appointed concertmaster in the philharmonic orchestras of Groningen and Arnhem and appeared as a leader and soloist with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and as a conductor with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. As a baroque violinist he played as leader in many European early music groups like the Balthasar-Neumann Ensemble, Al Ayre Espaol, Ensemble Cristofori and the Van Swieten Society. He gave masterclasses at the university of Salamanca and the conservatories of The Hague and Amsterdam and was professor of music and history of art at Teikyo University in Maastricht. He has written a study on the history of violin playing between 1770 and 1870.
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At present Rmy Baudet is concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and concentrates more and more on 17th and 18th century music. His collaboration with harpsichordist Pieter Jan Belder started in 2001 with the recording of the Scarlatti violin sonatas, and has resulted in an ever growing number of concerts with Musica Amphion and an expanding series of cds which is being sold worldwide. Sayuri Yamagata was born in Japan and studied the violin at the Tohogakuen School of Music in Tokyo. During her studies she became increasingly interested in performing on historical instruments, and in 1984 she came to the Netherlands to study baroque violin with Lucy van Dael at the Royal Conservatorium in the Hague. She has since played with many of the leading baroque performers such as Anner Bijlsma, Gustav Leonhardt, Sigiswald Kuijken, Philippe Herreweghe, Bob van Asperen and many others. She has performed extensively throughout Europe, Australia and Japan as a soloist and chamber musician and has made numerous CDs. Since 1985 she has been a member of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century conducted by Frans Brggen. Sayuri Yamagata is one of the concertmasters of the Orchestra of the Netherlands Bach Society. Rainer Zipperling grew up in a musical and theatrical family, and started playing cello at the age of 7. After finishing school he studied viola da gamba and violoncello at the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague, renowned for its Early Music department. After completing his studies in 1980 he became a member of many early-music ensembles such as the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, La Petite Bande, the Ricercar Consort and Camerata Kln, and has maintained a long-lasting relationship with many of them. At the same time he pursued a career as a soloist, editor and recording engineer, mainly for his own record company FLORA, which he founded together with the famous Belgian Gambist Philippe Pierlot and the violin player Francois Fernandez. Today he enjoys great esteem as a teacher at the Conservatories of Frankfurt and Cologne. His recent recording of the Bach Suites for Violoncello Solo was praised in the press for its vivid and spontaneous interpretation. Mieneke van der Velden studied viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken in The Hague and completed her studies in 1988, receiving the Performers Diploma. She is one of Northern Europes most sought-after gambists, and appears regularly with various well-known orchestras including the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Ton Koopman), Concerto Vocale (Ren Jacobs), Collegium Vocale (Philippe Herreweghe), the Netherlands Bach Society, and Cantus Clln (Konrad Junghnel). In her own recitals she collaborates with Glen Wilson (harpsichord) and Fred Jacobs (theorbo). She has appeared as part of the Dutch Early Music Network, the Grachtenfestival, the Bach Festival, the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht , the Festival van Vlaanderen and with many other concert organizations throughout Europe. Her repertoire ranges from French solo works (Marais, Forqueray, Couperin), to the solo arias from Bachs St. Matthew and St. John Passions, as well as his cantatas , viola da gamba sonatas and violoncello solo suites, the 17th-century English repertoire including lyra-viol music, to contemporary pieces by Heppener and others. She has recorded three CDs for the Dutch label Channel Classics, receiving an overwhelmingly positive critical reception. Mieneke van der Velden is a professor of viola da gamba at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. Pan and Syrinx, a through-sung, one-act English opera to an original text by Lewis Theobald and set to music John Ernst Galliard, was premiered in Lincolns Inns Fields Theatre in 1718. It was not Galliards first attempt to break into the London opera scene, which at the time was dominated by Italian opera, with an English-language work, but it was one of his most successful. It was given numerous performances, including one attended by the Prince of Wales and his consort, and was revived in 1726. It tells the tale of the woodland god Pan, who falls for Syrinx, a cold-hearted nymph devoted to the virgin Goddess Diana. Driven mad by desire, he attempts to ravish her and she flees him, begging the gods to help her. Just as his prize is within his grasp, she is miraculously transformed into a bunch of reeds, from which the panpipe is made, a flute to sing her eternal praise and lament her needless death. The history of Purcells Dido and neas is much more clouded than that of Pan and Syrinx, leaving ample room for speculation and controversy. The first performance we know about was one in a chic girls school in Chelsea in 1689, but it is currently generally accepted that the work must have been written for and premiered much earlier, and at court. It tells the tale of the widowed Carthaginian Queen Dido and her doomed love for the wandering neas, who, driven from Troy, dallies with Dido on his way to found Rome. The inevitable tragedy of her abandonment and death is given a non-Virgilian twist by the librettist Tates addition of a coven of witches led by a malevolent soceress, who plot the destruction of the lovers by magical means.
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Here it is not so much the conflict between love and duty that brings on disaster: in this version of the tale Evil, not Love, conquers all. Galliards sunny Pan and Syrinx is a perfect foil to Purcells dark masterpiece, for both operas treat the theme of loves destructive power from completely different angles: if Purcells treatment is tragic, Galliards is comic. In the latter, not only the wooings of the transvestite Nymph by her amorous but dim-witted Sylvan (Let Nature henceforward neglect), but also the sufferings of the main characters themselves are treated with a light touch. While Dido is a tragedy with one comic scene (the scene starting with Sailors Come away), Pan is a comedy with one tragic moment of breath-taking beauty (Pans lament Surprising Change!); the motto of Dido and neas, the magnificent chorus Great Minds against themselves conspire is treated with Baroque dignity and pomp, whereas the moral of Pan and Syrinx, Dianas aria Lawless rage and wild desire do the lovers name disgrace is treated with Gallant grace and charm. Our sympathies, so formed by 19th-century standards of the sublime and beautiful, reject the idea that charming, graceful music can be great, and are sadly unfavorable towards the aesthetic behind Galliards opera. Its critics shall grumble: Yes it is lovely, but is that enough? Must it not also be deep, difficult and perhaps a even little dull, to be worthy of our attention? To which its exponents shall reply: Why should the aesthetic of the late-Baroque and Gallant not be accepted on its own terms? Perhaps one day we will allow Joy back among the Muses, and Delight a place on Parnassus? The performances here attempt to present Dido and neas in as early a form as possible -authentic!- by taking the 1689 libretto as a guide, and Pan and Syrinx in as late a version -improved!- by using the 1726 revival music throughout. In order to complete Dido I have chosen music from Purcells vast treasure-house of incidental theater music: the result is a recording in which several dances and one chorus (tracks 7, 20, 21 and 30) mentioned in the libretto but not extant in the surviving scores are filled in using Purcells own music (only the guitar improvisations are not by the master himself). In the Galliard, the copious revisions made by the composer to Pan and Syrinx for the 1726 revival have all been incorporated into our performing score. And last but not least, the charming Masque of Cupid and Bacchus from The Tragedy of Timon of Athens offers a viable solution to the philosophical love-conundrums posed by both Dido and Pan. A light-hearted comparison of the joys of 79 love and drunkenness, it proposes a co-operative compromise: if wine cannot supply us with the ecstasies of love, it at least has anaesthetic qualities that any who have felt Cupids wounds will appreciate. Perhaps - who knows? - like Alice in Wonderland, nibbling from the right hand and the left of the caterpillars mushroom to achieve the correct height - shrinking from the right hand and growing from the left hand bits - so too can we, drinking deep draughts of Loves pleasures alternated with oblivious sips from the forgetful grape, find happiness at last? Jed Wentz

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Dido and neas

1. Overture Act the First Scene: The Palace Enter Dido and Belinda, and Train. 2. Belinda Shake the cloud from off your brow, Fate your wishes does allow. Empire growing, Pleasures flowing, Fortune smiles and so should you. Shake the cloud from off your brow. Chorus Banish sorrow, banish care, Grief should neer approach the fair. 3. Dido Ah! Belinda, I am pressd With torment not to be confessd. Peace and I are strangers grown, I languish till my grief is known, Yet would not have it guessd. 4. Belinda Grief increasing by concealing... Dido Mine admits of no revealing. Belinda Then let me speak: the Trojan guest Into your tender thoughts has pressd. Second Woman The greatest blessing Fate can give, Our Carthage to secure, and Troy revive. Chorus When monarchs unite, how happy their state, They triumph at once oer their foes and their fate. 5. Dido Whence could so much virtue spring? What storms, what battles did he sing? Anchises valour mixd with Venus charms, How soft in peace, and yet how fierce in arms. Belinda A tale so strong and full of woe, Might melt the rocks as well as you. Second Woman What stubborn heart unmovd could see Such distress, such piety? Dido Mine with storms of care oppressd Is taught to pity the distressd. Mean wretches grief can touch, So soft, so sensible my breast, but ah! I fear I pity his too much. 6. Belinda and Second Woman, chorus Fear no danger to ensue,
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The hero loves as well as you. Ever gentle ever smiling, And the cares of life beguiling, Cupids strew your paths with flowers, Gatherd from Elizian bowers. Dance this chorus. 7. The Baske Dance neas enters with his Train. 8. Belinda See, your royal guest appears. How godlike is the form he bears! neas When, royal fair, shall I be blessd, With cares of Love and State distressd? Dido Fate forbids what you pursue. neas neas has no fate but you. Let Dido smile and Ill defy The feeble stroke of Destiny. Chorus Cupid only throws the dart Thats dreaful to a warriors heart, And she that wounds can only cure the smart. 9. neas If not for mine, for Empires sake, Some pity on your lover take. Ah! make not in a hopeless fire A hero fall, and Troy expire. Belinda Pursue thy conquest, Love! Her eyes Confess the flame her tongue denies. A dance (guitar chacony) Chorus To the hills and the vales, To the rocks and the mountains, To the musical groves And the cool, shady fountains Let the triumphs of Love And of Beauty be shown. Go revel, ye Cupids! The day is your own. 10. The Triumphing Dance At the end of the dance, thunder and lightning. Act the Second Scene: The Cave Enter Sorceress. 11. Sorceress Wayward sisters, you that fright The lonely traveller by night, Who like dismal ravens crying Beat the windows of the dying, Appear at my call, And share in the fame

Of a mischief shall make all Carthage flame. Enter Enchantresses. First Enchantress Say, beldame, whats thy will. Chorus Harms our delight and mischief all our skill. 12. Sorceress The Queen of Carthage, whom we hate, As we do all in prosprous state, Ere sunset shall most wretched prove, Deprived of fame, of life and love. Chorus Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! First and Second Enchantress Ruind ere the set of sun? Tell us, how shall this be done? Sorceress The Trojan Prince, you know, is bound By Fate to seek Italian ground. The Queen and he are now in chase. First Enchantress Hark! The cry comes on apace. Sorceress But when theyve done, my trusty elf, In form of Mercury himself, As sent from Jove, shall chide his stay And charge him sail tonight with all his fleet away. Chorus Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! Enter two drunken sailors, and dance. 13. First and Second Enchantress But ere we this perform, Well conjure for a storm To mar their hunting sport And drive em back to court. Chorus in a manner of an echo In a deep-vaulted cell The charm well prepare, Too dreadful a practice For this open air. 14. Echo Dance Enchantresses and Furies Thunder and lightning, horrid music. The Furies sink down in the cave, the rest fly up. Scene: The Grove Enter Aeneas, Dido and Belinda, and their Train. 15 Ritournelle 16. Belinda, chorus Thanks to these lonesome vales, These desert hills and dales. So fair the game, so rich the sport, Dianas self might to these woods resort.
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A dance (guitar ground) 17. Second Woman Oft she visits this lone mountain, Oft she baths her in this fountain. Here Actaeon met his fate, Pursued by his own hounds. And after mortal wounds, Discoverd, discoverd too late. A dance to entertain neas by Didos women. 18. neas Behold! upon my bending spear A monsters head stands bleeding, With tushes far exceeding Those did Venus huntsman tear. Dido, chorus The skies are clouded, hark how thunder Rends the mountain oaks asunder. Haste to town, this open field No shelter from the storm can yield. Exit. The Spirit of the Sorceress descends to neas in likeness of Mercury. 19. Spirit Stay, Prince, and hear great Joves command! He summons you this night away. neas Tonight? Spirit Tonight thou must forsake this land, The angry god will brook no longer stay. Jove commands thee waste no more In loves delights those precious hours Allowd by thalmighty powers To gain th Hesperian shore, And ruind Troy restore. neas Joves command shall be obeyd Tonight our anchors shall be weighd. But ah! What language can I try, My injurd Queen to pacify? No sooner she resigns her heart, But from her arms Im forced to part. How can so hard a fate be took, One night enjoyd, the next forsook? Yours be the blame, ye gods, for I Obey your will - but with more ease could die. Enter the Sorceress and her Enchantresses. 20. Sorceress, chorus Then since our charms have sped, A merry dance be led By the nymphs of Carthage to please us, They shall all dance to ease us. A dance that shall make the spheres to wonder, Rending those fair groves asunder.

21. The Groves Dance Act the Third Scene: The Ships Enter the Sailors. The Sorceress and her Enchantresses. 22. Sailor, chorus Come away fellow sailors, your anchors be weighing, Time and tide will admit no delaying. Take a boozy short leave of your nymphs on the shore, And silence their mourning With vows of returning, But never intending to visit them more. 23. The Sailors Dance 24. Sorceress See the flags and streamers curling, Anchors weighing, sails unfurling. First Enchantress Phoebes pale deluding beams Gilding oer deceitful streams. First and Second Enchantress Our plot has took, The Queens forsook, Ho, ho, ho! Elissaa ruind, Ho, ho, ho! 25. Sorceress Our next motion Must be to storm her lover on the ocean. From the ruin of others our pleasures we borrow, Elissa bleeds tonight, and Carthage flames tomorrow. Chorus Destructions our delight, Delight our greatest sorrow, Elissa dies tonight And Carthage flames tomorrow. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! 26. A Dance Jack of the Lanthorn leads the Spaniards out of their way among the Enchantresses. Enter Dido, Belinda and Train 27. Dido Your counsel all is urgd in vain, To earth and heaven I will complain. To earth and heaven why do I call? Earth and heaven conspire my fall. To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, The only refuge for the wretched left. Belinda See, madame, where the Prince appears! Such sorrow in his looks he bears As would convince you still hes true. neas enters neas
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What shall lost neas do? How, royal fair, shall I impart The gods decree, and tell you we must part? Dido Thus on the fatal banks of Nile Weeps the deceitful crocodile. Thus hypocrites that murder act, Make heaven and gods the authors of the fact. neas By all thats good... Dido By all thats good, no more, All thats good you have forswore. To your promisd empire fly, And let forsaken Dido die. neas In spite of Joves command, Ill stay, Offend the gods, and love obey. Dido No, faithless man, thy course pursue, Im now resolved as well as you. No repentance shall reclaim The injurd Didos slighted flame. For tis enough, whateer you now decree, That you had once a thought of leaving me. neas Let Jove say what he will, Ill stay. Dido Away! To death I fly if longer you delay. Exit neas But death, alas! I cannot shun, Death must come when he is gone. Chorus Great minds against themselves conspire, And shun the cure they most desire. 28. Dido Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me, On thy bosom let me rest. More I would, but death invades me, Death is now a welcome guest. When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create No trouble in thy breast. Remember me, but ah! forget my fate. Cupids appear in the clouds oer her tomb. 29. Chorus With drooping wings ye Cupids come And scatter roses on her tomb. Soft and gentle as her heart, Keep here your watch and never part. 30. Cupids Dance

CD 31 John Galliard Pan and Syrinx, an opera

1-4. Ouverture Scene: a Wood, & Plain; at distance is seen the God of the River, leaning on his Urn, from whence the waters flow. Enter Syrinx 5. Syrinx On sunny Hills, in gloomy Shades, Oer Mountains steep, and at the Limpid Stream, Still let my Virgin Days be spent In innocent Delights! Where, whilst each rising Morn renews our Joy, In blest Dianas guiltless Train, I follow in the Sprightly Chase: With ardent Speed pursue the panting Prey And taste the Sweets which give a Goddess pleasure. 6. Syrinx Free from Sorrow, free from Anguish With no Amrous pains I Languish No tulmultuous cares molest. Freedom prizing Love dispising All is calm within my breast. Enter Pan 7. Pan What do I see? What form divine? Syrinx But why delay the nymphs? Here were they summond To attend the Goddess; thappointed Hour is fled. I grow impatient. Pan Bright Nymph! Syrinx Ha! Pan Let not awfull Love affright thee. Behold the Sylvan King adores thee. Syrinx Wert thou the King of Gods I must not hear thee. Am I not sworn a Foe to Love? Pan Disclaim that silly Vow: Nature condemns, & Venus will resent it. Believe me lovely Maid. Syrinx Fond God! forbear; & leave me. Pan Let not idle fears possess thee. Pan will protect thee on the lonely Glade.
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Syrinx The Goddess is my Guard: Diana & my Innocence protect me. Pan Relentless Nymph! O Listen to my passion & let me press thee. See the place, The gentle Season, & thy blooming years, Invite to Love, & dictate pleasing Joys. Syrinx Desist, rude Sylvan,tis in Vain. Syrinx contemns thy passion. 8. Syrinx Go leave me tis in vain. I Scorn thee nor will prove A Slave to thee and love. Cease to wooe me Nor pursue me Love & Courtship I disdain. Exit Syrinx 9. Pan How Insolently Coy! am I to be despisd? Perhaps I was too pressing: But whither shall I turn? Shall I pursue her? No - tis resolvd Ill wait for her return. I heard her say, the Nymphs were summond here, And with them will my Sylvans join; O Syrinx! Then again Ill tempt my fate: But see, the Sporting Train advance. 10. Pan Gentle Cupid aid my pleasure & thy Power I will adore. Crown me with this lovely Treasure I no greater Bliss implore. Exit Pan 11. Symphony Enter Nymphs dancing. Diana appears above in her chariot, & is landed on the Stage. 12. Diana The rising Morn her purple Beams now sheds Oer all thaetherial Plains. Each warbling bird hails her approach, And the beasts their coverts hast to leave. Tis Time, our sportive Toils begin. 13. Diana Bid the Tunefull cornet Sound Each your wonted task obey. Some with Nets the Woods surround, Some prepare to rouse the Prey.

14. Diana Yet hold; Some Ill our much-lovd Syrinx waits, Which to prevent demands my Speediest care: Awhile the promisd chase suspend, Instant is my return. Exit Diana. 15. Air for Nymphs Enter Sylvans 16. Air I for the Nymphs and Sylvans 17. Air II for the Nymphs and Sylvans 18. Sylvan aside Those glances Stoln a Flame confess; Tis Hers, to Love; mine to address. Nymph aside A proper Swain! But, female Art, Instruct me to disguise my heart. 19. Sylvan Fairest if thou canst be kind, Ah! Thourt the Damsel to my Mind Ah! If in me thou canst discover Ought to please thee as a lover Be it in thy smiles confest Thoult consent & I am blest. 20. Nymph Thinkst thou that aukward mien has Charms To tempt a Virgin to thy Arms? Sylvan If my aukward mien affright thee, Let this ruddy Cheek delight thee. See, with what bewitching Grace This Manly Beard Oershades my face. Nymph The Charms you boast, perhaps may please, Wild Fawns, and Clumsie Savages; But a more engaging Form Must my Breast with passion warm. Sylvan The Goddess self, Fantastick Fair, Might look, and be Enamourd Here! Nymph Foolish Sylvan! What conceit Makes thee think thy Charms so Great? 21. Duo Nymph Let Nature henceforward neglect Too much Beauty on man to bestow; Since opinion can help the defect And for Charms that are wanting allow. Sylvan Tho Nature should ever neglect Any Beauty on Nymphs to bestow, Their opinion will help the defect And for charms that are wanting allow.

22. A Sylvan & a Nymph Dance 23. Pan to the Nymphs & Sylvans Well do these Sports become Dianas Train, And well ye Sylvans, have you joind In honour of the Goddess of the Groves. Let Love, & Innocence, & Rural Joys Still glad the Plains, & Dictate New Delights. aside Yet what can please, whilst Syrinx is not here? Her absence Racks my anxious breast: But do I not at distance View the Fair? Tis She! She comes: - I will retire And waite some happy moment to approach Her. To Nymphs & Sylvans Again renew your Vocal Mirth, Again your jocund measures tread: 24. Pan Whilst your Harmony fills The Valleys and Hills The Goddess your Strains shall appprove. All Nature will smile Whilst your Songs reconcile The praise of Diana and Love. Exit Pan Chorus Whilst our Harmony fills The Valleys and Hills The Goddess our Strains shall appprove. All Nature will smile Whilst our Songs reconcile The praise of Diana and Love. Enter Syrinx 25. Syrinx How Sweet the warbling Linnet sings To usher in the New-born Day, While gentle Winds on Balmy Wings Diffuse around The Vocal Sound & make the Groves and Forest Gay. 26. Syrinx Toild & Impatient have I sought you long, Neglectfull Nymphs! Were you not summond Soon as the Sun shoud gild the Mountains tops Here on Old Ladons Verdant Banks to meet? It suits not Cynthias Train to Loiter thus, And frolick with Licentious Sylvans. Or are your Solem Vows forgot, & do your Bosoms glow with Wanton pleasures? 27. Syrinx Why should Love, that triffling Passion Which procures such certain Pain, Be the darling Sport of Fashion And Oer Gods and Mortals reign? Since it fills our Hearts with Anguish, Robs our Nights of balmy Rest;
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Makes our Mirth and pleasures Languish, Chases reason from the Breast. Enter Pan 28. Pan aside Love! How impatient hast thou made me? I can no longer wait. To Syrinx Divinest Nymph! Syrinx Ah! Must I be tormented still? Help! Help! Assist me Nymphs! Pan Forbear: - Quick, fly the place; Fly, or Ill call my Satyres of the Woods to Chase you hence: By all the powrs, I swear: Away, you Sylvans too, & wait my pleasure. 29. Chorus Fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly. exeunt Syrinx What must I do, Or how escape? Alas! I tremble Pan Why those tears? Hear me, Lovely, cruel Fair, Behold me prostrate at your Feet Low & submissive as a Rurall Swain. Syrinx I must not hear of Love. Pan Not hear of Love? Why then were all those Heavnly Beauties givn? Not Cynthias self can rivall you in charms. Syrinx Thy Flattry & thy Love alike I scorn. Pan Consent to Love, & thou like Her shalt reign Queen of the Lawns, & have thy Nymphs tattend thee. Syrinx No such Ambition can allure my Mind: I must not hear of love. Pan Force shall befriend me, since Intreaties fail. I will posses thee, stubborn Maid! Thy Beauty has inflamd my Soul; Nor will I Languish, Scornd & in Despair. Syrinx O savage Insolence! protect me Gods! Save me, Diana; Virgin-Goddess save me! 30. Syrinx / Pan S. Cruel Sylvan O forbear P. Cruel Nymph O stay & hear S. Thy Passion is in Vain.
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P. Resistance is in Vain. S. Ye Gods in Pity aid me P. Piercing Charms invade me S. O ease me from my Pain. P. yield to ease my Pain. Syrinx wrests herself from Pan and flies away. The Scene represents Syrinx Transformd into Reeds. 31. Pan solus Surprizing Change! Must I the Charmer Lose? Ah! Cruel Fate, thus to oppose my Love. Soft murmurs rises from the wondrous Reeds; The plaintive Sounds seem to condemn The Rashness of my Flame. O never cease & Pan with you will join Lost Syrinx to Lament. Yet shall her Memry Live; And these fair Reeds to future times Transmit her Name & Praise. 32. Pan But see! the Goddess comes; How shall I her resentment meet? 33. Diana Presumptuous God! Am I so little feard That thou so boldly dost my Anger move? Knowst thou not Cynthia coud sollicit Jove, & from Olimpus draw down sure revenge? Pan I own thy Powr, Celestial Maid, & dread the tempest of thy Rage. Diana Then, to prevent the threatnd Storm, Thy rash offence deplore: & strictly thy Licentious Sylvans Rule. So shall Diana be again thy friend, Forget thy Crime & Syrinx Loss forgive. 34. Diana Lawless Rage & wild desire Do the Lovers Name disgrace, But when Virtue fans the fire There alone can Love take place. 35. Pan O mighty Goddess! To thy will I bend Confess my crime, & will my Sylvans Rule. & Now that she forgives Ye Nymphs, and Sylvans Great Diana praise, Renew your Sports, & follow in the Chase. 36. Dance of Nymphs and Sylvans 37. Bouree I & II 38. Chorus Great Diana will we Sing Till the Plains with Echoes ring. To her pay the Honours Due,

& the sprightly chase pursue. exeunt omnes Finis Purcell The Masque of Cupid and Bacchus 39. Enter Shepherds and Nymphs. A Symphony of pipes imitating the chirping of Birds. 40. First Nymph, Second Nymph Hark how the Songsters of the Grove Sing Anthems to the God of Love. Hark how each amrous winged pair With Loves great praises fill the Air. On evry side the charming sound Does from the hollow woods rebound. 41. First Nymph Love in their little veins inspires Their chearfull notes, their soft desires. While heat makes Budds or Blossoms spring Those pretty couples love and sing. But Winter puts out their desire And half the year they want Loves fire. 42. First Nymph, Second Nymph, Follower of Cupid But ah! how much are our delights more dear, For only human kind love all the year. Enter the Mnades and gipanes. 43. First, Second and Third Follower of Bacchus Hence with your trifling Deity. A greater we adore, Bacchus who allways keeps us free From that blind Childish Powre. Love makes you languish and look pale, And sneke and sigh and whine. But over us no Griefs prevail While we have Lusty wine. 44. Cupid Come all, come all to me, make haste The sweets of mutuall passion taste. Come all to me & wear my Chains,

The Joys of Love without its Pains. 45. Chorus Who can resist such mighty Charmes, Victorious Love, Whose powr controuls the Gods above And even the Thunderer disarmes? 46. Bacchus Return revolting Rebells where dye goe? Dye know what Phantosm tis misleads you so, To Grief and to Care, To Tyranous Chains, To Doubt and Dispaire, To barbarous Jealosy, misery, slavery, To Torments and pains? 47. Cupid The Cares of Lovers, their Allarms, Their sighs, their tears have Powrfull Charms. & if so sweet their torment is, Ye Gods how ravishing the Bliss! So soft so gentle is their pain Tis even a pleasure to complain. 48. Fourth Follower of Bacchus Love quickly is palld tho with Labour tis gaind. Wine never does cloy, tho with ease tis obtaind. We sing while you sigh, we laugh while you weep, Love robbs you of rest, wine lulls us asleep . 49. Cupid & Bacchus, Grand Chorus Come let us agree, There are pleasures Divine, In wine and in love In love and in wine.

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

SOLOISTS: Dido Nicola Wemyss Aeneas Matthew Baker Belinda Francine van der Heijden Second Woman Penni Clarke Sorceress Helene Rasker First Enchantress Maaike Poorthuis Second Enchantress Yong-Hee Kim Spirit Rowena Simpson Sailor Richard Zook

Musica ad Rhenum: violins Franc Polman, Alida Schat viola rzse Adam viola da gamba Cassandra L. Luckhardt harpsichord Menno van Delft baroque guitar David van Ooijen

Choir:
soprano Penni Clarke Maaike Poorthuis Rowena Simpson

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alto Silva Barbosa Harm Huson Richard Zook tenor Otto Bouwknegt Corn Ran Jos van der Velde bass Matthew Baker Rene Steur Bas Witsenburg Restauration English Dr Julia Muller conductor Jed Wentz Galliard: Pan and Syrinx Syrinx Johanette Zomer Pan Marc Pantus Diana Nicola Wemyss Sylvan Mitchell Sandler Nymph Richard Zook Purcell: Timon of Athens First Nymph Pauline Graham Second Nymph Nicola Wemyss Follower of Cupid Ren Steur Cupid Penni Clarke Bacchus Marc Pantus Follower of Bacchus Mitchell Sandler 2nd Follower of Bacchus Hugo Naessens 3rd Follower of Bacchus Richard Zook 4th Follower of Bacchus Joost van der Linden

Choir:
Penni Clarke Pauline Graham Nicola Wemyss Silva Barbosa Annemarieke Evers Hugo Naessens Joost van der Linden Jan-Willem Schaafsma Richard Zook Matthijs Mesdag Mitchell Sandler Ren Steur Restaurion English coach: Dr. Julia Muller Conductor: Jed Wentz Special thanks to Jessica de Heer, Jan van de Bosschen and the entire Festival team for making this recording possible, to Barbara Schwendovius and Barbara Valentin for their faith in the project, to Annelies van Os for more than I can begin to say, to Taco Stronks and Remco Roovers for this, that and everything; to Michael Burden and the Muller family for aid English, Irish and Olympian; to Francine van der Heijden for her help when I was at my wits end, and to Moira Macduff (cousin!) for her endless, endless wit; and, most assuredly, to the strings, winds and windpipes who set this open air invibrant motion. Jed Wentz

Orchestra Musica ad Rhenum:

Franc Polman, concert master violins: Alida Schat, Annabel Ferdinand, Josine van den Akker, Anneke van Haaften, Stefano Rossi, Sara De Corso viola: rzse Adam, Elisabeth Smalt cello: Job ter Haar, Cassandra L. Luckhardt viola da gamba: Cassandra L. Luckhardt bass: Tis Marang recorder: Amy Power, Maria Martinez-Ayerza, Anna Starr, Erik Bosgraaf oboe: Anna Starr, Josep Domenech bassoon: Jane Gower horn: Jan Harshagen, Gijs Laceulle theorbe: Fred Jacobs harpsichord: Menno van Delft

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Jed Wentz
Jed Wentz has been involved with early music since the 1980s as a performer, teacher, researcher and lecturer. He received a soloist diploma from the Royal Conservatory in the Hague after studying with Barthold Kuijken, was a member of Musica Antiqua Koln for nearly 10 years and has performed with major forces in early music like The Gabrielli Consort and Les Musiciens du Louvre. He has published articles on 18th-century performance practice and social customs in respected magazines like Early Music, Concerto and Tijdschrift voor Oude Muziek, and has taught and lectured in the United States and Europe in such well-known institutions as The Royal Academy of Music in London and the National Conser vatory of Lyon. For the last 10 years he has led Musica ad Rhenum, with whom he has recorded 20 CDs, two of which were awarded the prestigious Cini Prize Venice. With Musica ad Rhenum he has explored not only 18th-century chamber music but also religious and theatrical vocal music, most recently having recorded 5 Mozart operas which were received with enthusiasm in the international press. He teaches at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

Musica ad Rhenum
Musica ad Rhenum was founded in 1992 and has performed as a chamber music ensemble and a baroque orchestra throughout Europe, as well as in North and South America, recorded more than 20 CDs (several of which have been awarded prizes), and recently performed operas by Mozart and Handel. The groups perfoming style stems from the musiciansconviction that the 18th-century audience was at least as lively and emotional as the audience of today; our experience of Baroque music now should be as fresh and envigorating as theirs was then. So, while avoiding anacronisms of style, Musica ad Rhenum hopes to communicate directly with the listener by using the rhetoric and aesthetics of the 18th century. As Dryden put it, they strive to follow nature, not on foot, but mounted on the back of winged Pegasus.

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CD 32 & 33 Alessandro Scarlatti Cantatas Flute concertos

Alessandro Scarlatti was born in Palermo on 2 May 1660. In 1678 he married Antonia Anzalone by whom he had ten children, including the great Domenico. When still quite young, Scarlatti made himself known in Roman musical circles through his pastoral fable Gli equivoci del sembiante performed in 1679. In addition to writing operas, Scarlatti tried his hand at the cantata one of the musical genres preferred by the nobility of the time and sacred music. The writing of sacred compositions became a professional obligation following the composers appointment as maestro di cappella at the church of S. Gerolamo della Carita. The war of succession to the Spanish throne convinced Scarlatti to abandon Naples from 1703 to 1706, and again in 1708, when he was employed in Rome as maestro di cappella of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. In 1706, together with Corelli and Pasquini, Scarlatti became a member of the Arcadia. Since 1696 Scarlatti had kept up contacts with the court of Ferdinando de Medici for whom he composed a series of works, now unfortunately lost, between 1703 and 1706. He certainly did all that he could to obtain a permanent post at the court of the Medici, but was unable to achieve this ambition: Prince Ferdinando found his style too studied and melancholic, too tied to the compositional methods and forms of the declining Baroque taste. This was the fist sign of rupture between Scarlatti and the contemporary musical world, a rupture that was to increase as time went on. This also accounts for his failure to obtain a permanent post in Venice where he had tried to gain favour by having an oratorio performed in 1706 and two operas in 1707, all of which met with little success. With the calming of political waters internationally and in the viceroyalty of Naples, where Austrian domination replaced the Spanish, Scarlatti returned to his old post of director of the Real Cappella at the beginning of 1709. There he again took up his operatic activities, though at a less frenetic rate than before, while the gulf between his music and the more forward looking trends of the pre-gallant style evinced by Francesco Mancini, Leonardo da Vinci and Leonardo Leo grew ever wider. It is no coincidence that his last important operas were performed not in Naples but in Rome where he often sojourned. Here, respected and esteemed, but in actual fact isolated, Scarlatti passed the last years of his life after 1722. He died in 22 October 1725. 820 cantatas are quite a record. And if such numbers already make us marvel at Alessandro Scarlattis prolificacy, what might we say about the equally amazing quantity of operas and oratorios? Yet even today, despite all, the greatness of Scarlatti fails to receive the respect it deserves. For indeed perhaps no other musician among his contemporaries served vocal music with such passion and such excellence. The fusion between music and textual affects in Alessandros works takes on characteristics which are entirely unique. Yet, in opposition to that of contemporary musicians, his compositional technique is absolutely enviable. A grand master of counterpoint, Scarlatti was somewhat hindered in his day: his doctrine was not always in step with the light and superficial atmosphere found in opera. It seems that in the closer and more intimate dimension of the cantatas, however, he was able, through a perfect balance between melody and contrapuntal development, to attain absolutely unique levels of expressivity. Obviously it is not always possible to establish a chronological order for the cantatas. While a few are indeed dated, the majority are not. Scarlatti preferred high voices - castrati, of course, in addition to sopranos and contraltos. The presence in Italy of excellent singers (more so than in other European countries) certainly justified such an abundant musical production. Intended for private use (academias, salons), the cantatas provided the grounds for the vaunting of more intimate sentiments and an expressiveness which, although more diminutive, was no less evocative. The favoured theme was obviously love, and it is interesting to see how in the famous cantata in dialect, Ammore, a desperate lovers desperate words are rendered perhaps with a sense of the grotesque, but yet never cease to be realistic and expressive.

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Alessandro was a great master: from him many learned about the construction of melody and the proper exploitation of the rhetorical-musical vocabulary. But what he was most effective in perpetrating was the Italian style which, despite the onset of unbridled vocal virtuosity, arrived intact in its affective essence into the eighteenth century. Rinaldo Alessandrini The cantata Andate, o miei sospiri, alternates recitative and aria (R/A/R/A). Born within the context of an academic con- test and based on a text abounding private words impregnated with strong expressive intensity, the work is characterized by its extreme harmonic daring (especially in the recitatives) and its strict counterpoint in the arias. The cantata Per un momento solo in A/R/A form is based on an extremely dramatic text the intensity of which is especially reflected in the first aria and successive recitative, and less so in the more flowing final aria. Both arias present the same motif and are in two parts. From a manuscript preserved in the Conservatory Library of Paris we are able to date Lascia pi di tormentarmi in A/R/A form as being from 1688. That this work belongs to Scarlattis first creative period is, moreover, clear from its rather archaic character, having certain traits in common with the cantatas of Alessandro Stradella. Its two arias, both in da capo form, strongly contrast each other, the first presenting dramatic chromaticism while the second is more pliable and cantabile. Some manuscripts attribute Lontan dalla sua Clori (R/A/R/A) the title Lo sfortunato (the unfortunate). It is in fact yet another variation on the theme of the distant lover written in typical Arcadian style. Considering the ample length of the two arias, the fluidity of the harmonies, and the extreme expressive balance, this cantata may be counted among Scarlattis later works. The cantata Bella madre de fiori opens with a Sinfonia in slow tempo written in strict contrapuntal style with imitation between the parts. The opening recitative presents an extremely analytical interpretation of the text tending continually towards an arioso style and including a degree of contrapuntal imitation between the vocal line and the bass part. The last line is treated, in typical late baroque style, as cavata, a short fugato arioso in measured time. The aria which follows is arranged according to the scheme Instrumental Ritornello/Verse 1/Instrumental Ritornello/ Verse 2/ Instrumental Ritornello. After a short recitative there is a second aria in which the voice is complemented by a slow concertante violin, and here too each vocal strophe is framed by an instrumental ritornello (for two violins). The Arietta which follows the next recitative offers a new version of the customary strophic scheme: the vocal sections, scored for voice and basso continuo alone, alternate with an instrumental ritornello scored for two violins and continuo, based this time upon the same musical material. The final recitative is perhaps the most intensely poetic and stylistically original section of the whole cantata. Following a convention typical also of baroque opera, the text evokes the motif of Amore who, moved to pity by the laments of Clori, grants her the merciful gift of healing sleep. Treated in free arioso style, the last episode of this fine cantata wraps the voice in the warm timbre of the two violins which, above the sustained harmony of the bass, take up its motifs again and again, repeating them more and more quietly until, with the voice, they finally die away into a whisper. Francesco Degrada

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1. Andate, o miei sospiri Andate, o miei sospiri al cor dIrene. Esso del mio le pene sappia da voi. Ben le sapr, se dite Che per aver ristoro al suo dolore Tutto con voi sen viene anche il mio core. Andate, e a quell bel seno Tanto chun solo almeno ella ne accolga Pien del mio foco ognun di voi saggiri. Andate al cor dIrene, o miei sospiri. Se vedete il cor di lei Pien dinsolito rigore Sfortunati, non le dite Che partite dal mio cor. Ma se poi dimostra avoi Di gradire il vostro ardour Dite allor che siete miei E che a lei vi manda Amor. Ma di che mi lusingo? Oh Dio, che spero? Vudir la crudele Vedr le vostre fiamme E sapr che laccese il suo bel ciglio. Ma finger, qual fino ad ora ha finto, Chella non vi conosce e non vintende E pur sa, quellingrata Lo sa con suo piacer, che miei voi siete. E intende, ma sinfinge, Quel suo barbaro cor ci che chiedete. se non vaccoglie in seno, Restar potrete almeno Della mia bella al pie. In fin chun d rimiri In voi qual sia mia fe. E un sol dei suoi sospiri Sparga colei per me. 2. Per un momento solo lasciate, affanni miei, di tormentarmi, e poi ritorni il duolo, armato di sciagure, a tormentarmi. Non v n fu giammai, vivente core del mio pi sfortunato: gioco di ria fortuna scherzo davverso fato. Di quanto irato ciel quaggi disserra catastrofe di pene e crudi affanni, ricetto miserabile ed eterno e chiude in se di Tizio, dIssione, di Tantalo e dAverno le pene tutte, anzi, pi crudo inferno.
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Mio core, affanni e pene intenti a danni tuoi avrai per sempre. Hanno le tue catene, che frangere non puoi, eterne tempre. 3. Lascia pi di tormentarmi rimembranza del mio ben! Tu sei troppo pertinace nel conterndermi la pace e un momento di contento mai non doni a questo sen. Ancor sazia non sei, tiranna deglamanti, lontananza crudel, di darmi morte se con spietata sorte fai che del mio bel sol in ogni loco provi lardor bench sia lungi il foco. Un sol giorno questo core brama aver di libert. Poi ritorni alle sue pene, notte e d pianga il suo bene, che contento ognor sar. 4. Lontan dalla sua Clori Lontan dalla sua Clori, Accanto a un fiumicello, Fileno il pastorello Spiegava in queste note I suoi tormenti Ai tronchi, ai sassi, a quell ruscello, ai venti. dove sei, dove tascondi, Caro e dolce mio tesoro? Se ti chiamo e non rispondi Sento gi che manco e moro. Qui il tuo bel volto cnadido e vermiglio Vincea la rosa e il giglio, se tua dolce bocca Il canto soavissimo sciogliea L aure fermar facea E raatenendo il volo, Vimparava a cantare il rosignuolo. Godea questo limpido ruscello Farsi spechhio al tuo bello. Or secco il fiore e lerba mesti gli augelli, intorbidato Il rio.

5. Bella Madre deFiori Recitativo: Bella madre defiori, tu ritorni vezzosa a spargere nel suol soavi odori, e placida e pietosa, al suon dellaure e degli augelli al canto tenti arrestare al mio gran duolo il pianto. Ma pur forz che mesta, lontana dal bellidolo chadoro, pianga lora funesta che mi rap dal seno il mio tesoro; e sol pu consolar questalma fida o chio torni a goderlo ol duol muccia. Aria: Tortorella dai flebili accenti, io complrendo chhai lungi il tuo bene; or seguali a noi son le pene giusto ancor che sian pari I lamenti. Onda chiara veloce tra scogli lieta corri a trovare il tuo amante. Deh potessi almen dare u nistante anchio tregua ai miei fieri dolor! Recitativo: Ah Fileno adorato, cagion de miei martiri, per te si struggle e langue la sua misera Clori, e tu non riedi. Dimmi, forse nol credi! Aria: Vanne, o caro, su le sponde, ove il mar feme inconstant e vedrai corer quellonde a dar baci a le tue piante, perch portano, oh Dio, insieme con quellacqua il pianto mio. Vanne o caro, ai boschi, ai pratti, ove ognor spirano I venti e dai zefiri pi grati sentirai li miei lamenti, poich dove taggiri ti seguon tra quellaure I miei sospiri. Recitativo: Ma folel, e con chi parlo a chi mercede io chieggo, se non mascolta e non pu darmi aita chi lalma mha rapita? Aria: Abborrita lontananza, troppo crudo il tuo velen. che sara sel mal savanza, manca il cor, lalmal vien men? Lassa ohim, per merc,
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chieggo solo un d seren. Ah, pieta dit tanto male. deh ti movi, o dio damor. Se la piaga feil tuo strale, sol tu puoi sanarla ancor/ Ahi, perch sol per me devi armarti di rigor/ Recitativo: Cos la bella Clori piangea le sue sventure e Amore intanto col sonno lusinghier le tolse il pianto.

Alessandro Scarlatti and instrumental music

Old Scarlatti was, for most of his contemporaries, a great man, and for being so good he manages to be bad, because his compositions are extreme difficult and are things for the chamber, for they do not work in the theatre. First of all, whoever understands counterpoint will admire them; but when heard in the theatre by a thousand people, only twenty of them understand it; and the others, not hearing something cheerful and theatrical, become bored. Also, since this music is so difficult, the musician, who must pay great attention in order not to make mistakes, has not the liberty to play in his own way, and tires himself excessively. This was the judgement which the cavaliere Francesco Maria Zambeccari, gentleman in the service of Cardinal Grimani, passed on to his lord following a taxing night at the theatre. And the opinion of this modest but well-informed representative of the multitude of young gentlemen who populated this affected century was unfortunately echoed by the cultured prince Ferdinando de Medici, as well as by Burney and other increasingly reliable observers. Thus it would seem that, in the change of styles occurring between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, marked by a decline in baroque tastes (in the original sense of the bizarre, complex and astonishing) and the rise of a new-found Arcadian cleanness, it was old Scarlatti himself who paid the price. He found himself relegated before his time to being considered a venerable antique, a composer to whom one made the obligatory visit of courtesy and testimonies of due respect, but whom fashion obdurately passed over with its usual indelicacy (an indelicacy which would appear again later with Bachs Musikalisches Opfer and Vivaldis Farnace). The Sicilian composer sensed this quite early when, suspecting that his good fortune at the Tuscan court was dangerously vacillating, he began to inundate the indifferent patron with letters of best wishes, of thanks, of may the good Lord bless and keep you, of I hope you live a hundred years, and the like. The prince quickly wearied of this and, as happened with Vivaldi and the marquis Bentivoglio, his answers became increasingly brief and formal, bordering on the annoyed. In vain, then, did the composer, courageously eliminating the syrupy language employed in official correspondence as a means of tempering the insolence of daily matters, manifest to his now cold-hearted protector all the desperation of a poor soul, unemployed with dependent children: My high, regal and true lord: I must make my present condition known to you which, being rendered free from all service and in full dominion over myself, and no less exposed to an uncertain human providence, it is insufficient to sustain the weight of a numerous family which, although attired in the cloak of virtue, is denuded of any succour and mercy [] This my present need is the greatest I have known in all my life Thus, in part because of his stubborn dedication to the aesthetic ideals in which he had always fervently believed (I have always considered it correct and honourable to use that style and those harmonies which become necessary. even when renouncing the delightful play, now of the virtuosic voices, now of the instruments), and in part because of the rapid change in tastes, Scarlatti found himself to be from the 1710s until his death, the depository of a great contrapuntal tradition of the past, of a weighty and difficult style, a maestro as much venerated by the connoisseurs as ignored by the public. This is the Scarlatti which the young and enterprising flautist Johann Joachim Quantz met during his visit to Naples in 1724: [] Quantz made his way to Naples, where he encountered his countryman Hasse, who at that time was studying under Alessandro Scarlatti. [] Quantz asked to be introduced to his teacher, and his friend immediately consented to do so. But upon speaking of him to the old composer, the latter said: My boy, you know that I hate wind instruments: they are always so out of tune! It is the indefatigable Charles Burney who describes this episode, and we are immediately reminded of the similar judgement pronounced by Beethoven a century later: I cannot resolve myself to writing for the flute: it is too imperfect an instrument. But if the latter composer remained faithful to his convictions, destining to the flute a modest number of works, the same cannot be said of the Sicilian musician. Scarlatti wrote twelve sinfonie di concerto grosso, eight concertos for flute and strings, one for two flutes, two suites and a sonata for three flutes, as well as ten cantatas with flute obbligato. The question comes to mind: if he so hated woodwinds, why did he ever write so much for them? The paradox is truly strange, but documentary sources are of no help in shedding further light on this love-hate relationship between Scarlatti and the flute, since we know neither for what occasions nor for whom all these works were composed. Only the Mnster manuscript carries the date of 16 June 1699 at the top of the two suites. This date might, for purely stylistic reasons, be considered an approximate point of reference for the other works in this collection, i.e. the concerto for two flutes, the flute concerto in F major and the sonata for three flutes.

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Regarding the other large body of concertos, preserved in Naples, a fanciful but uncertain date has been established by Bettarini and is seconded by Boyd. They claim that the seven concertos were destined for the young Quantz as a tribute to his Neapolitan visit in 1724. In effect, the hypothesis is apparently substantiated by Marpurg who, completing Burneys anecdote, recounts that Scarlatti accompanied Quantz on a solo, and the latter had the good fortune of so gaining his sympathy, that he was persuaded to compose a couple of solos for the flute expressly for him. It has yet to be proven that these pairs of solos (that is, sonatas for flute an (1725), written on the tile page of the first violin part certainly by a later hand (19th-century), unquestionably refers to the entire collection compiled for some flute lover by an anonymous copyist who brought together works by Sarri, Mancini, Valentini, Barbella and Mele, as well as our composer. Thus the fact that these concertos, were copied or collected in 1725 does not help us to place them in the context of Scarlattis production, although it is true that they stand apart stylistically from the Mnster group for their more unusual voice-leading and particular contrapuntal interest. These are some of the reasons which, together with a growing suspicion of the already weak Quantz hypothesis, lead us toward placing the seven Neapolitan concertos later chronologically, without actually casting doubts on the real paternity of these works. These concertos are, in fact, anomalous in comparison to Italian flute music in the early Settecento: at a time when the flute - either the older recorder or the budding traversiere - was steadily developing its own language in competition with the more distinguished violin. These compositions by Scarlatti restore a sort of reactionary equality among the voices, or rather a conscious and deliberate levelling of the idioms, in the name of an obsolescent polyphonic - contrapuntal writing. This was what contemporaries such as Zambeccari or Burney branded as being difficult of boring, and what Scarlatti instead preserved with the jealousy of one who is conscious of passing on a legacy. Fedrico Maria Ardelli Nothing is known of the motivation which led Alessandro Scarlatti to throw himself suddenly into the exploration of instrumental music, following 36 years of noble endeavours and reform which evolved from a privileged rapport with vocal music for the theatre. For in 1715, he composed the Variozioni su La Folia, and in 1716 the Dieci partite, Toccata per studio di cembalo and Tre toccata, ognuna seguita da fuga e minuetto. Perhaps these works resulted from a commission, or were part of a publishing scheme, considering the sudden commercial success of the posthumous edition of Arcangelo Corellis Concerti grossi, opus VI in the previous year. But as you listen to the pure and diaphanous polyphony of these pieces, try and imagine this 55-year old man as he creates his imaginary stage, far from the fertile terrain of words and music, which the unpredictability of the human psyche brings to the orchestra. Inevitably, other doubts reserved for pure music come to mind as well. Consider, for example, the champion reformer of dramaturgy, sixty-year old Giuseppe Verdi, who in a moment of indolence in Naples (recounted in his letter to Count Arrivabene dated 16 April 1873, following the debut of Aida at the Teatro San Carlo), composed his only Quartetto, performed one evening in my home, without giving the slightest importance. This scepticism was fostered by the conviction that chamber music - and thus instrumental music in general - in Italy is

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a plant growing in the wrong climate (see the letter to Bettli of 27 February 1878). Scarlatti must have been of the same mind. And yet, the publishing market, the sensibility of the aristocracy, the slowly growing independence of instrumental repertoire from vocal rhetoric, and perhaps the instrumental reforms themselves explored by his son Domenico (then thirty years of age), all contributed to the opening up of new cultural markets for this game of sound throughout Europe. If we look at the 12 Sinfonie di concerto grosso (begun on 1 June 1715) today, we see Alessandro as an austere patriarch, out of his element, schizophrenically intent on separating human affects from the interweaving of polyphony and melody. This music flaps its wings in the air beneath a crystal dome; it seeks no intercourse with the dramaturgy of forms, tragedy and comic invention. Indeed, its disregard for drama reaches the point of the sublime extreme as when, in the great majority of his solo lines, the vocal part is confined to the horizon of a narrow octave. Alessandro dons a pure and ascetic mask: his lines are deprived of the unexpectedness of the affects, woven together in simple formal combinations which on a large scale are not rent asunder by the eruption of a sudden Adagio of Allegro, and on a small scale reject sudden modulations or excessively thorny melodic designs. No attempt is made to spend those treasures of harmony (acknowledged once again by Verdi) which the word has transformed into sonorous beauty. Nor to enrich the palate of instrumental contrasts, as was the case in his parallel operatic production (see, for example, Il Tigrane, again from 1715, where a pair of horns boldly enters the scene over the concerto di oubuoe, i.e. the oboes). A penetration of an antique feeling, like a wedge driven between new instrumental and theatrical modernity (and here comes to mind another opera composer who has been ill-treated by time: Richard Strauss, with the heartrending and pure imitation entrusted to his Metamorphosen in 1945). Formally speaking, an appeal is made to Corelli whose Sinfonie di concerto grosso retrace to anachronism of the division into multiple movements borrowed from the seventeenth-century sonata, as well as the thematic reserve and indifference to the instrumental brilliance of the Venetian school (Albinoni, Marcello and Vivaldi, who had already published this collections Estro armonico and La stravaganza) Here, though, we find a twofold anachronism, given that Corellis concertos were actually composed at least twenty years earlier. The title itself (which might have been an apocryphal invention created for later editions, since the autograph copy is missing) seems an attempt to fuse the sinfonia preceding the opera (founded masterfully by Scarlatti himself) with the practice of the sinfonia with fugal of canonic episodes (see the incipit of the Allegretto and the Allegro in the Sinfonia VIII) leading up to the dialectic of mass and colour present in the concerto grosso. This sovereign absence of psychological designs, this indifference to kinetic stimulation, this drawing from the lake of memory in a sort of neo-historicism before its time: this music exalts in its domestic gesture, extraneous to that compositional conception which on the contrary is based on the gesture of large masses of strings. From this comes the decision to perform this music with one instrument for each part, and to juxtapose it against the two Sinfonie per flauto e basso continuo, dated June 1699. These works, too, are governed by floods of Apollonian luminosity, reminiscent of a couplet by Tagore: The flower conceals itself among the grass but the wind scatters it perfume. Carlo De Pirro translations Candace Smith

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CD 34 & 35 Heinrich Schutz Symphoniae Sacrae

ABOUT THE ORGANS USED IN THE RECORDING

In this recording two organs of different conception were used. To accompany the pieces concerted with wind instruments we chose a Chorpositiv built by Francesco Zanin of Codroipo (Pordenone). The ease with which its pitch can be regulated, thanks to the possibility of tuning the pipes with the aid of auxiliary tuning devices, proved better suited to tackling the problems posed by modern copies of 17thcentury historical wind instruments with their pitch standardized at 440 Hz. This is the organs specification: Gedeckt 8 Flte 4 Prinzipal 2 Completely different, on the other hand, is the organ built by Barthlmy Formentelli in 1980. This instrument is used throughout the Symphoniae Sacrae II (except in no. 4, Meine Seele erhebt denn Herrn) and in those of the first part concerted with violins. This organ, built in every detail after the most authentic 17th-century Italian tradition and voiced with an incisive chiff (con spicco) in accordance with early taste, has a manual of 50 keys (CD-d) and a pedalboard of 12 pedals always coupled to the keyboard (C-c). The stops are divided at C#, with the drawstops for the basses to the left of the keyboard, those for the sopranos to the right. Principale Bassi/Soprani 8 Ottava Bassi/Soprani 4 Quintadecima Bassi/Soprani 2 Decimanona 11/3 Vigesimaseconda Soprani 1 Flauto in XII Bassi/Soprani 22/3 Cornetta Soprani 1 3/5 Tromboncini Bassi/Soprani 8 The decision to play the continuo part - the harmonic and rhetorical foundation of such concerted music and its phonic centre of gravity - on an organ built according to the most authentic Italian (and particularly, Venetian) tradition was intended as a dissociation from the frequent performances that resort to modest organs devoid of all musical personality. For while such organs do present logistic advantages for present-day concert needs, they nonetheless constitute a historical falsehood, one of the most serious in the modern authentic recreation of continuo playing. After all, the organs played in the music conceived for sacred buildings were church organs (big or small according to the size of the building), and the contemporary performer would have resorted to all the resources of timbre that these instruments offered. The sound pyramid of the early Italian organ, founded on the family of the principale (as a rule the only foundation stop) to which were added certain da concerto stops of different cuts and shapes, blends perfectly with the other continuo and melodic instruments. In the same way, the Prinzipal was the most favoured foundation stops in the German en- 110 vironment for continuo playing, as Praetorius attests in the second volume of the Syntagma Musicum where he describes it as the most beautiful, the most similar in nature to the human voice and thus the best suited to accompanying motets and ensemble vocal music. The organ built by Barthlmy Formentelli

Schtz, musicus perfectissimus et universalis

Heinrich Schtzs reputation is indeed a strange one: that of a composer who continues to be the victim of some kind of confessional prejudice. While to a great extent he is still ignored in Catholic sacred music circles, at the same time he has enjoyed (the last few decades at least) wide interest as a pre-Bachian interpreter of Lutheran religiosity. To make matters worse, the editions of his music, after Spittas excellent one in the 19th century, are woe70

fully inadequate. The famous NSA, in particular, is so full of inaccuracies (notes, textual meanings, etc.) that it is worth mentioning a couple of examples here: 1) in Schtzs madrigal (no. 9) Quella damma son io, the term damma meaning doe, or female deer is rendered as dama, thereby creating considerable confusion (and this is all the more remarkable since Spittas preface abundantly clarifies the correct meaning by deriving it from the original literary source, the Pastor fido!); 2) regarding the fiffara (Symphoniae Sacrae I, Anima mea (8) and Adjuro vos (9) the editor Gerber, misled by the mezzo-soprano clef, suggests the use of the English horn, whereas in fact they are transverse flutes that play an octave higher to reproduce the actual pitches that Schtz would have otherwise had to write, most inconveniently, in the violin clef with numerous attendant leger lines. The term fiffare must not be confused with pifferi (fifres), which were the same as bombarde (played in pairs and combined with the slide trombone in dance music bands). On 16th-century organs it indicated the flauto alemanno (or German flute). That a characteristic of the flauto alla todesca or traversa was a delicate, trembling sound is confirmed by the fact that the organ stop was made in the first half of the 16th century with stopped pipes and played with the tremolo, whereas further into the century it was a second principal stop tuned sharp against the first principal in such a way as to generate beats. In this case it is called to the great confusion of those who claim that early voices were devoid of vibrato the Voce Umana stop to be played at the Elevation: Fiffaro, which by many is called the voci humane stop, which can indeed be thus named, owing to its sweet harmony (Costanzo Antegnati, LArte Organica, 1608). That such transverse flutes were played an octave higher is confirmed by Michael Praetorius (quoted in Ferruccio Civra, Heinrich Schtz, Gribaudo 1986, p. 227, n. 52) in the Syntagma musicum (1619), which also indicates a range extending upwards for two and a half octaves from central D, whereas the cornettino (an instrument indicated by Schtz as an alternative to the fiffare and pitched higher than the cornett played today) extends up from central E for two octaves. Such mistakes were evidently comprehensible in the 1880s (Spitta confidently declares: Fiffari sind Schalmeien!) but not, surely, in the 1950s! Moreover, the transcriptions of Schtzs music in the NSA edition (unlike the very reliable Spitta followed in the present recordings) also use the never sufficiently deplored American criteria codified by Apel for students, scholars and musicologists all too often devoid of practical musical skills. In other words: the pernicious recourse to just two clefs (violin and bass) to express the vocal and instrumental ranges; the transposition of keys according to very questionable criteria, which in any case have nothing to do with the still unclarified problem of chiavette; and above all, the reduction of note-values and the doubling of bars. Another edition, published by Carus of Stuttgart, though in other respects more respectful of the original text, adopts the same amateurish criteria of transcription, based on the scientific and musicological criterion of its suitability for reading and analysis at the piano. However, what is even more misleading is the religious reading: an approach that is especially unaccountable in the case of a universal (katholikos) musician like Schtz, who was trained in Venice at the school of Giovanni Gabrieli. Besides, his main source of inspiration was not the Lutheran chorale so much as the Psalter and his most significant and inspired works are called opus ecclesiasticum primum, Cantiones Sacrae and above all opus ecclesiasticum secundum, Symphoniae Sacrae I, the latter produced and published in Venice. Here in particular the composers supreme inspira- 111 tion creates unique and unsurpassable gems of a quality that Bach succeeded in equalling, with similar katholikos afflatus, only in the Magnificat and Missa (i.e. the Kyrie and Gloria, or first part of the B minor Mass). In Bach this is particularly evident, as long as one examines him without either indulging in the scientific and cabalistic tenets of pure numerology or espousing the rigidly confessional approach. In his keyboard music a direct descent from the teaching of Frescobaldi generates Part III of the Clavier-bung, which follows in the tracks of the analogous cycle of the Fiori Musicali, while the Kunst der Fuge follows in those of the Capricci; in the latter case the analogy even extends to the point of imitating Frescobaldis Terzo Capriccio sopra il Cucho in the Contrapunctus Quartus, where the cuckoos song is reiterated as an ostinato even more obsessively. Finally, in the Goldberg Variations (an instance of felicitous evasion following in the tracks of Domenico Scarlatti, whose idiom Bach revisits with the same contrapuntal enrichment that distinguishes his reworking of the Pergolesi Stabat Mater) the final Quodlibet of Variation 30 adds a
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touch of ironic self-reflection to supreme mastery by combining a popular air for Frescobaldi the everpresent Ruggero, for Bach the jocular ditty Ich bin so lang with the familiar theme of the Bergamasca. Bach strongly espoused a type of rhetorical and textual dramatization that derived from the Italian madrigal literature, though he did so apparently without direct knowledge of the work of Schtz, who was an untiring disseminator of this form of rhetoric in Germany. In Bach, however, the German religious component is much stronger than in Schtz: while Bach was Kantor of the Lutheran chorale, Schtz was Cantor of the Psalter (first in Latin, then in German). Both worked in honour of God and in the service of their fellow-men. Both revered the tradition and shared an unbounded admiration for the great Italian masters of the Renaissance (and particularly Gabrieli and Frescobaldi, respectively) in other words, for musicians who emerged from the union of Flemish contrapuntal wisdom with the Italian expression and sense of drama that attended the close adherence to poetic texts. What basically separated the two was Schtzs distrust not only of the new operatic tendencies (the Italian masters of the second half of the 17th century were much more perfunctory in their compositional approach than those of the great earlier school), but also of the new fashion for French instrumental music, a fashion that was subjugating music to political principles. Also totally lacking in Schtz, though this time for obvious chronological reasons, was any knowledge of the concerto grosso of Corelli and then of Vivaldi. All of these elements, on the other hand, Bach sublimely exploited, though he was also well aware of the futility of the voguish chauvinism that opposed the two tastes, French and Italian, and was fully cognizant that French music was only opposed to Italian music in its immobility, brought about by the crystallization of society under Louis XIV . In fact, as in the architecture (see Bernini in France), French music was nothing if not dependent on Italian taste (or more particularly, the Roman taste of the early 17th century). What half way through the century had by then become in Italy the tedium of recitative (Mazzocchi) had been introduced to Paris by the Italian musicians imported by Mazarin. Chief of these was Luigi Rossi, who composed the opera Orfeo (1647) for the court of Paris and whose Lamento della Regina di Svezia (for the widow of Gustavus Adolphus, the Lutheran king who had fallen at Ltzen) was sung before the Catholic ally Richelieu, with the singers spasmodic interpretation arousing great astonishment. The Italian taste was further consolidated by Cavalli with his opera Ercole Amante (1662), composed for the marriage of Louis XIV , only to become a genre that remained immutable until well into the 18th century in the hands of that mediocre, yet cunning, practitioner Lulli (or Mr. de Lully), the main perpetrator of the expulsion des Italiens. This explains the so-called Querelle des Bouffons: faced with the developments in Italian operatic music during the mid 18th-century, the French, oblivious of the true origins of Lullys recitative singing and neglectful that their art of ornamentation (which they clarified and classified in ordered Tables dagrments with true Cartesian method) derived from the Italian 17th-century embellishments, ventilated strange ideas of gots runis, when not actually raving about Gallic musical supremacy. If we consider the rich store of revolutionary innovations (harmonic and expressive) disclosed in the Symphoniae Sacrae I, the complete incomprehension of Schtzs Italian contemporaries is surely understandable. And their distrust was no doubt compounded by the fact that this genius was also a northerner of Lutheran faith (who, significantly, frequented only free Venice; in Rome he would have had to convert, like Froberger and Kerll). However, the textual inspiration of the Symphoniae Sacrae I is offered by two works that were assiduously plundered by theologians in search of pithy mottoes and equally assiduously frequented by Catholic musicians: the Psalms and the Song of Songs. In particular, the exquisite poem attributed to Solomon frequently inspired the composers of sacred music to write of mystical loves in horti conclusi, hinting at a sensuality that was sanctioned merely by the sacred transposition. As with the nudity shown in the paintings of languorous Susannas or the mystical swoonings of ecstatic St Teresas, these sacred translations satisfied a prurience that could only thus be cultivated (even in public) by the fashionable young cardinals. Aside from these two texts, the unabridged reading of the Bible was practically prohibited in Catholic spheres, and then only when accompanied by explicative glosses. Schtz, on the other hand, unlike his Catholic contemporaries and thanks to his Lutheran familiarity with the scriptures, was profoundly sensitive to religious feeling. Hence his expressive adherence to the word was not a mere transposition of disguised profane affects, such as those made by Aquilini for Monteverdis madrigals in the same age (witness how the Lamento di Arianna was turned into a Planctus Mariae). The amorous yearning expressed in the music in no. 8, Adjuro vos, at the words quia amore langueo, possesses a potent sensuality that is not at all a masking of profane sentiments. In this sense (to make a visual comparison) it differs totally from the fainting of Berninis St Teresa or the even more explicit spectacle of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (to cap it all, a late work), both exhibited (though the latter more discreetly) over an altar. With its bre72

athless phrasing and the return of feverish feeling at the astonishing E flat, here all the harmonic retardation of the amorous state is powerfully sacred: this is no orgasm, but pure ecstasy! The catalogue of the beloveds beauties in the following piece treats the female body without any lasciviousness. Instead we find a genuine awareness of eternal beauty, in which the musical settings even hint at visions of serene delight: the beloveds small yet firm, full breasts rise and fall gracefully (both textually and musically like two young roes, that are twins) under their veil (though perhaps also not), while the full splendour of her beauties is theatrically exhibited in a contemplation that surpasses all sensuality to become contemplation of pure beauty at the end of piece no. 10, after the tenor and baritone, in competition with one, have rapturously exclaimed a series of sweet attributes: Veni de Libano, veni columba mea, formosa mea, immaculata mea! O quam tu pulchra es!! What ecstatic astonishment is expressed at the revelation of beauty in that prolonged exclamation, in those enthusiastically repeated attributes (indicated presto by Schtz!) and finally in the last O quam tu pulchra es! (adagio). The influences we detect in Schtz are numerous. In the case of the opus ecclesiasticum primum, Cantiones Sacrae, the chief model is Palestrinas sacred madrigal production, so neglected in modern choral performances. For his opus ecclesiasticum secundum, Symphoniae Sacrae [I], the influences are various. Above all, there is of course Giovanni Gabrieli, for whom Schtz, recollecting his teaching during his first stay in Venice, expresses his boundless admiration in the dedication to Johann Georg II, heir of Saxony, written in highly elaborate Latin (in which he polytheistically invokes the immortal Gods, in ways that recall Cicero more than Christianity, and imagines musical nuptials between his beloved master Gabrieli and the Muse Melpomene): Quum Venetias appulissem, hinc anchoram ieci, ubi adolescens sub magno Gabrielio meae artis posueram Tyrocinia. At Grabrielius, Dij immortales, quantus vir; illum si garrula vidisset antiquitas, (dicam verbo) Amphionibus praetulisset, aut si connubia amarent musae, praeter ipsum non alio Melpomene gauderet marito, tantus erat arte ciendi modos. The inspiration of the magnus Gabrielius transpires already in the title, while the instrumental parts of nos. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 are a clear thematic (as well as instrumental) tribute to the venerated master. Then there is the influence of Monteverdi. We detect it in the incipit of no. 10, so indebted to Non cos tosto io miro from the Scherzi Musicali, and also in the echoes of Orfeo in the instrumental parts of both Davids lament (no. 13) and the grimly instructional psalm of the severe Asaph (no. 14). Again, the influence is hinted at in the Preface, which stresses the change in taste that occurred in Venice after his first stay and refers to his own adjustment to this new style: Venetiis apud veteres amicos commoratus, cognovi modulandi rationem non nihil immutatam antiquos numeros ex parte deposuisse, hodiernis auribus recenti allusuram titillatione: ad cuius ego normam ut aliqua tibi de meae industriae penu pro instituto depromerem, huc animum, et vires adieci. Then there is a reminiscence of Orazio Vecchi in the finale of no. 18, so similar to the ensembles of the Amfiparnaso and Selva di Varia Ricreazione. One great novelty of the Symphoniae I is the very rich manner of concerting the voices with the instruments, all selected with a superb Gabrielian feeling for variety, with instrumental sinfonie that anticipate and comment on the vocal theme or at times even develop an independent argument. In any case, throughout his life Schtz remained faithful to the great Italian polyphonic school of the late 16th century and duly celebrated the founding principle of the basic madrigal, i.e. full adherence, both conceptual and literal, of the music to the word. Significantly, this was to become a distinctive transalpine trait right up until Bach, to the extent that its Italian origin was eventually forgotten, if not even repudiated. But, I repeat, this was instead a revival: the revival of an art that had been developed in Italy through a merging of Italian features with the Flemish genius; an art that first emerged in the supra-national dimension created by the universality of European late-medieval culture, with its shared faith and the common dominion of the Holy Roman Empire (and incidentally, from the Empires last great champion, Charles V , descended most of the reigning national dynasties from the 17th to 19th centuries, all of which were inter-related even physically, judging by the distinctive jutting jaws yet bitter enemies: parentes serpentes). Finally, it is worth mentioning that in spite of the autograph manuscript corrections and the insertions insertions pasted over the errors in the Wolfenbttel copy (which belonged to Schtz and was cited by Spitta), many inaccuracies have remained. Often they have been indicated as astounding instances of Schtzs adherence to second practices: i.e. bold harmonies, whereas in fact they are just mistakes! In particular in no. 9 the clash between the 2nd note of the baritones third-last entry, G natural, and the violin G sharp is easily explained as an accidental misplacement of sharps in the edition: the violin G is in fact natural, as is confirmed by the continuo part, where only the second E is indicated as a major third; the sharp sign, on the other hand, should be moved back to the preceding F. Another probable error that Schtz must have considered too obvious even to call attention to is in no. 11, at bar 27 (numbering inferred from Spittas edition), where we find a correction (G instead of A) pasted over the Tenors second quaver (text: et laetentur). Spitta argues that if the first quaver D (over et) was also meant to be corrected to E, a similar slip of paper would again have been used.
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The present edition views such reasoning as too positivist and has opted for an E precisely because the mistake is so obvious: tot capita tot sententiae! As regards the instrumentation, where Schtz has offered a choice of two possibilities (e.g. no. 7: fiffaro or cornettino), that indicated first has been adopted, on the assumption that it was the one he preferred. For no. 18, Veni dilecte mi, the recorded version is that indicated by Schtz for 2 choirs, with the text added to the Trombone II part. For the texts the translation of the Bible offered is that of the King James Version (1611), owing to its chronological proximity to Schtzs youth. No transpositions of the music have been made. The vocal ranges are those indicated by the composer, with the exception of the Altus pieces, where any recourse to counter-tenors would have seemed attributable to present-day fashion rather than historical choice. The range is utterly in line with a form of tenor singing that resorts to falsetto when necessary (avoiding the exclusive use of the chest voice typical of 19th-century opera). I would like to conclude with the verse that Schtz, the quintessential Psalm composer, chose as the text for his own funerary sermon (given by Martin Geier) and which was set to music for five voices in 1670 by Christoph Bernhard. It is verse 54 of Psalm 118, the longest and most fervent of all the Psalms of the Vulgate, a poem about the love for divine love: Cantabiles mihi erant justificationes tuae in loco peregrinationis meae.

Symphoniae sacrae I
Concerto 1 Psalm 108, 1- 3 Paratum cor meum Deus paratum cor meum: cantabo, et psallam in gloria mea. Exsurge gloria mea, exsurge psalterium exsurge cythara: exsurgam diluculo. Confitebor tibi in populis Domine et psallam tibi in nationibus. Concerto 2 Samuel I 2, 1-2 Exsultavit cor meum in Domino et exaltatum est cornu meum in Deo meo. Dilatatum est os meum super inimicos meos quia laetata sum in salutari tuo. Non est sanctus ut est Dominus neque enim est alius extra te et non est fortis sicut Deus noster. Concerto 3 Psalm 31, 1-2 In Te Domine speravi non confundar in aeternum in justitia tua libera me. Inclina aurem tuam accelera ut eruas me. Concerto 4 Psalm 146, 1-2 Laudabo cantabo Dominum in vita mea psallam Deo meo quamdiu fuero. Concerto 5 Matthew 11, 28-30 Venite ad omnes qui laboratis et onerati estis et ego reficiam vos. Tollite jugum meum super voset discite a me quia mitis sum et humilis corde et invenietis requiem animabus vestris. Jugum enim meum suave est et onus meum leve.
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Concerto 6 Psalm 100, 28-30 Jubilate Deo omnis terra servite Domino in laetitia Introite in conspectu ejus in exsultatione. Scitote quoniam Dominus ipse est Deus ipse fecit nos et non ipsi nos. Populus ejus et oves pascuae ejus atria ejus in hymnis confitemini illi. Laudate nomen ejus quoniam suavis est Dominus in aeternum misericordia ejus et usque in generationem et generationem veritas ejus. Concerto 7 Canticles passim Anima mea liquefacta est ut dilectus locutus est. Vox enim ejus dulcis et facies ejus decora. Labia ejus lilia stillantia myrrham primam. Concerto 8 Canticles 5, 8 Adjuro vos filiae Jerusalem si inveneritis dilectum meum ut nuncietis eum quia amore langueo. Concerto 9 Canticles 4, 1-5 O quam tu pulchra es amica mea, columba mea, immaculata mea. Oculi tui oculi columbarum. Capilli tui sicut greges caprarum. Dentes tui sicut greges tonsarum. Sicut vitta coccinea labia tua. Sicut turris David collum tuum. Duo ubera tua sicut duo hinnuli capreae gemelli.

Concerto 10 Canticles 4, 8; 2, 10 Veni de Libano amica mea, columba mea, formosa mea. quam tu pulchra es. Veni coronaberis. Surge amica mea, sponsa mea, immaculata mea et veni: o quam tu pulchra es! Concerto 11 Psalm 34, 1-3 Benedicam Dominum in omni tempore, semper laus ejus in ore meo. Laudabitur anima mea, audiant mansueti et laetentur. Magnificate Dominum mecum et exsaltemus nomen ejus in idipsum. Concerto 12 Psalm 34, 4-5 Exsquisivi Dominum et exaudivit me et ex omnibus tribulationibus meis eripuit me. Accedite ad eum et illuminamini et facies vestrae non confundentur. Concerto 13 Samuel II, 19, 4-5 Fili mi, Absalon! Quis mihi tribuat ut ego moriar pro te! Absalon, fili mi! Concerto 14 Psalm 78, 1-3 Attendite popule meus legem meam: inclinate aurem vestram in verba oris mei. Aperiam in parabolis os meum, loquar propositiones ab initio. Quanta audivimus et cognovimus ea et patres nostri narraverunt nobis. Concerto 15 Psalm 51, 16 Domine labia mea aperies et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam. Concerto 16 Canticles 3, 1-2 In lectulo per noctes quem diligit anima mea quaesivi nec respondit mihi. Surgam et circuibo civitatem per vicos et plateas: quaeram quem diligit anima mea. Concerto 17 Canticles 3, 3-5; passim Invenerunt me custodes civitatis. Paululum cum pertransirem eos inveni quem diligit anima mea.
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Tenui nec dimittam illum. Egredimini filiae Jerusalem et congratulamini mihi. Cantate dilecto meo cum jubilo, cantate dilecto meo cum cythara. Concerto 18 Canticles 4, 16; 5, 1 Veni dilecte mi in hortum meum ut comedas pretiosum fructum tuum. Venio soror mea, sponsa in hortum meum et messui myrrham meam cum aromatibus meis. Comedi favum meum cum melle meo, cum lacte meo vinum meum bibi. Comedite dilecti et bibite amici et inebriamini carissimi. Concerto 19 Psalm 81, 3; Ps. 98, 3; Ps. 81, 1 Buccinate in Neomenia tuba in insigni die solemnitatis vestrae. In voce tubae corneae. Exsultate Deo adjutori nostro. Concerto 20 Psalm 150, 4; Ps. passim Jubilate Deo in chordis et organo, in tympano et choro. Cantate et exsultate et psallite, psallite sapienter.

Weihnachtshistorie Introduction or Entry The birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as it is told by the Saint Evangelists]

Evangelist And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them: The angel to the shepherds in the field. Below it is occasionally put the cradle of baby Jesus Christ. Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. Evangelist And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying: The multitude of angels Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Evangelist And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another: The shepherds in the field Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
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Evangelist And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying: The Magi from the East Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

Evangelist
When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him: The high priests and the scribes In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, and thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

Evangelist
Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said: Herodes Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

Evangelist
When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding

great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way. And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying: The Angel In where sometimes it is introduced the cradle of baby Jesus Christ. Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

Evangelist
And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

Conclusion
of the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ We all thank God, our Lord Christ, who through his birth enlightened us and through his blood delivered us from the devils grip. We all shall sing aloud with his angels. Glory to God in the highest.

Evangelist
When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt and was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt saying: The Angel to Joseph. Below it is occasionally put the cradle of baby Jesus Christ. Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young childs life.

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Cappella Augustana
The ensemble Cappella Augustana has been founded by the harpsichordist and organist Matteo Messori and brings together young performers who boast of many collaborations with the best European early music ensembles. The Cappella Augustana is particularly interested in the study of the relationships between Italy -cradle of Fine Arts- and the transalpine countries (often of a Protestant creed) during the late Reinnassance and the Baroque. The distinguishing characteristic of this ensemble is the investigation and rediscovering of the works of some important musicians today undeservedly excluded from the musical and academic scene, together with the re-proposition of the original vocal/instrumental dispositions and techniques, after the latest studies conducted on the matter. The madrigalistic style of J.S. Bachs liturgical music (sacred concertos and masses), for example, is considered as strictly related to the seventeenth century bel canto tradition (particularly that of the post-Carissiminian Collegio Germanico) and to the stylus luxurians and teatralis of the time. The most modern and sensitive instances of the sacred compositions of Bachs elder son, Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-1784) constitute the temporal deadline of the Cappella Augustanas musical research. For the Swedish label Mvsica Rediviva , the Cappella Augustana has recently recorded a CD dedicated to the sacred works by Vincenzo Albrici (1631-1690), Kapellmeister of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden and organist of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. The recording has been realized with the collaboration of the American musicologist Mary E. Frandsen (Notre Dame University, Indiana), who has researched and written on Albricis life and works. Other projects of the same kind will follow, like the recording of Albricis secular works and of the works of his colleague Marco Giuseppe Peranda (1625c.-1675), after Matthesons words, the master of the affetti.

Matteo Messori
Matteo Messori was born in Bologna where he studied Organ and Counterpoint, graduating with the best of marks and the summa cum laude. He studied Harpischord under the renomate harpsichordist, organist, conductor and singer Sergio Vartolo at the Conservatories of Mantua and Venice, graduating as well with the best of marks and the summa cum laude. In summer 1999, Matteo Messori was Guest-Organist at the Hunsrcker Musikhof (RheinlandPfalz, Germany), in 1998 he won the first prize in the Italian national harpsichord competition G. Gambi, Pesaro. In the same year he received the Campiani medal for his artistic activity in Mantua and a scholarship from Venice Conservatory for his artistic merits. He is active as a soloist of harpsichord and organ in Italy, Europe and America and together with various chamber music ensembles. He is one of the founding members of the Milanese ensemble I Filomusi. In order to deepen the musical and cultural relationship between the Bel Paese and the northern musical word (especially the Protestant one) between the sixteenth and seventeenth century, Matteo Messori founded the ensemble Cappella Augustana with whom he recorded, for the Swedish label Mvsica Rediviva, the first sound tribute wholly dedicated to the sacred music by the Kapellmeister in Dresden and organist at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Vincenzo Albrici (1631-1690/96). At the moment, he is recording the complete keyboard works by the German composer Johann Kaspar Kerll (16271693). He teaches Organ and Counterpoint at the Bergamo Conservatory. Besides the musical one, he is completing his humanistic and musicological education at the University of his native city. Digital recording, mixing and mastering (24 Bit, 96 kHz): Michael Seberich Recording assistants: Peter Golser, Luca Martini, Alessandro Orsaria, Gemma Marchegiani Digital Editing: Corrado Ruzza, Matteo Messori Recording: July 2003 - Chiesa arcipretale di S. Giacomo, Polcenigo (Pordenone), Italy Translations: Hugh Ward-Perkins, Sonia Cazzanello

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CD 36 Tartinis Trio Sonatas

The Sonatas a tre by Giuseppe Tartini (who was born in Pirano dIstria in 1692 and died in Padua in 1770) are generally overlooked by scholars and musicians, as they are considered to be minor works. They are, however, of great interest to performers and listeners indeed, both when related to the historical development of this kind of instrumental work in 18th-century Italy, and to the better-known violin concertos and sonatas he composed in his nearly eighty years. Tartini wrote almost forty three-part instrumental works, as can be seen from the subject catalogue compiled by Paul Brainard1, the main reference point also for the classification of Tartinis compositions. Apart from one sonata (in F major, Brainard F1), in an autograph conserved separately which also includes movements of three sonatas surviving in other sources, the whole corpus has been handed down to us in non-autograph manuscripts, and in some editions which appeared in Paris, Amsterdam and London2 between 1749 and 1756. The various editions of the same pieces from different sources, do not contain information allowing us to establish which of them is the main one, which leads us to suppose that none of them was considered to be the official version at that time. But the collection in manuscript 1906 conserved in the Musical Archives of the Cappella Antoniana in Padua contains practically all the Sonatas a tre attributed to Tartini; it is the largest source of his compositions and also includes works not to be found elsewhere. This is why we have chosen this collection for the performance of all the Sonatas on this CD, with the exception of the one in D major, Brainard D11: the version we used of this sonata was printed in Paris in 17493, and consists of three instead of two movements. The extension from two to three movements in some of the sonatas allows us do date the sources (of the nine three-movement Sonatas, six have come down to us with only two movements), so manuscript 1906 would seem to have appeared after the manuscripts conserved in Paris4 and in Musical Archives in Padua5. Most of the movements in these sonatas which were probably composed between 1745 and 1749 are in two parts which melodic lines usually end on the dominant in the first part (or, in the rare cases when they are in a minor key, on the relative major tone). Homophonic instrumental writing prevails, with the two violins often moving in parallel and the bass providing substantial harmonic support, as it is rarely involved in the imitative passages between the upper parts. But, as often happens, there is a danger that a global picture of this sort hiding the striking individuality and appeal of the music in specific passages in the eight Sonatas chosen for this CD. In addition to a variety of styles, they paint a picture of Tartini as a composer who tends not exaggerate in exploiting the technical capacity of the violin, but who is nevertheless engaged in searching for a beautiful instrumental sound, which many consider the most enduring aspect of his opus. 6 Examples of his various styles may be found in the sonatas. An archaizing imitative passage strongly influenced by Corelli opens the first movement of the Sonata in C major (Brainard C3). Tartini uses a traditional pastoral melody, and in doing so draws on folk music, a simple form aligned to nature 7, the origin of all truth. In the Sonata in D minor (Brainard d2) the harmonies tend towards a sweet melancholy that haunts the central movement. The Allegro assai at the end of the Sonata in F major (Brainard G1) is sunny and full of life. Giogio Cerasoli Translation: Priscilla Worsley 1 See Paul Brainard: Le sonate a tri di Giuseppe Tartini. Un sunto bibliografico, in the Rivista italiana di musicologicaIV (1969), pp. 102-126. See also Agnese Pavanello, Contributi a una lettura stilistica delle sonate a tre di Giuseppe Tartini, in Tartini. Il tempo e le opera, edited by Andrea Bombi and Maria Nevilla Massaro, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1994, pp. 133-159 For a complete list of the manuscripts and printed sources, and the table of concordances between the pieces they contain, see also P. Brainard, Le sonate a tre, pp. 102-106. Sei Sonate / a tre / a due Violino col Basso / del Signor/ Giuseppe Tartini / di Padua / Opera VIII / Graves par Melle Bertin. / a Paris / Chez Mr Maupetit./ Mame Boivin/ Mr Le Clerc/ Melle Castagnery Paris (F), Bibliotque Nationale, fonds du Conservatoire, ms. 9515 ms. 1907 See Pierluigi Petrobelli, Tartini le sue idee e il suo tempo, Luca, Lireria Musicale Editrice, 1992, p. 145 Io sto di casa pi che posso con la nature, e men che posso con larte, non avendo altra arte, se non la imitatione della natura (I stay at home as often as possible with nature, or at least if I cannot be with art, having no other art, but a reproduction of nature) in Giuseppe Tartini, Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dellarmonia, Padua, Stemperia del Seminario, 1767 (facsimile Broude Brothers, New York, 1966).
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2 3 4 6 7

CD 37 Tartinis opus 6
Musicological studies are re-examining Tartini, a composer of great significance, as well as an excellent performer, pedagogue and theoretician. Indeed, his music exhibits such particular melodic and harmonic invention that he has been called a pre-romantic. This judgement is obviously unhistorical for Romanticism was still far off in the future, and yet it holds a grain of truth: together with few other predecessors and contemporaries, Tartini felt the power of instrumental music at a time when it had not yet been accepted as an independent art capable of expressing thoughts or arousing affects. Strangely enough, although Tartini himself considered singing to be at the heart of learning to play well, he nonetheless composed very few vocal works. This apparent contradiction indicates, instead, the beginning of a definitive emancipation of instrumental music. And the solo sonata, by its very intimate nature, was well suited to this expressive end. In addition, it favoured a stylistic exploration, which was Tartini as precursor to so-called pre-classicism, a trend which that was merely more evident in some of his contemporaries. His opus 6, printed in Paris in 1748 by Le Clerc, reveals in fact few essential differences when compared to the remarkable opus 1 of 1732. Yet we find a consolidation of certain stylistic elements: a syntactical regularity consisting of brief symmetrical phrases juxtaposed in a sort of question and answer exchange; greater brevity and more serene pathos in the adagios; and a virtuosity which relies more on effect and is more flowing (with a modest use of double stops). The basso continuo simply provides the necessary harmonic support but allows the listener to focus entirely on the violin, so much so that in the last movement of sonatas 3 and 5, it is missing altogether. Before Tartini composers in Bolognese circles had experimented already with sonatas in which the basso continuo was entrusted to a solo cello, and it is no coincidence that the title page of this print bears the words Sonate per Violino e violoncello o cembalo, thus heralding the last compositional phase in which the basso continuo will be intentionally used only for ceremony (see Tartinis letter to Algarotti). All these elements render the music more sober and moderate in its effects, and demonstrate the extent to which Tartini privately cultivated the concept of nature so often disputed among the French encyclopaedists, albeit for different reasons. finally, from a formal point of view, all the sonatas in opus 6 (with the exception of no. 5) follow a fixed structure of three monothematic, bipartite movements, each progressively faster in tempo. In the second part of the last two movements, there is a brief development of the thematic material at the reprise of the initial theme: a confirmation of a new sensibility which would lead to the classic sonata form. Giuseppe Fochesato Translation: Candace Smith

Enrico Casazza
was born Adria (Italy) in 1965. He graduated in his hometown with Andrea Vio. He then studied with Carlo Chiarappa, Pavel Vernikov, Dino Asciolla, Franco Gulli and Giuliano Carmignola. In 1985 he won the International Competition in Stresa and the Violin Competition in Cento. Since then he started a brilliant career that allowed him to perform as soloist or as leading member of widely renown baroque ensembles in the most important concert halls worldwide, altogether with musicians such as Fabio Biondi, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Christopher Hogwood, Ottavio Dantone, Andreas Scholl, Alan Curtis. He is leader and conductor since its foundation of the ensemble La Magnifica Comunit. He recorded for EMI-Virgin, Nave-Opus 111, Denon, Arts, Brilliant and other record companies.

La Magnifica Comunita
The instrumental baroque ensemble La Magnifica Comunita was founded in 1990. The members of the ensemble are deeply convinced of the importance of philological and stylistical research in order to understand the music of bygone ages.The ensemble perfected their studies at prestigious institutions like the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Accademia Musicale Pescarese, Accademia Chigiana di Siena, Scuola di Musica Fiesole, Accademia Musicale di Villecroze. Primarius and leader of the ensemble is Enrico Casazza. La Magnifica Comunita perform in different formations, ranging from trio to chamber orchestra, also collaborating with choir. The ensemble gave numerous concerts in Italy and other European countries, among which a successful debut in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, to high critical and public acclaim.

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CD 38 - 42 George Phillip Telemann Concertos Ouvertures Paris Quartets Musique de Table

Most famous German composer of his time was a title that Telemann would soon lose to his compatriot J.S. Bach, but it is true to say, that after Vivaldi in Venice, Telemann was the best known and most proficient and indeed popular, Telemann left us a series of works for soloists and orchestra that drew on quite extraordinary combinations of solo instruments pitched against a string and continuo accompaniment. Telemann was born in the city of Magdeburg, west of Berlin, in 1681 to a family of rich middle class burghers. His father was a local Pastor, as was his brother and it was assumed that the composer we now know was destined for a similar career. Despite an obvious musical aptitude from an early age, he joined the Law school of Leipzig University in 1701, but very soon it became clear that his musical inclinations were to gain the upper hand and Law would fall by the wayside. Whilst at Leipzig, he founded a Collegium Musicum with the purpose of giving public concerts: the group was later to be taken over by Telemanns more famous contemporary J.S. Bach. He then went on to become the organist of the New Church in Leipzig and finally the Director of the City Opera House. By 1705, Telemann seemed to be in full control of the citys musical life but then decided to leave and take on positions in provincial German cities until he took over the job of Musical Director at the Frankfurt Church of the Bare-foot Friars where he stayed for the nine years between 1712 and 1721. His final move took him, that year to the Northern Hansa city of Hamburg where he was to remain as Director of music, for the rest of his life, to the five city Churches of Sts. Michael, Paul, Peter, Nicholas and George. Although Telemanns position nowadays is that of a secondary composer, he was considered in his time to be probably the finest of German composers certainly the most prolific. He managed to write some forty operas (none of which manage to hold the stage today), forty six oratorios as well as twelve complete cycles of Church Cantatas for of the Church Sundays and a large number of secular cantatas and occasional pieces. Of these operatic and choral works, the best known are the opera De getreue Musicmeister, his setting of the St Mark Passion and the oratorio Hamburgische Kapitansmusik. Telemann also composed a large amount of chamber music including sonatas, trios and quartets as well as the extensive collections of occasional music published under the title of Tafelmusik this is music full of charm and simplicity. In contrast, the instrumental music of Telemann is smaller in quantity but includes two significant sets of Fantasies for flute and violin which can be seen as rather simpler precursors of Bachs later works. Four years older than Bach, Telemann managed to outlive his contemporary and produce orchestral music that is often in the same form such as Orchestral suites and Concertos. Unlike Bachs masterworks for solo instruments or combinations of the same instrument though, Telemann specialised in many Concertos for mixed groups. These are more similar to Vivaldis Concerti per molto instrumenti and a wide range can be found on these three CDs. Vivaldi is indeed more of a model here than the French style of the Orchestral Suites or Ouvertures two of which can be heard on CD 3. Amongst the Concertos it is interesting to note the use of kettle drums and martial trumpets in the D major opening piece as well as the inclusion in Il Grillo of the unusual Chalumeau a type of reed wind instruments. Each of the Concertos use the conventional accompaniment of Strings and basso continuo and amongst the oboe pieces are three for oboe solo and two for the oboe damore. Of the orchestral Suite, one features three oboes against strings whilst the other, in the manner of Bachs Second Suite, features a solo flute. Dr. David Doughty

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The orchestral suites by Georg Philipp TELEMANN (1681-1767)

Of the extensive oeuvre of Germanys most famous composer from the first half of the eighteenth century, Georg Philipp Telemann, by far the largest part consists of his vocal works (operas, passions and cantatas). Still his output of orchestral suites, catalogued as TWV 55, is impressive especially in comparison to the quantity of such suites by his most famous contemporaries, Bach and Handel. Of Telemanns 135 still existing suites 118 have been completely preserved: 6 in an autograph, but most of them in copies scattered over many, mainly German music libraries. Darmstadt owns the largest collection mostly in well tended manuscripts by Kapelmeisters Christoph Graupner and Johann Samuel Endler. The suites have been written for widely varying ensembles. Next to 8 suites exclusively for wind (2 oboes, 2 horns and bassoon) there are other suites for strings and continuo. Quite often some concertante wind instruments (recorder, flute, oboe, bassoon, trumpet or horn) and/or concertante strings (violin and once viola da gamba) are added to the string orchestra. Each suite opens with a three-part French overture. Both outer movements of these overtures are mainly monophonic (except for a few short imitations) but full of surprising harmonic changes; the faster middle movement is fugal. After this follows a varied mixture of shorter pieces. These often are dances, not just from the French tradition (allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue) but also minuet(s), passepied, loure, gavotte, bourre, canarie, rigaudon and others. Telemann maximizes the variety by inserting more folk-like dances (polonaise, irlandoise, angloise), several instrumental forms like fugue, chaconne, passacaille and air, but also by inserting musical portraits, scenes from nature, character pieces and characterizations of people and mythological persons. It is impossible to precisely date all suites because only a few manuscripts mention a date. By studying some of the programmatic titles which refer to historic events and by comparing works to related ones which have been exactly dated indeed, we can conclude that Telemann composed his suites between 1716 and 1765. The year 1765 has been written on the autograph of TWV 55: D 21. Thus we discover that while the symphony was becoming the most popular instrumental form in Germany the old master kept composing traditional suites. These suites were written for specific occasions but by his unstoppable inspiration and remarkable craftsmanship Telemann managed to uplift them to permanent gems of the repertoire. P . Peire Translation: Priska Frank, 2006

Collegium Instrumentale Brugense

For over 30 years the Collegium Instrumentale Brugense has been a highly appreciated chamber orchestra in Belgium and Europe in general. The ensemble was founded in 1970 by musicologist and music psychologist Patrick Peire. The conscious choice for modern instruments manoeuvred the Orchestra into a special position. Especially so since Flanders took the lead in historical performance practice. However the Collegium respects a historical approach and characterizes itself by researching the stylistic individuality of each composition. This choice increases repertoire possibilities and enables the orchestra to maintain itself in less than ideal acoustical circumstances. The basic string group may be extended by wind and other instruments. The Collegium Instrumentale Brugense regularly performs in France, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy. Using modern instruments does not limit the ensemble to a single stylistic period. Patrick Peire insists on playing works by Belgian composers who hardly get a change to be discovered by orchestras abroad. So he peruses archives in search of interesting repertoire by people like Van Maldere and Van Helmont, offering opportunities to young Flemish composers such as Byloo, Duijck, Rath and dHoe as well. Patrick Peire also conducts the vocal group Capella Brugensis, which regularly collaborates with the Collegium. Both en- sembles have become increasing tuned to each other. The Collegium was the first Belgian classical ensemble to be nominated for a Grammy Award, the most significant American prize in the record industry, in the category Opera recording. This was for their recording of Rossinis opera Tancredi (for Naxos). By now the choirs and orchestras discographies consist of over 40 items. Some of these attracted a large amount of media attention such as Telemanns Brockes and Johannes passions. The orchestra also recorded the concerti grossi by Antonio Vivaldi and anthems by Purcell. In this last production Matthew White, Julian Podger and Stephen Varcoe were engaged as soloists. Translation Priska Frank 2006
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Patrick Peire (Brugge 1946)

Patrick Peire studied at the Gent and Brussels Royal Conservatories at where he was awarded prizes for harmony, flute, recorder, chamber music and music history. He also graduated in psychology specializing in music psychology and musicology at Gent State University. He then went on to Cologne and The Hague to specialize in early music and historical performance practice. As an instrumentalist he regularly performed with prominent chamber music ensembles at home and abroad. In 1970 he founded the Collegium Instrumentale Brugense which he has been conducting ever since. Shortly afterwards he also took over the Western Flemisch Vocal Ensemble, now Capella Brugensis. He often combines both ensembles in concerts. Patrick Peire often searches archives for lesser-known (Flemish) masterworks. He recently discovered music by Fiocco, Brhy and Van Helmont who were 18th-century kapellmeisters of the Brussels St.-Michiels cathedral. These works were recorded with the Collegium. Between 1986 and 1994 Patrick Peire also conducted the New Flemish Symphony Orchestra which enabled him to further explore the symphonic repertoire. He is regularly invited to guest-conduct in Belgium and abroad. Peire combines his pedagogical activities at the Gent and Leuven music colleges with giving master classes and chamber music concerts. In 1998 he received the Trofee Fuga 1998 from the Belgian Composers Union for his continuous efforts to promote Belgian repertoire.

Telemann - Paris Quartets

When Georg Philipp Telemann arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1737 he was 56 years old. No ambitious youngster seeking Royal patronage, no obscure provincial hoping to make his name in one of the citys dazzling public concerts, Telemann must have arrived confident of success and eager for the well-deserved adoration he was about to receive. Had he not, but a few years before, delighted all of Europe, France most certainly included, with his gallant, witty, and up-to-date Musique de table? Had not these very, oh-so-fashionable, qualities ensured that the new edition of his Quadri for flute, violin, viola da gamba and basso continuo (originally published in Hamburg in 1730 and now beautifully re-issued as Six quatuors by the Parisian printer Le Clerc) met with an unqualified success? And were not humour, charm, intelligence and feeling, those supreme characteristics of a galant homme, equally present in his person and in his music? Middle age had not soured Telemanns talent nor dried up the springs of his creativity. As J. S. Bach grew older, he became increasingly obsessed, holed up in Leipzig as he was, with the abstraction of sunlight from contrapuntal cucumbers, but Telemann, armed with his soave and witty style, stayed not merely stylistically up-to-date, but showed a younger generation the way forward, conquering a foreign land and setting the chicest snobs in all of Europe, the French, a-dancing to his own pert pipe. His brief stay in the capital-a little longer than half a year-was a huge success, marked by performances of his music at its most important public venue, the Concert Spirituel. Both in Paris and at court, he performed the Frenchified answer to his Hamburg Quadri, which he entitled Nouveaux Quatuors en Six Suites a une Flte Traversiere, un Violon, une Basse de Viole, ou Violoncel, et Basse Continu, with the outstanding performers of the day: flutist Michel Blavet, violinist Jean-Pierre Guignon, viola da gamba virtuoso JeanBaptiste-Antoine Forqueray le fils and the elusive cellist Edouard. Prior to their publication in Paris, which coincided with Telemanns stay there, expectations as to quality of these new quartets were surely running high. The subscription list for the Nouveaux Quatuors contains 237 names (including that of a certain Mr. Bach de Leipzig), 31 more than the earlier Musique de table. Telemann was now competing with himself, under pressure to top his own admirable chamber style, and to surpass his own recent excellence in a form of which he was the acknowledged master. In short, the Nouveau Quatuors were expected to be the most important and influential German chamber works of the decade: and, indeed, they were. Taken together, the Hamburg and Paris quartets represent Telemanns highest achievement in the genre, the crme de la crme of his chamber music. To the superior qualities of the Quadri are added the elegant beauties, the breadth and variety of the Nouveaux Quatours. Learned pieces, delicate soundscapes and earthy folk music are brought together within the larger forms of suites, sonatas and concerti. Telemann ensures that each instrumentalist is given ample opportunity to shine, while, for the sake of variety, complex conversations galantes, touching airs and virtuosic tours de force follow one another in rapid succession. The extremes of style these works embrace can perhaps best be illustrated by comparing the final two quartets, those in A major and E minor, from the Paris book: the former shows Telemann at his most fashionable, the latter at his most grand.
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The A major is light-hearted throughout. It aims to delight the Rococo ear through sly wit, simplicity and an eloquent, elegant lightness. Its madcap prlude sets the tone, followed by the hurly-burly of a raucous passepied, a sunny polonoise, a jolly jigg that veers off unexpectedly towards Locatellis Amsterdam, a hornpipe updated in the most delightful manner imaginable and a final bon mot in which one can just discern, shimmering on a distant horizon, Haydns future divertimento style. It is a jubilant work in which intermittent shade but serves to throw the prevailing brightness into higher relief. The E minor, on the other hand, with its old-fashioned ouverture and noble chaconne, its complex, dark vte and elegant gai gavotte, must have appealed to those Frenchmen who held themselves, half-turned in longing and regret back towards the days of old Louiss grandeur, in a complex aesthetic contraposto. It is undoubtedly to the detriment of the A major suites current reputation that modern taste seems to consider the graceful expression of bright and gay ideas to be incompatible with intrinsic musical quality. But even at its most profound, the much sterner E minor never grates on, but rather always ingratiates itself to, the listeners ear. Telemanns learnedness, neither here nor in the fugal movements of the two erudite sonatas from the Hamburg Quadri, never plunges to the often dreary depths attained by his more illustrious Leipzig colleague-there where pure sensual pleasure finds itself at a prodigious distance from the intellectual stimulation the experience affords. Telemanns music always sounds good. In the 18th century this was not yet a cause for censure. And as to sounds, especially the sounds emanating from these discs, a few words on the performance of the works presented here may serve to clarify some of the stylistic principles used in preparing this recording; for, though we generally speak that currently accepted early-music language which was developed in the course of the 20thcentury in order to make this exquisite repertoire palatable to contemporary ears, we do so with a personal accent perhaps not readily understood by all Early Music devotees. By briefly discussing the cornerstones of our style, we hope to prevent any purely performative choices from obscuring our larger aesthetic intentions. First to be mentioned must be the tempi we have chosen, which often exceed those of our contemporaries. These tempi are based on 18th-century sources, including metronomic markings from France at the time of Telemanns visit there. The application of such evidence to these quartets, resulting in virtuosic labours worthy of the Herculean reputations of the original performers, set us quite a challenge. Telemann may have intended to showcase the skills of the best and brightest in Paris, but he wasnt going to make it easy for them; nor for us. Such speedy tempi, however, would soon irritate the heart and weary the ear if maintained with post-Stravinskian rigidity. We therefore have approached these pieces with a pre-modernist freedom, inspired by the many references in the French sources to the expressive use of fluctuations in tempo in order to move the passions of the audience. Though Rameaus (to name but one author) strong opinions on the subject are now rarely put into practice, we have felt no qualms about applying the remarks in his Code de la musique here: Telemanns quartets, after all, were meant to reflect the passions of an enlightened Parisian elite. Consequentially, his enchanting music should neither plod nor thump, but rather flit and flutter freely with each vibrant passion it embodies. Our rushings and stretchings, however, have not been applied whimsically. Following Rameau, we have chosen to allow the richness of the harmony to dictate many of these rubati (to use the dirty word). Expressive chords, according to the French master, need time to penetrate the human heart, and must be prolonged beyond their notated values if they are to have their intended effect. And this structural, expressive use of harmony leads us to a final potentially puzzling element of our performance style: the realization of the basso continuo. Unwilling to re-open the by now tedious debate about whether or not one must re-interpret and improve the many 18thcentury basso continuo sources that apply to this music, we have simply chosen to follow, as closely as we can, the rules as the published sources present them. The resulting lushness of harmony reflects Telemanns careful figuration, while the performance style draws inspiration from the realizations that the composer himself published in his intensely practical Singe-, Spiel- und Generalbass-bungen (Hamburg, 1733-4). The application of Telemanns own basso continuo examples, as well as those from other important treatises by Mattheson and Heinichen, has resulted, in some cases, in a radical change of affect: for instance, the final modr of the E minor quartet from the Paris book is often performed as a dreamy, doleful adagio. When played at a speed consistent with contemporary tempo sources, however, and with a basso continuo realization in keeping with the style of the time, it becomes quite a different piece, one more grand than tender, more proud than poetic. We cannot guarantee that todays audience will smile upon the result, nor indeed more generally favour our endeavours, but we can hope to have, to some small extent, succeeded in our attempt to be faithful to the instructions that have come down to us. And perhaps the essential instruction that we have taken to heart in preparing this recording has been that of trus84

ting, though ever-questioning, our own artistic fantasy. We have not attempted to follow the composer slavishly on foot, but rather to rise towards him, treatises in hand, while mounted on the back of winged Pegasus. Rules must never serve as a finger raised in warning by some grim composers mummy-desiccated, tightly-bound and with the guts and brains removed; but rather as a gesture of encouragement from the warm-blooded past, as a touching, living, gesture gracefully pointing upwards, up towards Parnassuss top. There, we feel sure, sits the eloquent Telemann, surrounded by giggling Muses, telling joke after witty joke as he plucks Apollos lyre. Jed Wentz Many are the friends and colleagues who, behind the scenes, have offered inspiration, solace and guidance to Musica ad Rhenum in its first 15 years of existence. One cannot mention them all by name here, nor thank them sufficiently for their faithful support. Yet three must be singled out for the unusual, existential and irrepressible nature of their encouragement: Jolande van der Klis, Dr. Karl Bhmer and Annelies van Os.

Jed Wentz
Jed Wentz began his flute studies with Walter Mayhall in Youngstown, Ohio, and continued studying with James Walker in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied modern and historical flutes at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with Robert Willoughby and Michael Lynn, and received a Soloists Diploma from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague after three years with Barthold Kuijken. He has performed and recorded with groups such as Musica Antiqua Koln, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Capriccio Stravagante Paris and the Gabrielli Consort. In 1992 he founded Musica ad Rhenum, with whom he has recorded more than 20 CDs both as flutist and conductor. His recording of the complete flute sonatas of Locatelli was awarded the prize for the Best Recording of Italian Music 1995 by the Fondazione Cini Venetia. Mr. Wentz teaches at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music, and lectures regularly on performance practice at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has published articles in Early Music, Concerto, and Tijdschrijft voor Oude Muziek. He is pursuing his doctorate through Leiden University, with his research centering on the relationship between 18th-century staging and tempo in the tragedie en musique.

Michael Borgstede
Michael Borgstede lives in Tel Aviv and works as both Middle East correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung as well as a harpsichordist and organist. He has toured almost all European countries, the United States, Asia, South America and the Middle East and participated in more than 20 CD-productions. His recording of Francois Couperin s Complete Harpsichord Music on 11 CDs was awarded many distinctions and described by the press as a reference recording. A recording of G.F. Hndels Harpsichord Suites is in preparation. Apart from his extensive concert activities Michael Borgstede is invited regularly to hold masterclasses und give lectures on controversial aspects of Historical Performance Practice. He also published a book on the ethnic diversity of israeli society.

Job ter Haar

Job ter Haar studied cello at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Netherlands, with Ren van Ast, Lidewij Scheifes and Anner Bijlsma. He also took masterclasses with Heinrich Schiff and Valentin Berlinsky. After he graduated, he specialised in the performance of chamber music of all periods and styles. With his various ensembles, including Musica ad Rhenum, the , the and , he has recorded a large number of CDs and performed extensively in all corners of the globe. Job ter Haar also plays the lirone.

Cassandra Luckhardt
Since winning Best Individual Performer at the Van Wassenaer Competition for Early Music in Den Haag, The Netherlands, in 1998, Cassandra Luckhardt has established an international reputation as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician and teacher on both cello and viola da gamba. In performance, Cassandra has played with the The Academy of Ancient Music, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre and as the gamba soloist with the Kings Consort. As a chamber musician, Cassandra is in equally high demand, demonstrating her flexibility as both a cellist and gambist. She has performed all over Europe as well as in Japan, Iceland, the U.S. and throughout her adopted home of The Netherlands and has recently recorded the complete sonatas of J.S. Bach for viola da gamba and harpsichord. Cassandra received her Bachelor of Music and her Bachelor of Arts degrees cum laude from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1992 and her Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory in 1994.

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She moved to Paris in 1994 to study at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique under the auspices of a Harriet Hale Woolley grant, awarded that year to only three other artists in the United States. In 1996, she received third prize at the Early Music Competition for Ensembles in Bruges and 1999, won the Public Prize at the Utrecht Early Music Festival. In 2001, Cassandra finished her studies at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag, graduating with degrees on both viola da gamba and baroque cello.

Igor Ruhadze
Igor Ruhadze graduated from the Moscow Central music school and the Moscow State Conservatory as solo violinist with distinction in 1996. In 2002 he graduated from the Amsterdam Conservatory with Cum Laude distinction as a specialist of early music (baroque and classical violin prof. Lucy van Dael). From 1999 Igor Ruhadze has resided in the Netherlands. As a member of the Taneyev Trio, in 1996 Igor Ruhadze was awarded the First prize and the Special prize for The Best Trio of the competition, as well as the prize of public in the International Taneyev Chamber Music Competition, in 1997 - the Third Prize at the Locatelli Baroque Violin International competition in Amsterdam and the 1999 the Diploma of the Musica Antiqua competition in Brugge. Igor Ruhadze has performed in many European countries and USA. He performs as a permanent concert master of The Bach orchestra of the Netherlands and Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, as a member of the chamber ensembles, such as Van Swieten Society, Musica ad Rhenum, La primavera, and leads his own groups Violini Capricciosi and Concerto Moscow. Igor Ruhadze plays on violin by A. Amati (Italy, 1624)

Tafelmusik/Musique de Table
The age of communication. Accessibility. Keeping up with the times. The latest fashion. All slogans of our time. The 21st century. Market economies, open borders, cosmopolitanism. If we were to travel back in time, to the 1730s, the period of the music on these cds, we would be astonished not only at the efficient means of communication, the accessibility, the speed with which fashions spread across Europe, but also at market mechanisms, the law of demand and supply. The programme played here is a proof of 18th-century modernity, communication and fashion awareness. For one thing is certain: the composer concerned, Georg Philipp Telemann, had a good nose for what the public wished to hear, and liked to keep up with the latest musical fashions. That is why it is a cosmopolitan programme: the most popular German composer of the 18th century gives his answer to the leading musical fashions of Europe: the French and the Italian. Although Telemann received his first music lessons at the age of ten, from the Magdeburg cantor Benedictus Christiani, he really remained a self-educated man. From early childhood his great passion for music was manifest, and in his autobiography (1739) he wrote: I also learned to play the violin, flute and cither, with which I amused the neighbours, without realising that music could be written down. After composing the opera Sigismundo at the age of twelve Telemann wrote: ... ach! But what a lot of trouble I caused myself with this opera! A multitude of musical enemies came to my mother to tell her that I would become a conjurer, tightrope walker, minstrel or trainer of guinea pigs etc., if I didnt put an end to my music soon. Thus said, thus done! My music and instruments were taken from me, and thus half my life. Telemann took up law studies at the university of Leipzig in 1701. On the way there he passed through Halle and made acquaintance with Handel. Having made his name with cantatas and dramatic works for the opera in Leipzig (founded in 1693), he was offered the post of organist and choirmaster at the Neue Kirche in 1704. In this same year Telemann was appointed chapelmaster at the court of Count Erdmann II of Promnitz in Sorau, where Wolfgang Caspar Printz was employed at the same time. There he got to know the instrumental music of Lully and Campra more thoroughly. As chapelmaster to the count, Telemann stayed for six months on the estate of Pless in Silesia and visited Cracow, where he became fascinated by Polish folk music. In his own words: ... I got to know Polish and Hanakian music in its true barbaric beauty. An observer could get hold of enough ideas in eight days to last a lifetime. In 1707 Telemann took up the appointment of chapelmaster at the similarly French orientated court of Duke Wilhelm of Sachsen-Eisenach, where he became friends with Johann Sebastian Bach, who lived and worked in Weimar at the time. In 1712 Telemann moved to the Katharinenkirche in Frankfurt am Main, becoming chapelmaster and later rising to the post of municipal Musikdirektor. As conductor of the local Collegium Musicum he had the opportunity to per86

form all genres of instrumental music. In 1721 he became cantor of the Hamburg Johanneum and Musikdirektor of the five main churches in the city, with the exception of the Dom, where his friend Johann Mattheson was director of music. Telemann resurrected the Collegium Musicum, which had been founded by Matthias Weckmann but had declined, and organised regular concerts. The Hamburg Opera too enjoyed a last period of prosperity in his hands. In 1728, with Valentin Grner, he founded Der getreue Music-Meister, the first German music journal, in which he published contemporary music, including his own compositions (chamber music and arias from operas). Telemann died in Hamburg in 1767 at the age of 86. He was succeeded as Musikdirektor of the five main churches by his godchild Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the second son of Johann Sebastian. The Renaissance of Telemanns music has focused mainly on his chamber and concertante works. The many sonatas and their rich scorings reveal his thorough knowledge of the different instruments. In his autobiography of 1739 he mentions the instruments he had learned to play: keyboard (harpsichord, organ), violin, recorder, oboe, flute, chalumeau, viola da gamba, double bass and bass trombone. In 1718 he remarked: exact knowledge of the instruments is indispensable to composition. Thus Telemann, like Vivaldi, Geminiani and Bach, recognised the solo potential of the cello. The virtuosic element in his sonatas and concertos, including broken chords, brilliant runs and suchlike, alternates with comfort, lightfootedness and melodiousness, general principles of musical aesthetics of the time. A considerable number of the pieces from the Musique de Table played here are Italian flavoured. The Vivaldi fashion in Germany would be a suitable title. Or the German reaction to Vivaldi. Vivaldi. The red-haired composerpriest. The violin virtuoso. He lived and worked in Venice but travelled across half Europe to perform and publish his works. So famous in his day. But forgotten and maligned until far into the twentieth century. Since the rediscovery of his music in the 1920s, however, we know that music history would have been quite a different story without him. Now he is recognised as the most influential composer of the early eighteenth century. Vivaldi s exceptionally virtuosic violin playing was so highly commended and praised in the many reports of contemporaries, that countless musicians from all over Europe went to Venice to be taught by him. And so his virtuosic skills and his concerti grossi, solo concertos and sonatas, so revolutionary for the time, became the example par excellence for several decades of violinists and composers throughout Europe. Much of Vivaldis music was first published in Amsterdam, from where it found its way easily to centres of music such as Weimar, Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and London. This explains the fact that the Vivaldi fashion spread so far northwards. And this is how Telemann and Bach became familiar with his music without ever setting foot in Italy. Vivaldis stormy style caused quite a stir in Europe. Contemporaries describe how many women listened to his music and broke into tears and sobs and went into ecstasy. Telemann, Handel and Bach all unravelled and imitated Vivaldis concertos and sonatas, incorporating elements in their own style. The concertos, solo sonatas and trio sonatas recorded here give an impression of Telemanns reaction to Vivaldi. Telemann was most famous in his day for his enormous productivity and the agility with which he could move from one style to another. While in France fierce feuds were fought between adherents of the French and Italian styles, the cosmopolitan Telemann took his choice from both styles with ease, or even mixed the two after the example of Franois Couperins Gots Runis. Telemann was Europes Grand Master of the mixed taste. The Overtures (suites) form fine examples, with their French subtitles such as Lentement, Vite and Rejouissance, tailored to the French fashion but bearing Italian character indications such as Vivace, Allegro and Presto. Telemann, who was four years older than Bach and Handel, wrote not only an immense number of sacred works and operas, most of which have been lost, but also an unbelievable flood of instrumental works, frequently intended for the collegia musica that he had founded in Frankfurt and Leipzig, such as his Musique de Table. His compositions spread in an enormous stream across Germany. It is said that in his old age Telemann no longer knew exactly what he had written, so vast was his oeuvre. Moreover, he was not a specialist, but provided each field of music with dozens or even hundreds of pieces, from sacred cantatas to wedding music, from opera to keyboard pieces. He enthusiastically assimilated all musical novelties and propagated them with the same verve. He adopted the homophonic style of the Italians, composed hundreds of French overtures (orchestral suites), was strongly influenced by Polish music, and was not averse to imitations of shallow hits. In all this, Telemann remained a master of the notes, who could give even the most hollow of pieces a touch of craftsmanship. In many cases the composer acted as engraver and publisher of this own music, as was the case with the Twelve Fantasias for violin solo dating from 1735. In this period he published one after the other remarkable collection of chamber music, such as the Methodische Sonaten (1728-29), the Getreue Music-Meister, the extensive series Musique de Table (1733) recorded here, and similar collections of solo fantasias without basso continuo for flute,
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viola da gamba and harpsichord. In his Musique de Table Telemann naturally created contrast between the movements, after the example of the suite, sonata and concerto. Pairs of slow and fast movements alternate, as was customary at the time. New are indications such as Dolce, Cantabile, Affettuoso and Furioso, which say more about character than tempo. And of course the suites include an allemande, courante, gavotte, bourree or gigue (and an occasional polonaise) without their being described as such: only the time signature and the notes themselves give away the true nature of the movement. Some short slow movements serve mainly to link up two fast movements. And at the end a dance-like movement sometimes occurs in which Telemann creates a chiaroscuro effect by alternating major and minor. Telemanns Musique de Table is one of the largest and most extraordinary collections of instrumental music of the late Baroque. Like Bach, Telemann had encyclopedic leanings. Almost all instrumental genres and styles of his time are represented, as well as the instruments common at the time, as in Bachs Orchestral Suites and Brandenburg Concertos. After publication had been announced in the journal Hamburgische Berichten von Gelehrten Sachen in 1732, there was a rush of more than 200 subscribers, a great number for that day. Later, international interest was also remarkable: statesmen, court officials, priests, bishops, cardinals and countless well-to-do citizens from all over Austria and Italy queued for the music. Even a certain Mr. Hendel, Docteur en Musique, Londres, ordered a copy. It was clearly a prestige project, for the enterprising Telemann had signed the printing plates himself, and closely watched over the printing process. For this was no mere edition of yet another little galant concerto - no, this was a collection in no less than three parts, each comprising a suite, quartet, concerto, trio sonata, solo sonata and Conclusion. The cosmopolitan 51-year-old was well aware that, from the busy harbour city of Hamburg, the whole world lay open for him, and that from Germanys powerful cultural metropolis he could supply thousands of music lovers. It is no wonder that Telemann, rooted in strict Baroque counterpoint just like Bach, with his enormous mental dexterity and open ears, heard a new musical age approaching, and indeed helped to prepare it. Though older than Bach, he shook off Baroque severity, adopted the galant style and prepared the way for the Viennese classical composers. Not without reason did Johann Mattheson write: Lully is celebrated; Corelli enjoys praise; Telemann alone towers way above. Clemens Romijn

CD 43 Frais et gaillard
If we could jump into a time machine and swing back into the 17th century, the Golden Age of the Netherlands, we would be astonished by the efficiency of communication, the accessibility of lands and cities, and the speed with which fashions swept across Europe. Citizens of Amsterdam, The Hague or Utrecht not only had easy access to luxury articles from far shores, including coffee, tea, tabacco and spices, but could also acquire music from Venice, Florence, Rome and Paris. All this was due to well organised international trading routes, and to adventurous individuals who explored foreign territory and, upon return, spread by word of mouth the latest news on fashion and taste. Through his extensive travels and correspondence the Netherlands diplomat and composer Constantijn Huygens was well informed on French and Italian music, the leading styles of Europe. In his own compositions he gave full scope to foreign influences, being no great admirer of native produce, perhaps with the exception of Sweelinck. Like the Dutch poet and writer Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, the latest music by Monteverdi, Henry du Mont and Antoine Bosset provided his example. The blind carillonneur of the Janskerk in Utrecht, Jonkheer Jacob van Eyck, was a distant cousin of Huygens. From 1625, on the request of the town, he played the carillon and improvised on the recorder to entertain promenaders in the park around the church. In his collection Der Fluyten Lusthof (1646), dedicated to his cousin Huygens, he published his remarkably imaginative variations on well-known tunes of the time, including Amarilli by the Italian composer Caccini, Dowlands Pavana lachrymae, and Doen Dafne dover schoone Maeght. The volume includes some 150 pieces for recorder solo, many of which are highly virtuosic; it was greatly popular and became the stable diet of countless Netherlands recorder players. The manner in which Van Eyck wrote his variations is related to the Italian diminution technique of the time and the variation technique of Sweelinck and Vallet. The long notes of the tunes are translated into figuration in gradually shorter note values, creating an effect of increasing virtuosity. This technique of diminution, literally meaning re88

duction, could be mastered by musicians with the help of a number of celebrated tutors including Silvestro Ganassis La Fontegara (1535) and Diego Ortizs Tratado de glosas (1553), for recorder and viola da gamba respectively. Instrumentalists selected popular chansons or madrigals upon which to base their own diminutions (figurations, ornamentation), and often followed standard patterns. The resulting single part was rather improvisatory and ran from high to low, while the other parts of the original chanson or madrigal were accommodated in a harpsichord accompaniment. The surviving works by the blind Van Eyck reveal just how cosmopolitan he was. The manner in which he broke tunes known throughout Europe belongs to a tradition cultivated earlier in the far San Marco in Venice by Giovanni Bassano, and by composers including Cima, Fontana and Castello. The next step taken by composers was to apply this improvisation technique to freely composed works rather than adaptations of vocal models. In Italy this gave birth to the earliest sonatas, exciting solo pieces full of exuberant virtuosity. This early sonata comprised a succession of short, contrasting sections, without the breaks of the later sonata. The late 16th- and early 17th-century sonata and canzona could be played on a variety of solo instruments, such as the violin, cornett or recorder, provided the part in question matched its range, and this practice was to remain common until far into the 18th century the period of Bach, Handel and Telemann. In comparison with the rest of Europe, musical life in the Netherlands, and particularly the Northern Netherlands, was a remarkable affair. In great contrast to Lutheran and Catholic Germany, Calvinism had brought church music almost to astop, only allowing the unaccompanied singing of metrical psalms, which Huygens considered an abhorrent practice. Moreover, while Germany, France and Italy swarmed with the courts of the nobility, in the Netherlands there were very few, and benefactors offering employment to composers and musicians were therefore similarly scarce. The only figure of international repute was Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, organist of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, but he was in an exceptional position. This phenomenal improviser was one of the top organists of Europe, and like a huge magnet he attracted countless pupils who were later to spread his manner of playing, particularly in north Germany and Scandinavia. The real music making of the Netherlands was to be found in bourgeois circles, in municipal music societies (of which that in Amsterdam was directed by Sweelinck), in the many domestic chambers and in the occasional stately merchants house or castle. Compared with the average Netherlands composer, therefore, Bach, Handel and Telemann enjoyed prosperous circumstances in the 18th century. Their livelihood and artistic development were guaranteed by a host of noble benefactors, counts, dukes and municipal authorities. Thanks to these preconditions, combined with an abundance of talent and curiosity, they became the most celebrated composers of the 18th century. On the second CD, the three present their cosmopolitan view of the prevailing musical styles of their day: the French and Italian. It is conspicuous how very well acquainted all three were with the innovative violin sonatas of the Roman violinist Corelli and the compelling violin concertos which Antonio Vivaldi served up in distant Venice, but also with the dignified, highly perfumed and elegant dance music cultivated at the court of Louis XIV in Versailles. Most unique of all is Bach: while Handel and Telemann set foot in far countries (Handel visited Italy several times and Telemann travelled to Paris), Bach never ventured beyond German borders. It is almost as if he had a sort of world receiver, enabling him to pick up the music of Europe at home in his study, to absorb it, and to stamp it with the name of BACH. One of the guiding lights of Bach, Handel and Telemann was Arcangelo Corelli, and in particular his sensational violin sonatas op. 5. The twelfth piece of the set is based on La Folia, one of the best known themes in music history. This tune was originally a Spanish dance, like a saraband, but wild and elated, reflecting the literal meaning of the word folia: madness, frenzy. The theme left its mark on west European composition, from Lully and Marin Marais, via Alessandro Scarlatti and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, to Liszt and Rachmaninov. Georg Philipp Telemann was considered in his time to be the most versatile and prolific composer of the 18th century. He wrote an enormous number of sacred works and operas, most of which have been lost, and an incredible flood of instrumental works, often for the collegia musica that he founded in Frankfurt and Leipzig. Telemann engraved and published many of his own works, including the fantasias for solo flute. The term fantasia refers to a relatively free musical form; it is neither a suite nor a sonata, but may contain a dance-like movement from a suite, or a movement from a sonata, concertoor toccata. Some of the short slow movements are little more than transitional passages between two fast movements. And the composer sometimes closes with a dance-like movement in which a chiaroscuro effect is created by the alternation of major and minor. In the fantasias for solo flute, the imitative stile antico which Telemann adopted from the older polyphonic fantasia (a predecessor of the fugue) creates a suggestion of counterpoint heard in the va89

rious registers of the flute. This phenomenon is even more strongly evident in the Partita for solo flute BWV 1013 by Telemanns contemporary and good friend Johann Sebastian Bach. Two or even three simultaneous melodic lines are discernible, while there is no genuine two-part counterpoint: the polyphonic effect occurs in the listeners ear. This quasi-polyphony gives rise to large leaps between a melodic upper part and low bass notes forming the foundation of the piece, and gives opportunity for fine echo effects. With the seemingly limited means of a single flute, Telemann and Bach created a wealth of expression, affect and rhythmic invention. As the Hannover regents George I and II governed England as kings, so did Telemanns good friend, the Saxon giant George Frideric Handel, rule over English theatres with his operas and later oratorios from 1711 until his death. Even in music societies and domestic circles, Handels sonatas and concertos pushed aside the works of lesser mortals, such was the extent to which players eagerly identified with this capricious and outstanding virtuoso and improviser. Handel performed many of his sonatas and concertos during the intervals of his oratorios, and achieved enormous success with his often improvised performance on the organ. With works like the cosmopolitan Sonata in B minor (Fitzwilliam), countlessEnglish recorder players filled their houses with the sounds of Italy, France and their very own Handel. Beside chamber music with an accompaniment, Bach left a dozen other works for unaccompanied melody instruments, such as the sonatas and partitas for solo violin and the cello suites, including the Partita in A minor BWV 1013. This work is usually heard in the version for flauto traverso or transverse flute. Some scholars cast doubt on this instrumentationand assume a string instrument, on which some passages are easier to execute, such as the uninterrupted stream of semiquavers in the Allemande. Nonetheless, the listener is treated to wonderful examples of characteristic dances, such as the French Allemande, the Italian Corrente and the French Sarabande. The most magical movement of all is surely thesparkling Bourre anglaise. One of the most popular genres that drifted across from Italy was the trio sonata, an instrumental work for two violins or flutes and basso continuo. Particularly intriguing was the conversation or musical dialogue between the two upper parts. Reliably supported by the foundation of the basso continuo, they indulged in a conversation full of agreement and disagreement, concord and discord, in full harmony or intense competition. Various instrumentations were possible in

the trio sonata, including performance of one of the violin parts on the harpsichord or organ, or even all the parts on the organ alone, with the two original violin parts in the two hands and the bass in the pedal. Conversely, an organ work with three melodic parts could be performed on two instruments, for instance recorder and obligato organ, as is demonstrated here in Bachs Trio Sonata BWV 529. Such varied instrumentations of his sonatas and trio sonatas lent a whole range of colour and expression to one and the same piece, and ensured that Bachs music fell less easily into obscurity.
Clemens Romijn

Pieter-Jan Belder
Pieter-Jan Belder (1966) studied the recorder with Ricardo Kanji at the Royal Conservatory at the Hague, and the harpsichord with Bob van Asperen at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory, where he was on the staff between 1990-1995. He graduated in 1990 and has had a career since as a harpsichord and a clavichord player, organist, forte-pianist and a recorder player. He has played at several international festivals, such as the Barcelona Festival de Musica Antiga, The Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, the Berlin Tage fr Alte Musik, The Festival van Vlaanderen and the Leipzig Bachfest . He regularly plays solo recitals. He is also very much in demand as a continuo player with such ensembles as the Radio Chamber Orchestra, Collegium Vocale Gent, Il Fondamento, Camarata Trajectina, and de Nederlandse Bachvereniging. He has worked with conductors such as Frans Brggen, Ton Koopman, Paul Dombrecht, Philippe Herreweghe, Kenneth Montgomery and Ren Jacobs. Belder also accompanies soloists such as Johannette Zomer, Nico van der Meel, Rmy Baudet and Saskia Coolen. He has made numerous radio and television recordings for the Dutch broadcasting companies, Belgium and German radio. Belder conducts his own ensemble Musica Amphion. In 1997 Pieter-Jan Belder was awarded the third prize at the Hamburg NDR Music Prize harpsichord competition. In 2000 he was winner of the Leipzig Bach harpsichord competition. He has made many CD-recordings, most of them solo and chamber music productions. In 1999 Belder was invited to cooperate in two important CD recording projects: 10 CDs in a complete Bach recording (Brilliant), and a CD in a Edison awarded complete recording of all the Keyboard works of the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszn. Sweelinck (NM classics) In 2001 he recorded several CDs in a complete Mozart recording (Brilliant), including the KV 107 harpsichord concertos and a CD with variations for pianoforte. Belder is now halfway on a CD project (36 CDs),
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recording all the harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, a project which will occupy him until 2007, a memorial year of this great Italian/Spanish composer (1685-1757). Recently a complete recording of Telemanns Tafelmusik was released under his baton. Currently Belder is recording the complete works by Arcangelo Corelli, with his own ensemble Musica Amphion www.ibizweb.nl/belder

Menno van Delft

Menno van Delft was born in Amsterdam in 1963. He studied harpsichord, organ and musicology with Gustav Leonhardt, Bob van Asperen, Piet Kee, Jacques van Oortmerssen and Willem Elders, in 1988 winning the clavichord prize at the C. Ph. E. Bach Competition in Hamburg. He has given concerts and master classes throughout Europe and the U.S.A, made numerous recordings for radio and television. and performs with many soloists and ensembles including Pieter Wispelwey, Johannette Zomer, Ensemble Schnbrunn, Nederlandse Opera, Al Ayre Espaol, Cantus Clln, Nederlandse Bachvereniging. Van Delfts discography includes J.S. Bachs six violin sonatas, Musical Offering, Art of Fugue and Toccatas, and keyboard works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. This year the first of a series of recordings on important historical clavichords has been released, featuring sonatas and variations by J. G. Mthel on the 1763 J. A. Hass clavichord in the Russell Collection, Edinburgh. He teaches harpsichord, clavichord and basso continuo at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

Rainer Zipperling, cello

After his school years Rainer Zipperling began his studies of Music and Musicology. His love for baroque music led him to the Netherlands, the pioneer country of the so-called authentic performance practice. He played with important musicians such as Sigiswald and Barthold Kuyken, Frans Brggen and Gustav Leonhardt. At present he counts among the most important cellist in the field of Early Music. He played with numerous ensembles and made over 250 recordings as a soloist and chamber music player. He teaches at the Hochschule of Kln and Frankfurt, and gives regularly master courses. He also publishes unknown compositions for the cello. The instruments Soprano van Eijck recorder by Adriana Breukink after Rosenborg (CD track 3,4,9,12,15,16,18) Soprano recorder by Mollenhauer designed by Adriana Breukink ( CD track 1) Soprano recorder by Jacqueline Sorel after Ganassi (CD track 2,6,13,17&19) Alto recorder in G by Kanji & Sorel after Ganassi (CD track 5,7,8,10,11,& 14) Tenor recorder by Mollenhauer designed by Adriana Breukink (CD track 15) Harpsichord by Cornelis Bom, 2003, after Giusti (CD ) Organ by Henk Klop, 1999 Cello by Vincenzo Panormo, 1786 Viola da Gamba by Francois Bodart, 1992

CD 44 Torelli Trumpet Concertos

Giuseppe Torelli was a native of the northern Italian city of Verona, whose cultural roots extend back to Roman times and survive in the form of antique buildings such as the theatre and the Arena, now famous as a concert venue. From the 10th century onwards, starting with music-making in the Benedictine monastery of San Zeno, music was practised intensively in the churches in Verona. Its outstanding secular musical culture has been documented since the Middle Ages, when travellers reported that the whole of Verona was filled with music. Although the city was plagued by war and famine in the 16th century, the subsequent economic and political upturn led to a resurgence in patronage of the arts and the beginning of what was historically the most fruitful era for music in Verona. When Giuseppe Torelli, the sixth of nine children, came into the world on 22 April 1658, the auspices for his inclusion within the newly blossoming musical world in this part of Italy were favourable. Thanks to the wealth of his father Stefano, a senior civil servant, the young Giuseppe was able to receive tuition at an early age from the musician Giuliano Massaroti. This training bore early fruit in 1676, when Torelli played the violin in the musical setting of the Vespers in the church of San Stefano in Verona. Little is known of his life during the years that followed; he ap91

pears to have remained attached to the violin, however, as he was employed as a violinist in the cathedral in Verona in the summer of 1683. He also appears to have made an intensive study of composition and to have visited neighbouring towns to seek out other spheres of activity; he was briefly the maestro di cappella at the cathedral in Imola before being accepted on 27 June 1684 as a suonatore di violino (violinist) at the Bolognese music academy, the Accademia Filarmonica, by 27 votes to 3. In the Italian music academies, the most promising and most highly regarded instrumentalists, singers and composers from the various cities gathered regularly at that time in order that they could jointly devote their attention to the perfection either of the practical or the academic portion of music (H. C. Koch). These music academies were progressive free-thinking establishments where there was continuing discourse on the old and the new in music. However, they were also places for practical experimentation, for many works at that time were first heard in the academies the most famous example undoubtedly being the first performance of Claudio Monteverdis Orfeo, the first opera in the history of music, in the Accademia degl Invaghiti in Mantua in 1607. Bolognas Accademia Filarmonica, to which Torelli now belonged, had been founded in 1666; with the passage of time, it now became the most important in Italy and was also highly regarded by music connoisseurs in every other country. Even W. A. Mozart, having passed the entrance examination and been accepted as a member of the academy in 1770, made reference to his membership of the Bolognese Accademia Filarmonica when applying for posts with orchestras at German courts. When he moved to Bologna early in September 1684, Giuseppe Torelli discovered a musical sphere which not only far outstripped that of his native city but was unrivalled in the world at that time. In addition to the music academies, this city, which had acquired its wealth through commerce, had possessed a university since the 11th century; its students are said to have included Dante Alighieri and Petrarch, and a professor of music was appointed there as early as the 15th century. Public places, alleyways and squares were filled on the citys feast days with sophisticated brass wind music played by the nationally renowned Concerto palatino del Senato, and various music groups were also housed in the citys churches, of which there were more than 150, and monasteries. San Petronio, then the musical home of the Accademia Filarmonica ensemble, was the most splendid church in Bologna. Construction of this church, which was named after the citys patron saint, began in 1390. Although the original architectural plans, according to which San Petronio would have been taller than St. Peters in Rome, were not implemented in full, the result was the finest Gothic ecclesiastical building in Italy, created with the collaboration of such major artists as Raphael. For the next two years, Giuseppe Torelli played an active part in the celebration of the patron saints feast day on 4 October, initially as a temporary musician with the instrumental ensemble. At the same time he continued his education, studying the violin with one of the violinists in the ensemble, Leonardo Brugnoli or Bartolomeo Laurenti, and being taught composition by Giacomo Antonio Petri. When a vacancy for a violetta (low violin) player with the ensemble was advertised, Torelli applied and was engaged not to play the violetta, however, but as the successor to Geminiano Buosi on the tenor viola, another deeper-voiced member of the violin family which has fallen out of use. In the same year, Torelli also made his debut as a composer and by 1688 had completed his Op. 1-4, works for string ensemble, destined for performance in a secular setting. During that era, music-making at Torellis musical base in San Petronio was totally dominated particularly on feast days by what is known as the Bolognese trumpet style, founded by maestro di cappella Mauritio Cazzati. During his period in office (1657-71), Cazzati had expanded the ensemble so that it now numbered 30 permanently employed musicians; this considerable size was necessitated by the sheer scale of the church of San Petronio. The number of musicians performing works in many parts must be proportionate to the scale of the location where the performance takes place. An orchestra with an inadequate number of musicians in a large opera house cannot produce sufficient sound to fill the building in such a way that the individual parts stand out strongly against the whole. Although directed at the architecture of opera houses, these remarks by the music theorist Heinrich Christoph Koch are applicable to the vast dimensions of San Petronio. Moreover, festive music at San Petronio in Giuseppe Torellis time was very closely related to opera, as is evident from the description of the French observer Ange Gourdar: I went to Bologna recently, to attend what is known there as a great musical mass. When I entered the church, I thought at first that I was at an opera. Entres, symphonies, minuets, rigaudons, arias for solo voice, duets, choruses, drum, trumpet and timpani accompaniments (), in a word everything that belongs to the theatre was gathered together here. These remarks may help us to understand the framework within which Torellis works for trumpet were created. Instrumental music in San Petronio was festive music, intended to paint acoustic images with brilliant colours and
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clear lines while filling the vast space in the church with sound. Given the harmonic colour of the San Petronio ensemble, which was characterised by string instruments, it seems likely that Cazzati had introduced trumpets before Torelli as powerful instruments with a contrasting timbre, but notwithstanding this most people attending Mass were in any event familiar with the splendid brass wind ensemble of the Bolognese Senate, the Concertino Palatino, from the music of the citys festivals, and this familiarity facilitated the transition from the flamboyance of the magnificent secular festivals to the solemn mood of the celebration of Mass on feast days before a single note had been played. Giuseppe Torelli was aware of the dominance of the trumpet at San Petronio from his own experience. It is therefore not surprising that in his next works, compositions for the Masses celebrated in the church of San Petronio in the 1690s, he should have included solo trumpets in the ensemble playing. In so doing, he was able to draw upon the virtuoso playing of the leader of the Concertino Palatino, Giovanni Pellegrino Brandi. Since this music was not intended for publication in print, he did not have to take account of the interests of the music publishers, who even as early as 1700 were demanding, in order to promote commercial sales of their products, that composers should write parts that could be played by musicians with only average technical skills. As far as his music for trumpet and strings was concerned, Torelli was answerable only to the Accademia Filarmonica and the authorities at San Petronio, and he was thus able to take the tradition there as a starting point from which he could explore new musical paths. Although the tonal range of the trumpet, played at that time without valves, was confined to the natural notes, and given that the melody was therefore restricted to motival devices such as triads, scales and repetition of sounds, contemporary audiences were very aware of the novelty and versatility in Torellis trumpet music, and held these qualities in high esteem; today, though, at a historical distance of 400 years, it is difficult to hear the music in the same way. A fundamental contribution in terms of overcoming this hurdle was made by the Swiss musicologist Franz Giegling, who was the first to make a comprehensive study of Giuseppe Torellis concertante trumpet works and who pointed out the particular structural principles which enable us to understand precisely what was new about the musical language in these compositions. For instance, it was Torellis custom in his concertante trumpet works, only some of which were called Concerto, others bearing the name Sonata or Sinfonia, to place the solo trumpets opposite the string ensemble, thus allowing the trumpets to emerge distinctly as solo parts like the solo voices in the vocal aria, which at that time was still very young but already very successful. The whole musical movement is no longer built up around the bass part, as was still traditional in the basso-ostinato style at the beginning of the century; instead, all the parts are developed as an accompaniment to the high solo part. Initially, the trumpets and strings introduce the theme separately; frequently the trumpets are first to play the motifs, the strings repeating them only after the trumpets have finished, before thematic elements are given to both groups. In this manner, Torelli created a work consisting of movements in which motifs were elaborated upon, which in the terminology of the later classical style was referred to as developmental. Another notable structural device is Torellis treatment of the trumpets in the fugue-like episodes. Here, too, Torelli makes the valveless trumpet the focal point of the themes and the movement, though it has far less expressive potential than the string instruments. In order to allow the solo trumpets to participate on equal terms in the structure of the movement, however, Torelli now develops the theme on the wind instrument, with the remaining voices geared to the trumpet. In the concertante works for two trumpets, Torelli developed a slightly modified musical language. While the range of the works for solo trumpet encompassed the entire solemn Mass in the manner of intermezzi, possibly accompanying particularly significant individual parts of the liturgy, such as the showing of the host, the works for two trumpets undoubtedly served as preparation for the Mass. As in opera overtures, their celebratory, fanfare-like character is intensified, finding expression in distinct triad melodies and in simple harmonies sustained over long periods during which the rhythm marches on at an unhurried pace. Of the many other experimental features in the concertante trumpet works of Torelli, the ritornello form, should also be singled out; in this, recurring sections of ensemble playing are clearly distinguished in terms of tonality, texture and rhythm from the interpolated solo sections, thus forming stark contrasts the fundamental characteristic of the concertante style. Also striking is Torellis experimentation with different numbers of individual movements in his various works. In addition to the four-movement form he also used the three-movement form, in which two faster movements enclose a slower one; this was to become the standard for instrumental solo concerti. In these slow movements, Torelli explored keys which were far beyond the range of the trumpet, and hence we find here numerous virtuoso solos for the violin, foreshadowing the violin concerti of Torellis later years, in which he perfected the structural techniques he had developed and tested in the concertante trumpet works. In summary, it should be emphasised that the composer Giuseppe Torelli, who was active until 1709, made a major contribution to developing the genre of the concerto for solo instrument with the works for trumpet featured on this recording. Matthieu Kuttler
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Thomas Hammes Trumpet

Thomas Hammes was born in Osann Monzel near to the famous Romans city Trier in 1978. In 1987 he becomes student of Nikoley Tchotchev (1. Solo Trumpet at Bulgarian State Opera Sofia). At the age of 15 he starts his studies at the Music Academy of Saarbrcken with Peter Leiner. His career as a professional trumpeter begins in 1998 as the 1st Solo Trumpet of the European Union Youth Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. In 1999 he completes his studies at the Herbert von Karajan Academy of the Berlin Phliharmonic Orchestra with Martin Kretzer. Since 1999, he has been a trumpeter in the Munich Radio Orchestra of Bavarian Radio. In 2001 he becomes 1st Solo Trumpet in the SWR Radio Sinfonie Orchestra Stuttgart under Sir Roger Norrington.

Peter Leiner Trumpet

The trumpeter Peter Leiner , who was born in Landau in the southern part of German state of Palatinate in 1962 , completed his studies at the State Music Academy in Mannheim with Professor Reinhold Lsch. Since 1986, he has been a trumpeter in the SWR Radio Orchestra in Kaiserslautern. His career as a university teacher began in 1993 with a position as lecturer at the Music Academy of Saarbrcken, and in 1997 he appointed professor. More than 20 CDs document the impassioned musicians career as a chamber musician and soloist. His wide range of artistic interests also become evident in his work as head of various types of ensembles. For instance, he founded the Ensemble Contemporano, for contemporary music, as well as the Trio Cantclarino and Die Kurpflzischen Kammersolisten both of which groups specialize in baroque compositions. In addition, Peter Leiner is a member of Das Rennquintett, an internationally renowned brass ensemble founded in 1987.

European Chamber Soloists

Die Europischen Kammersolisten wurden im Frhjahr 2002 in Saarbrcken gegrndet. Junge Musiker (20-25 Jahre) aus verschiedenen europischen Lndern schlossen sich unter der knstlerischen Gesamtleitung des Organisten und Dirigenten Christian Schmitt mit dem Ziel zusammen, bekannte und seltener gespielte Kammerorchesterliteratur auf hchstem Niveau zur Auffhrung zu bringen. Die Besonderheit der Europischen Kammersolisten besteht darin, dass die einzelnen Mitglieder zur musikalischen Elite ihrer Generation zhlen. Dies belegen Studien bei namhaften Professoren im In-und Ausland, renommierte Stipendien (z.B. Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes), Erfolge bei nationalen und internationalen Wettbewerben (u.a. Deutscher Musikwettbewerb, Deutscher Hochschulwettbewerb, Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe), solistische Auftritte im In-und Ausland sowie frhe Engagements in Auswahlensembles (Jeunesse Musicales Weltjugendorchester, Bundesjugendorchester, Jugendorchester der Europischen Union) und renommierten Berufsorchestern. Die Europischen Kammersolisten kommen mehrmals jhrlich zusammen, um ihre solistischen Fhigkeiten in interessanten Programmen zu vereinen. Stets vom Ziel motiviert, eine spezifische Interpretationskultur und Auffhrungspraxis zu verwirklichen, ist das Spiel der Europischen Kammersolisten geprgt von musikalischer Intelligenz, technischer Perfektion und enthusiastischer Freude am gemeinschaftlichen musikalischen Erlebnis.

Nicol Matt
Nicol Matt was born in St. Georgen, studied church music and conducting in Stuttgart, Trossingen and Strasbourg, and then honed his craft by taking further classes with Eric Ericson and Frieder Bernius. After producing a number of CDs as an organist he has concentrated on choral and orchestral conducting, working regularly with the Kurpflzische Kammerorcherster Mannheim, the Sdwestdeutsche Kammerorchester Pforzheim, the Wrttembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen and members of the Barock Orchester Freiburg. Very quickly he has transformed the Chamber Choir of Europe (which was called the Nordic Chamber Choir until April 2002), into One of the finest choirs in Germany. (Ex-Kings Singer Bob Chilcott). Mr Matt enjoys the close cooperation of important contemporary composers such as Morten Lauridsen, John Rutter and Bob Chilcott. His diverse repertoire is reflected in his growing corpus of CD recordings for Joan Records and Bayer Records, and in his many radio broadcasts for SWR, WDR, BR, NDR and Deutschland Radio Berlin

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CD 45 Jacob van Eyck and his Der Fluyten Lust-hof

Jacob van Eyck (ca. 1590-1657) was one of the most remarkable figures in Dutch musical life during the so-called Golden Age. He was a contemporary of Rembrandts: when Van Eyck published his first musical works in 1644, at an advanced age, the paint on the famous Night Watch was barely dry. Jacob van Eyck, a nobleman, was blind from birth. He was internationally respected as the greatest campanologist of his time. His expertise was even of decisive importance in the development of the carillon. Intellectuals of the day such as Ren Descartes, Constantijn Huygens, and Marin Mersenne praised his art. Jacob van Eycks name is primarily associated with the city of Utrecht, where he worked as the citys carillonneur from 1625 until his death. The tower of the Dom Church, the city cathedral, was his most important stampingground there. During his free time, he played the recorder, and he was a brilliant virtuoso on the instrument. Citizens of Utrecht could enjoy his remarkable artistic achievements as they strolled through the Janskerkhof (St. Johns Churchyard) on a pleasant summers evening. Nearly 150 of these solo compositions have survived in the two volumes of Der Fluyten Lust-hof (The Flutes Garden of Delight), which was printed between 1644 and 1649 by Paulus Matthijsz in Amsterdam. They are mostly variation sets on popular tunes of the period, and on psalm melodies. This repertoire is both loved and feared by professional recorder players today. The music, technically demanding, bears unmistakable witness to Jacob van Eycks own virtuosity.

The Janskerkhof
Seventeenth-century citizens of Utrecht would still recognize the Janskerkhof of today, for its shape has not changed significantly, and the church itself still stands there. In their time, this was a square, with something of the character of a park, planted with small trees. The paths were paved with rectangular stones. The burghers took their walks in this pleasure garden, and young people in search of romance found each other here at night. Ultrajectine tempe, ofte S. Jans Kerck-hoff versch wandel-groen, is the name of an ode (1640) by Regnerus Opperveldt which sings the praises of this oasis. Today, except for the flower market which is held on Saturdays, the Janskerkhof is used mostly as a parking lot. The historical Janskerk stands there almost as an obstruction. The street curves gently around it. Early in the twentieth century, the square still had some of the qualities of a park, as shown by photograph of the period (see ill.). Many of Jacob van Eycks recorder compositions from Der Fluyten Lust-hof would have had their first public hearing on the Janskerkhof. The literature frequently refers to the raise in salary from eighty to one hundred guilders a year which the chapter of Sint-Jan voted him in 1649 for his services as carillonneur, provided that he occasionally in the evening entertain the people strolling in the churchyard with the sound of his little flute. In contrast to what these words might suggest, this custom had been around for sometime already. Nine years earlier, the abovementioned Opperveldt devoted considerable space to the subject in his poem. He set Van Eyck in the scene as carillonneur and recorder player: Maer wat schelter in mijn ooren But oh! what tinkles in my ears Dat soo vrolick sich laet hooren? So full of joy? t Is de soete klocke klanck, Tis the sweet sound of bells Eyckje singt zijn hellen sanck, Eyckie sings his clear-toned song Eyckje comt ons Pleyn vereeren, Eyckie comes to honor our square En de klockjes spreecken leeren, And teach the little bells to speak Schaetert door de teere blaen Pealing through the delicate leaves Datse weer geluydtjes slaen. Which echo back the lovely sounds. Daer begindt hy op zijn fluydtje; Now he starts to play his flute; Dat wast! O! wat liever tuytje! Thats what we hear! O! Lovely twittering! (Wech nu loome lompery!) (Begone, drowsy heaviness!) Of ick inden hemel sy? Or am I in heaven? O! vergoode Palmer-gaedtjes, O! Divine boxwood-holes, O! wat boven-menschte maedtjes O! What superhuman measures, Vloeyen uyt u konstich rondt Flow and fill the space around

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Van een rappen aessem-mondt. Driven by an agile mouth. At the end of the poem, when the day which the poet describes has come to an end, he turns again to Van Eyck and addresses him in person: Eyckje maeckt nu klockgeluydt! Eyckie, set the bells a-ringing! Spaert geen vingers, mont, noch fluyt! Spare neither fingers, mouth, nor flute! We know more of van Eycks busy life in Utrecht than we do of his earliest years. Even his date of birth is lacking. An archival document belonging to the chapter of the Dom of Utrecht, bearing the date of 23 January 1628, indicates that Van Eyck was about thirty-eight years old at this time. Thus one can deduce that the sightless artist must have been born around 1589/90.

Heusden
Jacob van Eyck was not from Utrecht. He was probably born in Heusden, the strategically located fortified town near s- Hertogenbosch. His parents, both of noble families, had long chosen to side with the House of Orange, and as a result, with the Revolt, the resistance against Spain. Jacobs father was a tax collector, and his behavior was not irreproachable in that position. He turned out to be incapable of keeping proper accounts. The affair became so serious that he was imprisoned in January 1589 on orders of the Council of State and the States-General. He was then dismissed. Not until 1599 was he bold enough to offer his services once again, as military inspector. He was sent to Ostend, which was suffering under a heavy siege. He died in 1604, leaving a numerous household. Jacob, about fourteen at the time, must have been a source of anxiety owing to his blindness. The prospects of employment for a blind person were limited. A blind person, citizen of the Dutch Republic, and musically gifted, could consider himself lucky. In such a case, he could always become an organist or carillonneur. Dutch organists and carillonneurs were active above all as improvisers on popular tunes and psalms. If one knew the melodies, then being able to see was not a necessary condition for making music. Playing a carillon was usually a part-time job, an extra duty for organists. Jacob van Eyck is an exception to this rule, in the sense that he devoted himself completely to the bells. It remains a mystery as to how this young blind nobleman could have developed his abilities as a campanologist in the small town of Heusden, abilities which would carry his fame far beyond the borders of his native country. Heusden had no more than a single small carillon, in the tower of the town hall. Van Eyck was never officially appointed carillonneur in this city; here, too, that job belonged to the local organist. We first encounter him as an expert in 1619, when the carillon is being equipped with a new console designed by Van Eyck himself. In the succeeding years he continued to devote himself to the improvement of the instrument. From 1622 onward he was also permitted to set out the voorslag, in other words he provided the automatic carillon with new compositions, which were played by the bells prior to (voor-) the striking (-slag) of every hour and half-hour. This was accomplished, as it still is today, by setting pins in a barrel. The barrel is activated by the clock, and the hammers are made to strike the bells by means of wires and a system of levers. Neither the carillon nor the old town hall of Heusden exists today. The massive structure was blown up in the night of 4-5 November 1944 by the retreating occupation forces. Some two hundred residents were sheltering from the hostilities on the ground floor of the building; 134 of them were killed, about ten percent of the total population. It is one of the darkest pages in the history of this little town. Van Eyck himself must have realized that a single modest town carillon could not satisfy him if he wanted to make the best use of his proven abilities. And he would have felt more and more strongly that it was time to stand on his own feet. The young blind nobleman was still living in his mothers house. In 1623, well past his thirtieth birthday, he spread hiswings. Utrecht was forty kilometers to the north, and there he found a new destination.

Utrecht
The carillon of the Dom tower was the reason for his first visit. Van Eyck immediately pressed for improvements to the hand controls, returning the next year for a period of three months to supervise the placement of a new console. On the occasion of this second visit he indicated that he would like to settle in the city, if only he were to have four hundred guilders a year, so that he, as a blind man, who needed assistance, could live a modest enough life. After laborious negotiations with the city authorities and the Dom chapter Van Eyck remained steadfast in his demands his salary was set at 350 guilders in 1625. In that same year, Van Eyck began the expansion of the Dom carillon from twelve to eighteen bells. Within three years he requested a raise in salary. This was granted on several conditions. First of all, he was required to take on two students who could take over for him in the event of his death. He was also required to take charge as technical supervisor of the bells in the most important Utrecht churches and the town hall. For this he was awarded the title of Musicyn en Directeur van de Klok-werken (Musician and Director of the Bell-works), as the
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title pages of Der Fluyten Lust-hof proudly proclaim. Attracting students was indeed a problem. Where could these children practice, other than in the towers themselves? For this reason, Van Eyck requested the purchase of a practice keyboard with thirty miniature bells, which was installed in his own house. This was Van Eycks way of dreaming out loud about a thirty-bell carillon for the Dom. It was a dream that would only come true several years after his death. In 1632, a further appointment followed as carilloneur of the Janskerk (St. Johns Church), which boasted a bell tower (no longer standing) on the southwest side. And so his activities spread across the city like an expanding oil slick. In 1645 he also became carillonneur for the Jacobikerk (St. Jamess Church) and the Town Hall. Meanwhile, Van Eyck also found time to offer his services elsewhere. Various cities called on his help to improve existing carillons or build new ones: The Hague (1626), Bergen op Zoom (1632), s-Hertogenbosch (1640-41), Zutphen (164546), Deventer (1646-47), Arnhem (1650, 1652), and Nijmegen (1651).

The secret of bell tuning

What, then, was the nature of the special knowledge which Van Eyck alone could command? He discovered how the overtone structure of a bell is composed, how a bells shape influences its sound, and in this way, how the sound and pitch of a bell can be modified. In other words, he knew how to tune a bell. This meant that an out-of-tune carillon could be corrected, and bells of differing origins could be united into a well-tuned carillon. This was a stroke of genius in a former bishopric such as Utrecht. Following the transition to Protestantism, numerous abbeys and convents had lost their original function. Much of the local bell population seemed to beg for new employment. When Van Eyck suggested, in 1628, that the Dom carillon be expanded to thirty bells, he provided a list of Utrecht bells which would be suitable for the purpose. Van Eyck had developed a special method for analyzing the overtone structure of a given bell. He brought his face close to the rim and whistled various pitches until the bell finally began to resonate to a particular pitch. In this way he was able to evoke separate overtones. Van Eyck demonstrated this analytical method to Constantijn Huygens with the aid of a crystal glass. In 1639, Huygens wrote letters on this subject to the French philosopher and musical expert Marin Mersenne and the Haarlem music theoretician Joan Albert Ban. Mersenne had already been alerted to the phenomenon by the philosopher Ren Descartes, who had lived in Utrecht for a year and attended a demonstration in the Dom tower. The scholar Isaac Beeckman made a report of the event as well in his Journal. And so the entire intellectual elite of Western Europe became aware of what this sightless nobleman had discovered. Van Eycks knowledge could also be put into practice when new bells were being cast. His collaboration with bellfounders Franois and Pieter Hemony, who came from Lotharingia to the Netherlands, was of decisive importance. They produced their first Dutch carillon in 1642 for the Wijnhuis tower of Zutphen. Then it was Deventers turn. And all of this involved Van Eycks collaboration. Of course, Van Eyck also did his best to provide Utrecht with the Hemonys instruments. The Jacobikerk was first in line. This instrument has not survived; it collapsed in the tornado which hit Utrecht in 1674. The small Hemony carillon of the Nicolakerk (St. Nicholass Church) still survives, but Van Eyck never had a chance to play it; it was installed in the spring of 1657 when the master was already on his deathbed. Nor could he be present at the installation of a new carillon in the Dom tower. That dream only became a reality in 1664. A Hemony is still considered the Stradivarius among the carillons.

Recorder playing
In 1632, Van Eyck, as carillonneur of the Janskerk, was ordered to play on every Sunday and Friday from eleven in the morning until noon, and from May until the Dom fair on four evenings a week for an hour after dinner. This latter duty was probably also the beginning of his custom of playing the recorder on the Janskerkhof during pleasant summer evenings. The Janskerk carillon only had a few bells, which limited the musical possibilities. Undoubtedly that recorderplaying provided Van Eyck with the perfect outlet for the virtuosic side of his art. At first glance it seems somewhat unusual that in 1649, the chapter of the Janskerk granted Van Eycks salary raise on the condition that he would sometimes play on his flute in the evenings. After all, this tradition had been in place for years. But there was a good reason: in that same spring, Jacob van Eyck had set the capstone on his publications of recorder music in Der Fluyten Lust-hof with a variation set on Psalm 150 and the words Ik eyndige (I make an end). In the 17th-century Dutch Republic, the recorder was probably the best-loved instrument. It was an instrument for rich and poor, young and old, for him and for her, and suited to music-making on every imaginable level. The instrument was called hand-flute or just flute. It is illustrated uncountable times in Dutch paintings of the period. There were recorders in every imaginable type and size. The works in Der Fluyten Lust-hof, however, are specifi97

cally notated for the instrument known today as the soprano recorder, with c2 (sounding; notated as c1) as the lowest pitch. Of course the pieces can also be performed on larger or smaller instruments.

The end of a life

Van Eycks last years were marked by declining health. His assistant, Johan Dicx, was permitted to substitute for his master late in 1655 during his indisposition. Dicx lived with his own household on the Oudkerkhof, but in 1656 he bought the house on Reguliersbrug (Weesbrug) where Van Eyck rented his rooms, clearly in order to be able to take care of Van Eyck in his last days. (The house on Oudegracht currently bears the number 262). After Van Eycks death on 26 March 1657, Dicx succeeded him in most of his positions. He was also the principal legatee of the blind musician, who had remained a lifelong bachelor. The present Dom carillonneur still plays the Hemony carillons of the Dom and Nicolakerk every week, carillons which owe their existence to Van Eyck. And many times every day, the clocks in these two towers still activate the pinned barrels for the voorslag. There are other things in the city which serve as a memorial to the blind musician. In the Janskerk there hangs a little bell in memory of the Orpheus of Utrecht. Its ornamental border bears the text: Ziel de fluit/Hartslag de toren/Gaf hier Van Eyck/Dies laat ik horen. [To the flute, a soul/To the tower, a heartbeat/Van Eyck gave here/This I do proclaim] During the summer of 2006, Annie Brouwer-Korf, the mayor of Utrecht, unveiled an inlaid memorial tablet on the Domplein, at an angle to the tower (illustration). And Van Eyck lives on in his compositions.

Jacob van Eyck in Utrecht:

1. Dom / The Dom 2. Janskerkhof / St. Johns Churchyard 3. Jacobikerk / St. Jamess Church 4. Stadhuis / Town Hall 5. Woonhuis / House (now Oudegracht 262) 6. Reguliers- or Weeskerk (where Van Eyck was buried)

Van Eycks music: the sources

Der Fluyten Lust-hof was printed in two parts and three stages by Paulus Matthijsz, whose press was located in the Stoofsteeg in Amsterdam. In 1644 Van Eyck was already well over fifty the first book appeared with the title Euterpe oft Speel- goddinne I. The following book, in 1646, was called Der Fluyten Lust-hof II. Three years later, the publication was completed by an expanded version of Euterpe, re-baptized Der Fluyten Lust-hof I. New printings in 1654 (second book) and ca. 1656 (first book) are proof of considerable popularity. The complete oeuvre comprises nearly one hundred fifty monophonic compositions. Van Eycks publisher, Paulus Matthijsz, must be credited with five duet arrangements (1649). Van Eyck dedicated Der Fluyten Lust-hof to Constantijn Huygens, the influential secretary to the Stadholder. Huygens, himself an amateur musician and composer, was a distant relative. The relationship was treated as though it were a close one. My Noble Sir and Cousin, dictated the blind Van Eyck as the salutation of a letter accompanying a complimentary copy of Euterpe in 1644. Van Eyck, in passing, daringly requested Huygens to proofread the musical text and see whether there might be some abuses or mistakes that had been made either in the copying or the printing. The blind Van Eyck, after all, had always been obliged to dictate his music and he could not see the printed results. He depended on borrowed eyes.

The art of variation

The variation technique that Jacob van Eyck used was a simple one, at least in terms of composition. The procedure was simply called breaking. A better term can hardly be imagined. The notes of a theme are replaced, i.e. broken, in the variations, into groups of notes of smaller value. This is accomplished by means of ornamental figuration. For example, a quarter note in the theme can be replaced in the variation by two eighths, by an eighth and two sixteenths, or four sixteenths. Jacob van Eyck consistently made use of this principle at the most basic level, going step by step in a series of variations, directly resulting in increasing virtuosity. In other words, the simplicity of this variation technique is in the concept and not at all in the execution. Broken by J. Jacob van Eyck is printed at the top of many pages in Der Fluyten Lust-hof, following the title of the theme. The variations are indicated in Paulus Matthijszs print by modo, the Italian word for manner. In this context, it should be remarked that the first variation is indicated as modo 2, so that the theme must be considered modo 1. The musical example (page 24) shows the variation technique as based on the opening measures of Psalm 140, ofte tien Geboden [cd 3, track 4]. The theme
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consists of nothing but half and whole notes. In the variations, the themes notes return on the corresponding beats of the measure (circled in the example). In the first variation, modo 2, quarter notes prevail. The second variation, modo 3, is dominated by eighth notes, modo 4 by sixteenths. Since Van Eyck originally developed the compositions from Der Fluyten Lust-hof for his own use, they give an unambiguous picture of his technical capacities. Virtuosity in the simple sense of rapid execution was not viewed negatively in the seventeenth century; as a way of increasing the excitement it was a generally accepted and valued element of musical practice. A number of Van Eycks admirers mentioned his technical facility. The poet Regnerus Opperveldt mentioned Van Eycks agile mouth, Thomas Asselijn praised his dancing fingers, while Lodewijk Meijer, in his elegy on Van Eycks death, wrote of those hands which with their artful fingers, could play the bell-keyboard and pipe [=flute] so quickly and accurately. True artists were those who could exhibit their virtuosity with a kind of careless ease, as though they were capable of even more than they let the listener hear. Since the sixteenth century, an Italian term, sprezzatura [carelessness, scorn], had been used for this attitude. Van Eyck possessed this, if we are to believe Opperveldt; he wrote that the Utrecht master let his superhuman measures flow around him. The breaking technique was certainly nothing new at the time that Van Eyck and other Dutch composers were writing solo variations for the recorder in the mid-seventeenth century. Lutenists and keyboard players were familiar with the technique of intabulation: instrumental transcriptions of vocal works in which ornamental figuration was almost always used. But even when polyphonic music was played or sung, ornamentation techniques were used. During the Renaissance, the improvisation of passaggi (passages, ornamental runs) formed an important part of the essential skills of both singers and instrumentalists. Various instruction books were published, such as Silvestro di Ganassis Opera intitulata Fontegara (1535), Il vero modo di diminuir (1584) by Girolamo dalla Casa, and Giovanni Bassanos Ricercate, passaggi, et cadentie (1585). Singers and instrumentalists made use of the same techniques, even though people realized that instruments offered greater possibilities as far as large intervallic leaps were concerned. As early as the mid-sixteenth century, the use of passaggi was a subject for dispute. Composers could only stand gloomily by as their work was abandoned to the caprices of performers and watch as it was buried under notes which they themselves had not composed. Critical opinion received extra support when, around 1600, a new kind of music made its appearance: the supreme purpose of this music was to support the text and, by extension, the emotions expressed by the text. Improvised ornamentation was a liability rather than an asset. Giulio Caccini and Claudio Monteverdi were the most important advocates for the new style. In 1602 Caccini published his Le nuove musiche, a collection of madrigals and strophic songs for solo voice and basso continuo. He gave a precise explanation of the new style in the extensive foreword to the collection. In order to appreciate Jacob van Eycks recorder variations properly, it is of fundamental importance to distinguish variation technique from variation form. At first glance, the variations seem to be very much like the examples on the basis of which the Italian instruction books explained the improvisation of passaggi. The techniques, in fact, were the same, the melodic decorations constituted a musical lingua franca. But apart from these external resemblances, there is a whole world of difference. In performances of polyphonic chansons or madrigals, the ornaments replaced the original notated music. In Van Eycks recorder works, a theme is subjected to a series of instrumental variations. That is music of another order altogether, obeying a different set of rules. Variation is no longer a mere way of livening the music up; it has become an end in itself. If we want to look for any equivalent of these recorder variations in another genre, then they can be directly compared to keyboard variations by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and his contemporaries, or Nicolaes Vallets lute variations. There is one important difference: Van Eyck made use of purely figural ornamentation, whereas this was only one of several variation techniques available to lute and keyboard composers. This difference can be explained by the fact that the recorder is a monophonic instrument. There is simply no other option than that of melodic variation. Those who made use of passaggi in order to generate an instrumental form could afford to ignore the criticisms of Caccini and other likeminded musicians. The variation series as a genre constituted a significant step in the emancipation of instrumental music, which had stood in the shadow of vocal music for centuries. At mid-seventeenth century, the art of instrumental variation was in full swing. Melodic ornamentation remained a current technique as late as the nineteenth century as a popular way of varying a melody. Van Eyck, with his variation technique, was a child of his time.

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Themes
Van Eyck composed variations on songs and tunes that were popular in his day. The Dutch Republic could boast a welldeveloped song culture in the seventeenth century. Innumerable songbooks bear witness to this. The song was typically an expression of a popular culture, as defined by the historian Peter Burke: a culture for every branch of society. Musically speaking, this Dutch song culture did not have an independent existence; most of the melodies originated abroad. The muses could avail themselves of the loveliness of the Italian songs, like the lightly-tripping French Airs, and the English round-songs, in the words of the introduction to the Amsterdamsche Pegasus, a songbook of 1627. Within the Republic, these melodies were frequently provided with new Dutch texts, a principal known as contrafactum. This occurred at every level of society. The greatest Dutch poets, from Bredero to Vondel, devoted themselves to the production of contrafacta. The notes of the melodies were often not given in the songbooks; it was assumed that the user already knew them. It was sufficient to accompany the text with an indication of the tune to be used: Voice: or To the tune of , after which the opening words of a familiar song followed. Page from the Friesche Lust-hof (1621), a songbook by Jan Starter. The page shows Blydschap van mijn vliet, on which van Eyck wrote variations [cd 1, track 13] Carillonneurs played these same popular melodies on their bells, and it should be clear that no inhabitant of the city could escape their tower-borne music, unless he or she were deaf. If the carillonneur was not in the tower, then the voorslag set the carillon ringing every hour (and half hour or quarter hour) with a set tune. Jacob van Eyck, as well, would have had an ample song repertoire at his disposal. The themes from Der Fluyten Lust-hof provide a cross-section of the usual repertoire of the day. The American musicologist Ruth Griffioen has performed an extensive investigation of the thematic material in Der Fluyten Lust-hof, and she has been able to trace nearly all of the themes to some other source (see literature). About half of the melodies originated in France; about thirty per cent of them are of British provenance. The purely Dutch contribution is minimal. One important source was the genre known as the French air de cour, which flourished in the late sixteenth century and remained popular through the mid-seventeenth century. These airs de cour were solo songs, performed either with lute accom-paniment or in homophonic vocal settings with four or more parts. Pierre Gudron, Antoine Bosset, and Etienne Moulini were among the most important composers of the genre. The chansons pour danser et pour boire, dancing and drinking songs, were related to the airs de cour. On a parallel course with the airs de cour of France, the English lute song experienced its period of greatest development around 1600, with John Dowland as its principal representative. His bestknown works, Flow my tears (Lachrimae) and Come again both appear in Der Fluyten Lust-hof. The psalms and related liturgical songs of praise can also be considered part of the song culture. They played an important role in daily life, and they did as well in Der Fluyten Lust-hof. In the Reformed Church, the psalms entirely dominated the musical side of things. Other songs, barring an occasional rare exception, were not permitted in the liturgy. The Dutch calvinists most often sang the psalms in the rhymed translation of 1566 by Petrus Dathenus (Datheen). This was based on the Geneva psalter of 1562, in a rhymed French translation by Clment Marot and Thodore de Bze. In addition to the one hundred fifty psalms, the psalter contained a few additional songs of praise. In Geneva, these were the sung Lords Prayer and the Canticle of Simeon. In the Dutch Republic, the Canticles of the Virgin (the Magnificat) [cd 1, track 26] and Zachary, the Ten Commandments [cd 3, track 4], the confession of faith, and a few other songs were part of the additional sung liturgy. According to the austere religious principles of John Calvin, the singing of psalms was to take place without accompaniment, without papistical use of the organ. That is how it was done in most of the Dutch churches. Musically speaking, the results were lamentable, moving Constantijn Huygens, in his Gebruyck of ongebruyck van t orgel inde kercken der Vereenigde Nederlanden, to plead the cause of organ accompaniment. In order to familiarize the congregants with the psalm tunes, organists were expected to play variations on the psalm melodies before the service began. The fact that virtually every set of rules for carillonneurs mentioned the playing of psalms as a requirement doubtless had the same educative purpose. In 1628 Jacob van Eyck described the automatic play of the Dom as unfit and defective with respect to its ability to perform all the psalms and musical pieces. The psalms occupy a prominent place in Der Fluyten Lust-hof, both in number and positioning. Most of the psalms on which Van Eyck composed recorder variations were among the favorites of his day: 1, 9, 15, 33, 68, 103, 116, 118, 119, 133, and 140. Van Eyck was a God-fearing man. He stated to Isaac Beeckman that the tonal structure of bells has a reason unknown to any mortal, and that God alone can comprehend it. But something else must have played a role as well: the harsh Calvinist establishment in Utrecht, under the rule of theologist Gisbertus Voetius. This would have made the inclusion of psalm variations socially desirable, not to say a requirement, as a counter100

weight to earthly pleasures. Resolutions against dancing were repeatedly promulgated in Utrecht. The church council had distanced itself from dancing as early as 1640 and 1643, and would do so again in 1644. In that same year of 1644, the first book of Van Eycks oeuvre, Euterpe oft Speel-goddinne, was published. Although the repertoire is not, strictly speaking, dance music, many of the themes are indeed dance melodies, and for that reason they might have been viewed as suspect.The present writers investigation has shown that the psalm variations were not part of Van Eycks established recorder repertoire. He developed them with a special eye to the publication of his works. Van Eyck used his carillonneurs practice as a point of departure, and based on this he went in search of a suitable recorderistic style. In a work like Psalm 140, ofte tien Geboden [cd 3, track 4], the first two variations can be seen as disguised carillon music. They may be one-voiced, but they are based almost completely on implied harmonies. The persisting and overlapping sound of the bells naturally produces a gentle sort of harmony. In other psalmbased works, Van Eyck offers a more melodic style of variation, more suited to the recorder and less to the carillon.

Composition and improvisation

In Van Eycks music it is difficult to determine where the boundary lies between improvisation and composition. Der Fluyten Lust-hof contains several duplications, which proves that the Utrecht master had stored complete variation sets in his memory. This does not mean that improvisation did not play a part. Apparently identical variations or portions thereof regularly exhibit differences, showing that improvisation continued to exert some influence. Even where Van Eyck kept works completely ready to play in his memory, improvisation may have assisted at the birth of the performance: improvising on the same theme as it is repeated, making use of a more or less fixed reservoir of ornaments, at the same time that memory was fully engaged, could result in variations being grooved in. Nowadays, the terms improvisation and composition are often treated like antonyms. It is not that simple a matter. As a practicing musician, Van Eyck is the prototype of a homo ludens, a man at play. His music, intended as carefree entertainment, was constantly subject to alteration.

A closer look at the pieces

1. Preludium of Voorspel. 2. Phantasia. 3. Lavolette. The theme of Lavolette, a corruption of La Vallette, presumably originates with a piece for lute. Van Eyck composed two variations on this French melody. The first variation is unusual in the sense that the composer seems to be denying the uniqueness of the original theme, resulting, in fact, in a complete new work which has little remaining resemblance to the theme. A sense of humor can be sensed in the rhythmic motives and the large leaps. In the second variation, Van Eyck is back on his customary track. 4. Een Schots Lietjen [A Scottish ditty]. This tune was known in Britain as The merry cuckold. Erik Bosgraaf let himself be inspired by Scottish folk music in his interpretation, in particular the bagpipes. 5. Comagain. The theme is John Dowlands immortal air Come again: sweet love doth now invite from his First book of songes and ayres (1597). Within five years the melody became familiar within the Dutch Republic. In the second section of the theme, Dowlands original contains a dialogue between the voice line and bass (To see, to heare, to touch, to kisse, to die). Van Eyck included this dialogue in two of the four variations. (See also: cd, track 8.) 6. Silvester in de Morgenstont [Silvester in the morning-time]. This uncomplicated tune came over from England, where it was known under various names. A variation set by Thomas Morley in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is entitled Nancie. In the Netherlands, the melody became familiar from its inclusion in the Friesche Lust-hof, by the Englishman Jan Starter, who turned it into the song Silvester in de Morgenstond. He indicated the tune as Sir Eduward Nouwels delight. 7. Lanterlu. This melody, possibly of Italian origin, became the basis of so many subversive, satirical songs in France that Louis XIII issued a decree forbidding its use. Lanterlu was the nonsense text of the refrain. In 1739, Johann Mattheson complained about the variation style of seventy or eighty years earlier, in which everyone found it necessary to produce at least half a dozen variations on brief airs such as Lanterlu-songs. Van Eyck dedicated two variation sets to Lanterlu, this being the first and more succinct of the two. 8. Pavaen Lachrym. John Dowland was famed for his melancholy songs and consort works. His Lachrym (Tears) is surely the best known of them. Dowland felt so strongly connected with this pavan that he once presented himself as Io. Dolandi de Lachrim. He originally composed the piece for lute, later giving it the text Flow my
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teares in his Second book of Songes or Ayres (1600), and ultimately set the work, as Lachrimae Antiquae at the beginning of his Lachrimae or Seaven Teares (1604), a series of seven pavans for five viole da gamba with lute accompaniment. Van Eyck composed two variation works on Dowlands masterpiece; this is the first of them, with only a single variation. Erik Bosgraaf used Van Eycks ornaments to provide the theme with varied repeats. Everything indicates that Van Eyck was not attempting virtuoso acrobatics in this piece, but rather tried to maintain the emotional atmosphere. 9. Rosemont. This simple English tune bears the title Tower Hill in a keyboard setting by Giles Farnaby in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. In the Netherlands, it pops up around 1620 with the title Londons Bridge, Reformee. The title, Rosemont comes from the Dutch contrafactum through which the tune became familiar: Rosemond, waer ghy vliedt / ghy ontloopt my noch so niet [Rosamond, wherever you run / You wont escape me so easily]. The tune has a narrow compass of barely more than an octave, and Van Eyck chose a low-keyed setting, given extra emphasis in this recording by the choice of instrument. 10. 1. Balet, of Vluchste Nimphje van de Jaght [1st Ballet, or Fleetest Nymph of the Hunt]. Stylistic traits suggest English origins for this theme. A Dutch text about the fleetest nymph of the hunt has not survived. Van Eycks two variations can be explained as program music: the Utrecht composer, using capricious motives, wild leaps, and unusual rhythms, apparently wanted to depict the mercurial capering of the nymph. 11. Tweede Carileen [Second Carileen]. Carileen is a girls name, in other words the name has nothing to do with the carillon. Five melodies were known as Carileen in the Netherlands. Van Eyck wrote variations for the first four of them. The melody of the Eerste [First] Carileen was sung to the words Carileen, Ay! wilt u niet verschuilen [Carileen, Oh! Please dont hide], which explains the title. The reason for the other melodies also being called Carileen is probably because they are interrelated musically. No analogous similarities can be found in the text. The Carileen melodies were composed by William Lawes, as part of his masques, which were performed at the English court. The theme of the Eerste Carileen comes from The triumphs of peace (1634). The melody is part of an instrumental symphony. The 12. Stil, stil een reys [Hush, hush a moment]. The song with this title, in praise of womans beauty, originates with the Friesche Lust-hof by Jan Starter. Originally this bourre was a French court dance. The melody is best known from a four-part setting in Terpsichore (1612) by Michael Praetorius. In Der Fluyten Lust-hof, the transmission is clearly defective. For example, the variation is a whole measure longer than the theme. Erik Bosgraaf plays a newly reconstructed version based on Wind 2007 (see literature). 13. Blydschap van myn vliedt [Joy flees from me]. Van Eyck did not produce a variation set for this melancholy tune; he confined himself to decorating the repeats. Everything seems to be dedicated to emphasizing the sorrowful affect. Erik Bosgraaf plays the earliest version (Der Fluyten Lust-hof II, 1646), which differs rhythmically in several places from the version in the second edition (1654). The melody originated in England, where it was also originally a lament. In the Netherlands, the tune was known as the contrafactum Blydschap van mijn vliedt through the Friesche Lust-hof of Jan Starter. 14. Derde Doen Daphne dover (1644 version) [Third Doen Daphne dover]. Nowadays, Van Eycks variations on Doen Daphne doverschone Maeght are among the most beloved works in the Lust-hof. This is not only because of Van Eycks variations, but also owing to the charm of this graceful melody. Doen Daphne became familiar in the Dutch Republic from Jan Starters Friesche Lust-hof (1621), shortly after the original When Daphne from fair Phoebus did flie made its appearance in England. The song is one of the broadside ballads, which got their name from being issued on unbound sheets (broadsides) of paper. The song tells the story of how the mythological Daphne refused the advances of the amorous Apollo, who pursued her. She was changed into a laurel tree, after which Apollo pressed his lips to the trunk of the tree. The melody was probably no less beloved in Van Eycks day than it is today. The Utrecht composer devoted more attention to this tune than to any other, although there are several duplications in the variation material. All of his variation sets on Doen Daphne can be found in the first volume of Der Fluyten Lust-hof. When this first volume was still called Euterpe, in 1644, there was a total of four variation sets on Doen Daphne. In Van Eycks revised second edition of 1649, which can generally be considered the principal source, the number has been reduced to three, because the first two variation sets have been combined into one. The fourth Daphne from Euterpe, therefore, was renamed the third when it reappeared five years later; another two variations were added to the original three at that time. These were presumably intended for another set. Erik Bosgraaf plays this last Daphne in its original form.
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15. De eerste licke-pot [The first pot-licker]. Likkepot is the Dutch name for a greedy person, someone who enjoys & sneaking a bit out of the honey pot or jam jar. The Dutch song on which Van Eyck composed his variations is 16 based on a French air boire, Lorsque je mouille, mouille, mouille. 17. Malle Symen (Malsimmes) [Malsims, Crazy Simon]. This British melody was also known in the Netherlands as English echo because of the octave echoes which occur in the second half of the theme. In Dutch song texts for this tune, the echoes are frequently used for dialogues. The range of over two octaves suggests an instrumental origin. Jacob van Eyck composed two variation sets on Malle Symen. They show considerable interrelationship and are well suited to a combined version, as they are performed here. 18. 2. Courant, of Harte diefje waerom zoo stil [2nd Courante, or Thief of my heart, why so silent?]. The theme is based on the air Now, o now, I needs must part (1597) by John Dowland, wildly popular in England and known as the Frog Galliard in instrumental arrangements. Van Eyck uses embellishments in the theme which are very obviously based on the Frog Galliard. There is no known Dutch contrafactum beginning with the words Hartediefje waerom zoo stil. It may have been a song which was performed in the theatre. 19. Wat zalmen op den Avond doen [What shall we do in the evening?]. The theme is an allemande, a quiet dance in fourquarter time. This song originated in Germany and although there is no known Dutch text for it (except for the opening words as given here), we know, thanks to Constantijn Huygens, that it was also sung within the Dutch Republic. In the poem Hofwyck, written about his estate with the same name in Voorburg near The Hague (see illustration), Huygens describes how the guests depart, and then begin to sing this song. It was a typical farewell song, because the answer, in the original German, to the question enclosed in the opening words, translates as well go to sleep. Indeed, the Thysius Manuscript for lute gives the melody as Allemande Slaepen gaen [Allemande Go to sleep]. Van Eyck composed two variation sets, of which Erik Bosgraaf recorded the longer and more virtuosic second one, with the addition of a single variation which accidentally strayed into the first set. This variation work extends to modo 9, a number unequalled in Der Fluyten Lust-hof. The composition has the obvious character of a finale or an encore piece. Presumably Van Eyck played these variations on the Janskerkhof as a warning bell for the last round, to indicate that it was time to go home tom bed. As the thirty-second notes whiz by in modo 6, the variations reach their first climax. Then Van Eyck follows themwith three variations in triple time. 20. Almande prime roses. The title seems to suggest an English origin. A two-voice setting of the tune has survived in the collection t Uitnemend Kabinet, where a Brande Mr Primrose can also be found. Was this beautiful melody composed by the little-known Primrose who also left some traces behind in England? Probably not. When Cornelis de Leeuw used this almande for his Christelijcke plicht-rymen (1649), he indicated the tune as Beaux jeux agrables Tirans, which rather suggests an origin associated with the French air de cour. The musical style also suggests this provenance. 21. Bravade. The French word bravade means something like provocation, boldness, showing-off. Indeed, this lively theme does not lack for high spirits. Despite the title, it probably came from England. When Jan Starter used the tune in his Friesche Lust-hof (1621) for the contrafactum Is dit niet wel een vreemde gril? [Isnt this a strange whim?], he indicated the tune as Van dEngelsche indrayende dans Londesteyn [From the English turning dance, Londesteyn]. 22. Princes roaeyle. Nothing is known of the background to this theme, a French courante abounding in hemiolas. In Van Eycks day, Princess Royal referred to Mary Stuart, the eldest daughter of King Charles I of England. She married William II of Orange (16261650), who succeeded his father as Stadholder in 1647. Van Eycks variations invite the performer to give an expressive, affect-laden performance. 23. Onder de Linde groene [Under the linden green]. This charming, carefree melody came from England, where it was known as Lord Zouches Mask. Its names in the Netherlands included Brande dIrlande (Nicolaes Vallet) or Brande Yrlandt (Pieter de Vois). The name Onder de Linde groene is based on a mistake. The melody known to the English as All in a garden greene although related to this one, nevertheless differs from it to a substantial degree. 24. Lossy. This French sarabande, a dance in triple time, was ascribed in a keyboard manuscript of the early seventeenth century to a certain La Barre, possibly a member of the well known French musical dynasty. It is not known why the work is called Lossy in Der Fluyten Lust-hof. Perhaps it refers to the Amsterdam dynasty of organists. Jan Willemsz Lossy was Sweelincks organ teacher. Together with his grandson, Nicolaes Lossy, Jacob van Eyck tested the organ of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam in 1655. Van Eyck gave the sarabande a single through-composed variation, in which he played with the structure of the theme.
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25. Gabrielle maditelle. It is astonishing that the tune to Gabrielle maditelle, one of the most sparkling melodies in the Lust-hof, has not been found in any other source. It must have been a French air de cour. 26. dLof-zangh Marie [Marys Song of Praise]. This is a Dutch version of the Magnificat as it appears in the Dutch psalm books, and as it is sung to this day in Protestant churches. My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoiceth in God my Saviour [etc.]. 27. 3. Ballet. The melodies of Van Eycks 3.Ballet and 4. Ballet were part of a series of five songs/ballets, each of which was devoted to one of the five senses. Number 3 was devoted to Sight, number 4 to Smell. The presumed origin was the Ballet van de Vijf Zinnen [Ballet of the Five Senses] which was performed in 1645 in the Amsterdamse Schouwburg. Each sense was represented by a single dancer. Van Eycks variation sets on the ballets appeared a year later in the second volume of Der Fluyten Lust-hof. 28. O slaep, o zoete slaep [O sleep, sweet sleep]. This variation set is based on Farewell dear love (1600) by Robert Jones. Shakespeare parodied this air a year after its appearance in his Twelfth Night (II, iii, 102-112). In the Netherlands the melody was known with a text in praise of sleep. In each verse, the closing line began with the words O slaep, o zoete slaep, which explains the title in Der Fluyten Lust-hof. As a soloist I am as free as a bird

Interview with Erik Bosgraaf

Eddie Vetter Erik Bosgraaf was eleven when he played music by Jacob van Eyck during a church service in his native city of Drachten, in the province of Friesland. At that moment he could not even have imagined that fifteen years later he would be recording three cds worth of the old Dutch master. The family has musical genes, particularly on his mothers side. He tells the story: My grandfather comes from North Groningen. He could choose between becoming a baker or a blacksmith, but his heart was really in music. Ultimately he became a baker in Friesland. He remained an amateur musician for his whole life, but at a high level. Hes in his late eighties now and hes still a church organist. I began with the recorder when I was nine. A couple of years later I moved on to the oboe, but that instrument wasnt right for me. Because its an expensive instrument, I had to spend fifteen minutes a day practicing it, but just for my own enjoyment I kept practicing maybe two, three hours a day on the recorder. I felt much more at home with it. I could express my emotions much more readily on the recorder. Say what I wanted to say. I like instruments that are direct. You feel the holes, you can manipulate them too. Ganassi said this about the recorder as early as the sixteenth century: its capable of imitating the human voice. The instrument is so direct that it sometimes seems as though it has no mysteries at all, it is so straight to the point. In that sense its also very Dutch. Thats exactly whats so interesting about it, finding out how you can throw a veil over the sound, make it mysterious. You need timing for that, tone color, articulation, a whole bunch of things. As a child I did have a vague idea that I wanted to become a musician later on, but during middle school I began to doubt myself. But still I started at the preparatory class at the conservatory in Groningen. Then I entered the Princess Christina Competition, really just for the fun of it, and I got bounced right into the national finals. That took away all my doubts. Thats what I was going to do! At the age of nineteen, Erik Bosgraaf moved to Amsterdam to study there at the Conservatory with Walter van Hauwe and Paul Leenhouts. His loyalties were never undivided. He had already played the saxophone and other instruments in a rock band. At the conservatory he joined The Royal Wind Music, a double sextet specializing in consort music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition he studied musicology to expand his theoretical knowledge.

Versatility
After becoming prizewinner at several competitions, including the renowned Moeck International Recorder Competition in London, and having finished his conservatory and university studies, he says that he strove consciously for versatility. It might sound a bit pretentious, but at a given moment in time I decided to put everything in my life in the service of music and to try and understand all kinds of music. That was in order to achieve the ultimate in performance by approaching it from every possible angle. I used to think that there was only one optimum performance, but I have abandoned that idea completely. For example, Jacob van Eycks music. The improvisatory character is very important. You mustnt make the performance too static. I always try to preserve the freedom of it. Sometimes you see with child prodigies that a particular interpretation has been studied at an early age, and later on they cant let go of it. For me, that very aspect is the most enjoyable part of playing, doing it differently each time.
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In addition, as a soloist I am as free as a bird. Otherwise its just reproducing something. Erik plays more than a dozen different recorders on the cds. He says: People think that Jacob van Eyck played everything on a soprano recorder, but well, he didnt have to record three solo cds. That would get monotonous pretty quickly. And wind players in those days were at home on instruments of all sizes and shapes. I want every single piece to speak as clearly as possible to the listener. It has to become a person, so to speak, with a definite personality. Thats why I use different types, from sopranino to tenor.

Character
During the preparations I have dug deep into the origins of each piece and looked for contrafacta, the same music but with another text, preferably with an accompaniment so that I could find out about the harmonic context. In that way I try to get a clear picture of the pieces character. This piece, for example, Orainge, is a courante, a French dance. French, for me, means: ingalit, in other words, that you dont play a succession of the same note values exactly evenly. And I have added ornamentation to this piece which you can already find in France in the seventeenth century. For this I chose a copy of a baroque flute. That type, its true, is of a slightly later date, but I didnt want to wear historical blinkers. The renaissance type is a model from the sixteenth century. Then the question is: do you choose an instrumental type that is a century older, or one thats thirty years younger? If you look at it like that then youll never do things right. For me its about bringing out the characteristics of each piece as clearly as possible, and getting a varied and contrasting result for the listener. For introverted French music, that kind of baroque flute is ideal because of the thinner sound, less rich in overtones. Amarilli mia bella I play on a flute with an open sound, more like a diva, so to speak, not like Pavarotti, but yes, more extroverted, with the Italian ornamentation that fits it. For the interpretation of this piece, Erik went to get advice from singer Marco Beasley. He probably thought: here comes someone else who wants to find out how to perform Italian music. I told him that I wanted to imitate a voice on my instrument. A recorder player has more or less the same problems as a singer with Amarilli. It starts on a high note with an open sound. The higher you go, the louder the sound becomes. And you have that at the same time as the accent is supposed to fall on -rilli and not on the opening note. We talked about things like that. And about the question of how you maintain interest in the themes. Instrumentalists are crazy about those virtuoso variations, but sometimes they sort of fall asleep during the themes and other slow movements. The important thing is to give the themes the elasticity that enables you to play the most rapid variations in the same tempo. In Psalm 9, after the last variation, I return to the theme. Building up the excitement in that way, from the slow theme to the quickest variation, and then returning, and still keeping the basic tempo, thats a special feeling.

Polyphony
For three of the pieces, Erik is accompanied by guitarist Izhar Elias, with whom he also collaborates on the big eye project, in which composers and film makers from all over the world create works for the duo. Sometimes people feel the need to gussy up Van Eyck a little, but usually the polyphony has already been composed into the piece itself, for example with the carillon figures that he uses to suggest a sort of harmony. If in addition you add an accompaniment to that, then you miss the point. You wouldnt think of doing that to a violin partita by Bach? Then why do it to Van Eyck? But there are a couple of compositions where a harmonic accompaniment doesnt get in the way of the variations. For example, Repicavan. It doesnt work as a solo, its a piece in the stop and go style, with very long notes and then all of a sudden rapid ornamentation, and then long notes again. The tempo has to be fairly slow because otherwise the diminutions dont come out clearly. So we looked at the original. Its an air de cour by Moulini with a kind of Spanish character and accompaniment by a baroque guitar. Then all of a sudden it becomes clear why the piece is so unpredictable. Here the text says: lets leap and dance, and then it goes back, and then the dancing starts again. For that music you really need a harmonic foundation. I think that a lot of things were clear in Van Eycks time because the melodies were familiar. Todays audience might need a little help now and then. Van Eyck, to that extent, has an image problem because only a couple of his pieces have been played to death. Doen Daphne, for example, or the Engels Nachtegaeltje. So everyone thinks that thats Van Eyck. But there are so many other beautiful pieces. In my opinion, people often make all of this music sound the same when they perform it. Its not Bach or Palestrina. Its exactly what Thiemo
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Wind writes about it: music of a homo ludens, playful music that demands a very free interpretation, different ever time, just for fun. Thats how I play with it and I keep trying to surprise my audience. www.erikbosgraaf.com

Literature
Dick van den Hul, Klokkenkunst te Utrecht tot 1700. Met bijzondere aandacht voor het aandeel hierin van Jhr. Jacob van Eyck. Zutphen [etc.]: Walburg Pers & Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1982. Muziekhistorische monografien, 9. Ruth van Baak Griffioen, Jacob van Eycks Der Fluyten Lust-hof (1644-c1655). Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1991. Muziekhistorische monografien, 13. Thiemo Wind, Jacob van Eyck en de anderen. Nederlands solorepertoire voor blokfluit in de Gouden Eeuw. Dissertation Utrecht University, 2006. [by the end of 2007 available as] Jacob van Eyck and the others. Dutch solo repertoire for recorder in the Golden Age. Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 2007. Muziekhistorische monografien, 21. www.jacobvaneyck.info Recorded: October 27 & 28, December 1, 2, 15 & 16, 2006 Location: Chapel of Marinhaven, Warmond Recording and editing: Peter Arts Production and musicological supervision:Thiemo Wind

CD 46 Antonio Vivaldi: Cello Sonatas RV39-47

The nine Cello Sonatas of Antonio Vivaldi have established themselves as among the most popular of all Baroque works for the cello. Like so many sonatas of the period these were written down as a melody line and a bass; and though many solutions have been suggested and tried, such as the use of an organ, theorbos or a guitar, the bass is most often realized for a continuo of harpsichord and cello, as on the present recording. In all probability, however, these nine works are only a portion perhaps a small portion of the number of sonatas he actually wrote for the instrument. Vivaldis known output of music is very large, but no-one imagines it has all survived the ravages of time. Since he was fabulously prolific in an age of haphazard reproduction, it is entirely likely that many works have been lost. Unlike his violin sonatas, he never bothered to publish any of his Cello Sonatas himself (the six socalled Paris sonatas seem to have appeared in print without his participation and perhaps without his knowledge), and the manuscripts containing cello sonatas that we have owe their survival to luck rather than careful preservation. Nonewere included among the vast amount of manuscript music that Vivaldi left in Venice when he moved to Vienna, where he died; on the other hand he is also known to have sold a great many manuscripts in 1739, before he made the move. Like most string players of his day Vivaldi, though primarily a violinist, was clearly well acquainted with the potential, character and playing techniques of the other instruments of the string family, perhaps especially the cello, for which he wrote a large number of concertos and gave many expressive solos in other works. And as the teacher of all the string instruments at the Ospedale della Piet, that celebrated institution for foundlings in Venice, he will have had to instruct pupils on the cello. Moreover we know some of his concertos were written for the talented cellists among the all-female orchestra of the Piet, and he may well in fact, almost certainly have written sonatas for them also, but these works have disappeared. It is also clear that as he became better-known as a composer he received many commissions from cellists or their patrons, and it is unlikely that all the results were limited to the three manuscript collections of cello sonatas, dispersed between Paris, Naples and Germany, that are now known. The most important of these collections is a volume of six sonatas (numbered RV 47, 41, 43, 45, 40 and 46 in Peter Ryoms standard catalogue of Vivaldis works published in 1974). This is now in the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris. It is believed that this was a fair-copy made for Count Gergy, the French Ambassador in Venice, in about 1725 (it can be approximately dated by comparison with other manuscripts by the same copyist). Gergy was not
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himself a cellist, so he probably ordered the collection for aristocratic musician-friends in Paris. It was this manuscript that eventually served as the exemplar for the edition that appeared in Paris much later in about 1740 from the publisher Charles-Nicholas Le Clerc which is often (though erroneously) termed Vivaldis opus 14. Starting in the late 1730s, there was a sudden vogue for the cello in Paris, and Le Clerc capitalized on this enthusiasm by issuing at least 26 volumes of cello sonatas up to 1750. Apart from the Bibliothque Nationale collection, three sonatas (RV 39, 44 and 47) are found in a manuscript in the library of Naples Conservatoire that seems to date from the early 1730s. These are the only copies that have tempo-markings added Vivaldis own hand. It has been speculated that these sonatas were copied for a Count Maddaloni who was an amateur cellist: Leonardo Leo wrote six cello concertos for him, and Pergolesi a sonata. The third collection contains three sonatas (RV 42, 44 and 46) and reposes in Unterfranken, Germany, in the library of the Counts of Schnborn-Wiesentheid. It is a reasonable assumption that these were collected by the enthusiastic amateur cellist Count Rudolf Franz Erwein von Schnborn (1677-1754) who had studied the cello in Rome in the 1690s and who also acquired several of Vivaldis cello concertos. The collection however appears to date from two different periods: RV 42 and 46 seem to have been acquired in about 1726, while RV 44, which was definitely copied in Rome, could have been brought to the Count by his sons, who visited that city in 1731. For completeness sake, we should mention that in addition, there was a tenth Sonata in D minor, and catalogued by Ryom as RV 38 which was advertised in 1766 by the Leipzig firm of Breitkopf, but this work is now lost: only an incipit survives. (According to legend, the manuscript was placed too close to an open fire and burned.) There is also a mysterious Sonata da Camera in A major which Ryom placed doubtfully in his catalogue as RV Anh. 1, but the majority opinion is that this anonymous manuscript work, posthumously attributed to Vivaldi, is not in fact by him and may not even be intended to be played on a cello. Of the eleven sonatas of which we are aware, therefore, one is probably spurious and one is lost, leaving the canonic nine of which only three (RV 44, 46 and 47) are found in more than one manuscript source. Even so, scholars have theorized that certain of the sonatas (most probably RV 40, 42 and 43) were not original compositions for cello but are rather pasticcios, arranged and assembled from various other Vivaldi works. As this account suggests, the nine extant Sonatas are in no sense a group; and even the six published by Le Clerc in Paris, though numbered I to VI in his edition, were probably not intended by Vivaldi to form a sequence. But they do all appear to date from the same general period (the 1720s), and all ten have the same form that is to say, the four-movement, slow-fastslow-fast design of the Baroque church sonata, the Sonata da chiesa. Nevertheless the dance-like character of many of the quicker movements (the Wiesentheid sonatas bear actual dance-designations on the movements in question, though these do not appear in the Paris manuscript and edition of RV 46) are more reminiscent of the Sonata da camera or chamber sonata, and these dance-movements are very varied in character. In these respects the cello sonatas closely resemble Vivaldis twelve so-called Manchester violin sonatas, which also date from the mid-1720s. In each sonata, every movement is in binary form, with two repeated sections. The third movements are frequently contrasted with the others by being placed in a different key. It is very clear, from all the sonatas, that Vivaldi was able to exploit the versatility of the cello in his writing for it. His demands on the player include string-crossing figures, wide leaps, flamboyant scale passages and broken chords. Being both a melody instrument able to carry a strong and wide-ranging line, and a bass instrument that could double or ornament a bass line, the cello offered him unique opportunities for combining both functions in a single part. So he requires it to negotiate high and low registers, and the transition between them, with great mobility, and is able to suggest a quality of interior monologue in which the cello answers and responds to itself in different parts of the tonal spectrum. But over and above all this, Vivaldi seems to write for the cello with especial sympathy and identification: the instruments low register and plangent tone give the sonatas have a gravity and expressive pathos seldom found to such an extent in his violin works. Thus it is typically in the first and third movements of these sonatas that we find thoughtful, contemplative and sometimes melancholic music, full of expressive nuance, almost unique in Vivaldis output. This aspect is especially strong in the minor-key sonatas RV 40, 42, 43 and 44, and their faster movements, though much livelier and sometimes calling for considerable bravura, seem to share the generally thoughtful mood. In contrast to the minor-key works, a remarkable aspect of the sonatas as a group is the presence of no less than three in the key of B flat major. This is a particularly rich and mellow-toned key for the cello, and it engenders relaxed, inventive works of serene mastery. Here the fast movements tend to be dance-like, sometimes with rustic and jocular undertones, and sometimes with quirky, asymmetrical phrasing, while the slow movements are calmly melodic in conception. Copyright 2007 Malcolm MacDonald

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Jaap ter Linden

As one of the first early music specialists, Jaap ter Linden witnessed the very beginnings of many of the oldest and finest baroque ensembles as co-founder of Musica da Camera and principal cellist of Musica Antiqua Kln, The English Concert and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. From these auspicious beginnings, he moved further into the spotlight, either playing solo concerts and intimate ensemble repertoire with the worlds finest interpreters or at the helm of an orchestra as conductor. He founded and directs the Mozart Akademie (with which he has recorded the complete Mozart symphonies) and is a regular guest director and soloist with the Arion Ensemble (Canada). He has led many period instrument orchestras such as the San Francisco Philharmonia Baroque, Portland Baroque and Amsterdam Bachsoloists and has lent his expertise to modern ensembles such as the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. His extensive discography as player and conductor boasts many awardwinning recordings for labels such as Harmonia Mundi, Archiv, ECM, Deutsche Grammophon and more recently Brilliant Classics. In 2006, Jaap released his second recording of the Bach Cello Suites. Most recently, Jaap has dived into the world of opera, conducting Purcells King Arthur with the Stdtische Bhne Mnster and Glucks Iphignie en Aulide with the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. 2007 by Moens Artists

Lars Ulrik Mortensen

Lars Ulrik Mortensen (born 1955) studied at The Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen (harpsichord with Karen Englund, figured bass with Jesper Bje Christensen) and with Trevor Pinnock in London. From 1988 to 1990 he was harpsi- chordist with London Baroque and until 1993 with Collegium Musicum 90 (leader: Simon Standage). He now works extensively as a soloist and chamber-musician in Europe, the United States, Mexico, South America, Japan and Australia, performing regularly with distinguished colleagues like Emma Kirkby, John Holloway and Jaap ter Linden. Between 1996 and 1999 Lars Ulrik Mortensen was professor for harpsichord and performance practice at the Hochschule fr Musik in Munich, and he now teaches at numerous Early Music-courses throughout the world. Until recently, Lars Ulrik Mortensen was also active as a conductor for modern orchestras in Sweden and Denmark, where especially his activities at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen - a.o. Kunzens Holger Danske in 2000 and Mozarts Marriage of Figaro in 2003 - met with great critical acclaim. In the future, however, he wants to concentrate on work with period instrument ensembles. Since 1999, he has been artistic director of the Danish Baroque orchestra Concerto Copenhagen (CoCo), and in 2004 he succeeded Roy Goodman as musical director of the European Union Baroque Orchestra (EUBO). For the period 2006-07, his busy schedule with CoCo will include performances of Mozarts Clemenza di Tito, Monteverdis L incoronazione di Poppea at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, as well as tours in Holland, Germany, Austria and Japan. Lars Ulrik Mortensen has recorded extensively for numerous labels including DGG-Archive, EMI and Kontrapunkt, and his recording of Bachs Goldberg Variations was awarded the French Diapason dOr. A series of Buxtehude-recordings from the 1990s for the Danish Dacapo-label has met with universal critical acclaim. The first complete recording of Buxtehudes chamber music with John Holloway and Jaap ter Linden received the Danish Grammy-award for best classical recording of the year, another Grammy was awarded a CD with Buxtehudes cantatas with Emma Kirkby, and Lars Ulrik Mortensen became Danish Musician of the Year 2000 for his three CDs with harpsichord music by Buxtehude. These recordings also received the Cannes Classical Award 2001. Furthermore, a series of recordings with John Holloway and Aloysia Assenbaum of violin-sonatas by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber were released on the prestigious ECM-label. Directing Concerto Copenhagen, Mortensen has recorded the complete harpsichord concertos by J.S.Bach for CPO, which has received lavish praise in the international press, and 2004 also saw the release of recordings of Haydn piano concertos (with soloist Ronald Brautigam) on BIS as well as symphonies by the Danish composers J.E.Hartmann, Kunzen and Gerson on CPO. Lars Ulrik Mortensen has received a number of prizes and distinctions, among them the Danish Music Critics Award in 1984, and in 2007 he received Denmarks most prestigious music award, The Lonie Sonning Music Prize.

Judith-Maria Becker
Judith-Maria Becker (*1975) initially studied Modern Cello in Luebeck, Germany. During her studies she was en108

gaged at the Hamburg State Opera for four years and was famous for her extraordinary sight-reading. At this point of her life she decided to become a baroque cellist. Her studies started in 2001 at The Royal Conservatorium in The Hague with Jaap ter Linden as her teacher and she achieved a Bachelor and Master Degree. Judith-Maria is a frequently asked musician and the whole of Europe is her scene: She is participating in various festivals such as Oude Muziek Festival Utrecht, Trigonale, Austria, Potsdam Sanssouci Festival, Innsbruck and Barcelona, among others. Judith-Maria is a sought-after ensemble musician and Accordone and the Ensemble Aurora are only two of those she is performing with. She was also engaged as soloist by the polish Arte dei Suonatori. At the Johann-Heinrich-Schmeltzer Competition in Melk, Austria she won a prize with the ensemble Quintus. Furthermore Judith-Maria was one of the founding members of the Holland Baroque Society. Apart from her work as a concert musician she has been participating in several recordings with the labels PentaTone, Alpha and Cypres. Whenever she is not playing the cello she enjoys her family life in Sweden with her husband and son.

CD 47 Antonio Vivaldi (16781741) SONATAS and TRIOS for FLUTE and CONTINUO
Vivaldi and the flute sonata Antonio Vivaldi made a significant contribution to the development of flute repertoire in the first half of the 18th century, both within his home city of Venice and disseminated across Europe, even though the role he played has not always been fully appreciated. Yet Vivaldi composed much original music for the recorder and the transverse flute. He was at the core of an intense exchange of adaptations and personal loans, of transcriptions by other authors, according to a common practice which produced a number of collections of choice pieces by the greatest Authors fitted to the German [transverse] Flute. A few compositions for flute have survived as unsigned manuscripts but carrying his name, although some musicologists have debated their authenticity. Nonetheless, these works are associated with original productions, or at least belong to Vivaldis stylistic influence. This CD contains a collection of works for flute and thorough bass, and two flutes and thorough bass, catalogued among Vivaldian works according to the latest scholarly research. According to the ancient practice of the ricercata the free execution of a prelude by the soloist before the actual beginning of the piece the sonatas RV 48 and 51 both open with a prelude, respectively extracted from a composition by the Italian violinist Nicola Matteis, active in England between the 17th and 18th centuries, and from a prelude of the theorbo-player Sylvius Leopold Weiss (RV 51). In RV 51, which belongs with other original works of Vivaldi (such as the Sonata RV 27 for violin, edited as op.2 no.1 in 1709), a recitative is added (originally for voice, from the Serenata a tre RV 690) as an introduction to the second half of this sonata, which in its diffuse cantabilit approaches the vocal style of the Cantata. A recording of Spring from The Four Seasons is at the centre of the CD. This concerto is the first of the famous Four Seasons, which enjoyed extraordinary fame during Vivaldis life. The arrangement, testifying to the persistent success of Vivaldis concerto, made almost into a myth just a few decades after his death, is due to the intelligent curiosity and the refined musical sensitivity of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who published it in 1775, thus proving his talent for translating the language of the violin into idiomatic music for solo flute. The two sonatas for two flutes and thorough bass (RV 80, RV 800), in tripartite concert form, are examples of a genre to which Vivaldi was particularly devoted between 1728 and 1730, a period during which there were documented contacts between the Venetian composer and Duke Carl Ludwig Friedrich von Mecklenburg-Strelitz, an enthusiastic flute amateur, who was at the time visiting Venice. The development of the thorough bass is carried on the thread of the amazing ability of the performers to improvise. The continuo on this recording consists of an Italian harpsichord and a chest organ, in a variety of combined and alternate roles, to guarantee a wide range of rich, deep sounds, where the flute, alone or in a pair, may stand out from the melody or perfectly merge with it. Donato Gallo, University of Padua Translation: Roberta Bruni Bibliography: Castellani Marcello, Introduzione, a Antonio Vivaldi, Quattro sonate, Firenze, SPES, 1986 Eller Rudolf, Vier Briefe Antonio Vivaldis, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani, X, 1989, pp. 5-23.
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Fanna Antonio, Talbot Michael, eds., Vivaldi. Vero e falso, Firenze, Olschki, 1992 Fertonani Cesare, La musica strumentale di Antonio Vivaldi, Firenze, Olschki, 1998 Ryom Peter, Verzeichnis der Werke Antonio Vivaldis: kleine Ausgabe, Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag fr Musik, 1977, Antonio Vivaldi: thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke (RV) Wiesbaden, Breitkopf & Hrtel, 2007 Sardelli Federico Maria, La musica per flauto di Antonio Vivaldi, Firenze, Olschki, 2001 Talbot Michael, Vivaldi, London, Dent, 1978 (New York, Schirmer, 19933); trad. ital., Torino, EDT, 1978

CD 49 & 50 Antonio Vivaldi (16781741) Il Cimento dellArmonia e dellInventione

The enormous present popularity of Antonio Vivaldi is quite a recent phenomenon. During his lifetime (1678-1741) his music was very well-known in many European countries, partly due to publications in Amsterdam, at the time the European capital of music printing. Johann Sebastian Bach was heavily influenced by Vivaldis concertos and transcribed some of them for organ. The decline of Vivaldis fame started in the classical period and continued during the romantic era. Baroque music in general and Vivaldi in particular, as far as people knew it, was vilified as being too impersonal and unemotional. This perception changed during the 20th century, after romanticism had been abandoned in favour of a more objective approach to music. As a consequence, Baroque music was hailed for its clarity, transparency and lack of emotional abundance. The heydays of modernism and the strive for objectivity (the first two decades after World War II) were also the ideal period for the (re)introduction of Baroque music. Its playability by advanced amateurs and its relative simplicity and predictability, compared to the complexity of great romantic compositions, rescued Vivaldis concertos from oblivion and gave them a popularity previously only granted to Mozart and Beethoven. A new change occurred during the last four decades. The performance style evolved from an inclination towards great objectivity to an inclination towards greater freedom in details, strong focus on variety of orchestral sound and opportunities for ornamentation. IL Cimento dellArmonia e dellInvenzione (The battle between harmony and imagination), a cycle of twelve violin concertos, was first published in Amsterdam in 1725. In those days publishing compositions in groups was common practice. Of these twelve concertos most attention went to the four known together as The Four Seasons. They owe their present popularity mainly to their programmatic character and therefore to their association with nineteenth-century so called programme music, i.e. music with an explicit content. Each of the four concertos is preceded by a sonnet describing events typical for each season. In Spring flowers start to grow and birds sing their songs. In Summer the heat is overwhelming and a small storm rises. In Autumn hunters set out with horns, guns and dogs. Winter is the season of ice. With the knowledge of rhetoric in music (in Vivaldis time common knowledge) it was easy to connect the content of the text with the gestures in the music. During the early eighteenth-century this kind of writing was not unusual, certainly not in France, where art was regarded as an imitation of nature. The text does not speak about personal, subjective emotions in relation to the seasons. Around 1720 music was not intended as a romantic individual reflection on the subject, but as a representation of general feelings (or feelings people considered to be universal). Only with Beethoven subjectivity of the romantic kind enters in music when he described his Sixth symphony, Pastorale, as to express more emotion than painting it. Nevertheless Vivaldis concertos are highly personal and expressive. This results from the way Vivaldi builds his melodies and his forms. In Vivaldis lifetime the concerto was rather a new form for which a standard was not yet available. Everything being more or less standardized to Mozart and Beethoven, it had been virtual virgin territory to Vivaldi and his contemporaries. With his concertos Vivaldi introduced some rules about the order of the individual elements: sections for orchestra on its own, for orchestra and soloist, sections with the main subject, sections with material based on this theme. Besides, the violin went through a period of great change: building violins became the work of highly skilled craftsmen and the scope for players was enlarged enormously. Vivaldi, himself an excellent violinist, followed these events with great interest, and integrated the innovations in his compositions. Never before was virtuosity exposed to such a great extent in a written score. Vivaldi wrote his music for the new rising class of the bourgeoisie who on the one hand wanted rather easy music to play at home and on the other hand virtuosic compositions to listen to in the amusement place for the new classes, the concert hall. Especially in France the concert industry came into full swing and compositions for this kind of entertainment were in great demand.
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Less well known, but certainly not less interesting are the other eight concertos belonging to Il Cimento dellArmonia e dellInvenzione. The nicknames for some of them originate from the composer, and with the knowledge of the style of Vivaldis time, they are understandable. La Tempesta di Mare (one of the two Vivaldi concertos with this name, the other is opus 10 no. 1 for flute) exploits the common feature of storm, inside and outside a person. The sections for the entire orchestra illustrate the violence of nature. La caccia, concerto no. 10, is a less clear example. The concerto does not contain the conventional motives for the horns (as several Haydn symphonies do), but the big jumps in the final movement evoke the horn and the hunt. Still less clear is Il Piacere (the enjoyment). Probably the name does not refer to some details, but to the general mood. The concertos had a long history before they were published. Vivaldi probably composed La caccia between 17181720 in order to please the local aristocratic ruler in Mantua. The concerto opus 8 no.7 is based on material from previous concertos, also written for an aristocratic ruler (in Dresden) and just as no.10 a musical representation of the hunt. The concertos in turn were to be exploited in later works. The first bars of the Spring concerto would return in the opera Dorilla in tempo which Vivaldi wrote for Venice in 1726. The general title for the twelve concertos is in a sense misleading. Vivaldi, as one might expect, explores the battle between beauty and form. For most of Vivaldis contemporaries there was no battle but a harmonious collaboration. The concertos instantly achieved great fame and copies of the first edition circulated through the whole of Europe. One copy was in the possession of Cardinal Ottoboni in Venice who organized big ceremonies in which music played a major part and who collaborated with composers like Corelli, Caldara and Vitali. Vivaldi was proud of his concertos and had the first six of the twelve printed in a special edition for the French king with (very uncommon at the time) a portrait of the composer. Vivaldi regarded the concertos as a big improvement in his development a judgment shared by his contemporaries. Of the earlier concertos hardly any edition survived, by contrast of opus 8 rather a lot. No matter how interesting the other eight concertos are, it is likely that Vivaldi was primarily interested in getting the Four Seasons published. Those four are the only with a written explanation and the most combative in their structure. For this reason some people even suggested the Four Seasons might be intended as theatre music. The eight other ones are less capricious and present soloist and orchestra less as fighters. But the richness in ideas and fascination they exert on musicians and listeners alike is just as great. A complete recording of opus 8 is a well-deserved homage to a great composer. Emanuel Overbeeke

Enrico Casazza
Enrico Casazza was born Adria (Italy) in 1965. He graduated in his hometown with Andrea Vio. He then studied with Carlo Chiarappa, Pavel Vernikov, Dino Asciolla, Franco Gulli and Giuliano Carmignola. In 1985 he won the International Competition in Stresa and the Violin Competition in Cento. Since then he started a brilliant career that allowed him to perform as soloist or as leading member of widely renown baroque ensembles in the most important concert halls worldwide, altogether with musicians such as Fabio Biondi, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Christopher Hogwood, Ottavio Dantone, Andreas Scholl, Alan Curtis. He is leader and conductor since its foundation of the ensemble La Magnifica Comunit. He recorded for EMI-Virgin, Nave-Opus 111, Denon, Arts, Brilliant and other record companies.

La Magnifica Comunit
The instrumental baroque ensemble La Magnifica Comunit was founded in 1990. The members of the ensemble are deeply convinced of the importance of philological and stylistical research in order to understand the music of bygone ages. The ensemble perfected their studies at prestigious institutions like the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Accademia Musicale Pescarese, Accademia Chigiana di Siena, Scuola di Musica Fiesole, Accademia Musicale di Villecroze. Primarius and leader of the ensemble is Enrico Casazza. La Magnifica Comunita perform in different formations, ranging from trio to chamber orchestra, also collaborating with choir. The ensemble gave numerous concerts in Italy and other European countries, among which a successful debut in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, to high critical and public acclaim.
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