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Early Keyboard Extravaganza

Early Keyboard Extravaganza

Tuesday August 20 at 7:30 pm
Trinity Episcopal Church | $22-$38

Program Notes

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), a direct contemporary of Bach and Handel, is probably best remembered today as the towering music theorist of the early 18th century. But during his life Rameau was esteemed as France’s premiere opera composer and second only to François Couperin at the harpsichord. Very little is known of Rameau’s early life except that he came from a musical family in Dijon, traveled for a time in Italy, and had his first professional jobs as an organist (following his father’s example). Better documented is his career after 1722, when he settled in Paris, brought forth his profoundly influential Treatise on Harmony, and began working as a theater composer. Success in opera followed a few years later, though Rameau continued to work in smaller, private genres. He published two significant volumes of harpsichord music in 1724 and 1728. Rameau’s keyboard works often refer directly to the world around him: people he knew, things he saw, places he visited.

Tonight’s program opens with two movements from Rameau’s third collection of Pièces de clavecin en concerts. Written in 1726, these are chamber works for “clavecin en concerts” – in other words, keyboard pieces situated within ensemble settings. Rameau specified the instrumentation for “flute or violin, plus viola or second violin.” A bass viol (violone) is often added to enrich the lowest register and help provide a sonic background for the harpsichord. That Rameau was a bit overly fixated on the question of scoring and instrumental balance is confirmed by the extensive notes he provided, by way of introduction, for all the performers. La Lapoplinière and Tambourin are the first and last movements, respectively, in the set. La Lapoplinière is a simple yet charming binary form built on arpeggios. Rameau goes to some length to showcase the various textures possible from this ensemble. Tambourin is more animated and played at a faster clip. Both titles are not entirely self-evident, though the latter clearly ties into the foot-stomping, rustic folksong appeal.

When Elisabeth Jacquet (1665-1729) was just thirteen, she was described by a contemporary as “the marvel of our century.” Born into a Parisian family of musicians, she had already earned a reputation in the highest court circles as performer, composer, and improviser. Indeed, her talent was rewarded by the patronage of Louis XIV, who not only encouraged her burgeoning career but also supported Jacquet financially. Her first marriage to court clerk Anton La Rue ended in failure – happily for Elisabeth, for La Rue discouraged her compositional activity and generally restricted her freedom. She later remarried organist Marin de La Guerre and renewed her performing career. Now known as Jacquet de la Guerre, Elisabeth organized and performed a series of recitals held in her home; these were, by all accounts, eagerly anticipated and well received.

Jacquet de la Guerre composed works in all the standard genres of the time, including large-scale ballets and operas. Most of her productions and publications were the first ever by a woman in France. The musical style shows a great debt to previous masters, such as the unmeasured preludes in the manner of Louis Couperin and the more modern ornamented style of François Couperin. In 1708 her collection of Biblical cantatas appeared, all based on texts by poet Andre de la Motte. From the fifth cantata, centering on the besieged Susanna (Daniel Ch. 13), the sumptuous da capo aria “Indiscrète Jeunesse” offers an obvious highlight. The spare accompaniment, featuring only viola da gamba and harpsichord, allows Susanna’s soprano line to ring through with the purity of her feelings.


Indiscrète Jeunesse,
Qui suivez les Amours;
Ne croyez pas que la vieillesse,
Contre eux vous garde aucun secours.
Celui qu’Amour entraîne,
Dans son jeune printemps,
Traîne toujours sa chaîne
Jusqu’à ses dernier ans.

Indiscreet youth,
Which follows love,
Do not believe that old age
Protects you from desire.
He whom love leads
In the youthful springtime,
Forever drags his chain
Until his old age.


Around the same time, de la Guerre published a collection of sonatas for harpsichord with obbligato violin part (1706), an important contribution to a new genre that would eventually become the classical violin sonata. The A-Minor Sonata includes an imitative slow section followed by a vigorous Presto in triple meter. De la Guerre shows herself completely at ease in chamber music, enough to break the mold and insert a last-minute Adagio – barely three measures long – to close the sonata with a touch of poignancy.

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) was a contemporary of Monteverdi and initially schooled by several masters of the Italian madrigal. Born into a prestigious family in Ferrara, his most important work was done in Rome, though he also served as court organist to the powerful Medici clan in Florence. During his lifetime Frescobaldi received a great deal of attention from musicians and well-to-do patrons both in Italy and abroad for his keyboard ability. A well-known contemporary once stated that “all his knowledge is at the ends of his fingertips” – which could be intended either as praise for Frescobaldi’s dazzling technique or a jab at his lack of intellectual rigor.

After writing very little liturgical music, Frescobaldi produced a massive collection in 1635 called Fiori musicali (Musical Flowers). At the time he served as organist at St Peters Basilica under Pope Urban VIII. Fiori musicali contains three complete organ masses: solo organ works intended to accompany every part of the Catholic mass, including preludes, Kyries, Graduals, and more. Each mass closes with a lavish canzona after Communion. General speaking, the canzona form emerged from earlier vocal traditions (the word derives from the French chanson or “song”), but it quickly became a significant predecessor of both the fugue and instrumental sonatas. As demonstrated by Frescobaldi, a canzona was a variation form, highly sectional, and noted for continuous three- and four-part counterpoint.

As the most prolific song composer of all time, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) would inevitably have works centering on dozens of topics: love, of course, trees, nostalgia, the night. Water became a favorite companion. Auf dem Strom (On the Stream) was written for a specific occasion, which helps explain its unique scoring for voice, horn, and piano. On March 26, 1828 Schubert hosted the single concert during his lifetime that included only his music. He had secured the hall of the Vienna Philharmonic Society and engaged a famous horn player, Josef Lewy, and high tenor, Ludwig Titze. Moreover, the original date of the concert was postponed in order to coincide with the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death. The text of the song, penned by Rellstab, had been offered to Beethoven to set, though the latter had not lived long enough to achieve that end. Schubert enjoys the opportunity to pay homage to the deceased master both in general style and in direct quotations from Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. Though Schubert was a pall bearer at Beethoven’s funeral, the song offers a more poignant leave-taking than could be expressed just in words.

The expansive tone is established immediately by virtue of a poignant piano-horn prologue. When the tenor voice enters, it builds off the lyric energy set out by the horn. Schubert consistently intensifies darker tonal implications in connection with the water (storm, waves), as if the water itself were to blame for causing this enforced separation between the narrator and his beloved. This is particularly clear in the second stanza. The “unsympathetic” waves depicted in throbbing C-sharp minor chords push the hero away from shore and deeper into reverie. Only when he thinks about the fields “where once I discovered her” does the music recover its brighter tone. These quicksilver changes of mood reveal Schubert’s unrivaled gift for matching music to text.

Works like Auf dem Strom reinforce the powerful symbolism of the horn as connoting distance and romantic yearning. Both of those sentiments stand behind the central message of Rellstab’s poem, the longing that tugs the hero’s emotions when separated from the beloved, and how to cope when that love is lost forever. It is developed across four stanzas before being stated directly and concisely at the start of the fifth:

Kann des Auges sehnend Schweifen
Keine Ufer mehr ergreifen,
Nun so schau ich zu den Sternen
Auf in jenen heil'gen Fernen!

If my longing eyes,
surveying the shore,
can no longer glimpse it,
then I will gaze up to the stars,
into that sacred distance!


INTERMISSION


Despite all that she accomplished, Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) is almost completely unknown today, certainly outside her native France. At a time and place in which women’s professional roles were extremely limited, Farrenc ascended to the highest echelons of Parisian musical society. She was blessed with both incredible talent and supportive parents. As a piano prodigy, she was allowed to study with two veritable titans of the concert world: Ignaz Moscheles and Jan Nepomuk Hummel. Composition lessons followed privately with Anton Reicha; females were still not allowed at certain classes in the Paris Conservatory. But such was her stature that Louise eventually became full professor at the Conservatory in 1842 – the only woman to hold that position until 1906. She was also a significant force in reviving older keyboard music well before any others were seriously undertaking such projects.

As one would expect, the piano dominates Farrenc’s output. Of some 50 published works, nearly 40 are for solo piano or chamber music with piano. In this latter category are two Piano Quintets written 1839-1840. Both enjoyed wide popularity during her lifetime but then faded into obscurity. We hear the expansive first movement from her Piano Quintet No. 1 in A Minor. The triple meter rhythm immediately provides an engaging mood, and it is clear Farrenc knew the chamber music of Felix Mendelssohn. She deftly combines a spirited A-minor first theme with a pleading second idea in C major. Where she pushes beyond expectation is in the virtuosic extension of that second theme, which swells the form to larger proportions. Judged by only a single example, Farrenc shows a powerful creative personality. Her quintets are probably the best in the genre among French composers until Franck and Fauré a half century later.

Following early posts in his native Denmark, Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) became organist at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, where he remained for the last 40 years of his life. It was to meet and hear Buxtehude in Lübeck that the young J. S. Bach made his famous pilgrimage from Arnstadt – over 400 km on foot, so the story goes. Apart from some sacred vocal music, Buxtehude is best known today for his many organ compositions.

The Ciacona in E Minor BuxWV 160 is one of the finest organ works from the 17th century based on an ostinato, or repeated bass motif. In this case, Buxtehude builds the ostinato upon a descending four-note pattern, E–D–C–B. This descending tetrachord is termed the “lament bass” from its use in several superlative lament arias (think of Dido’s lament as the archetype). Buxtehude presents 31 statements of the ostinato, mainly in the pedal, against varying melodic activity in the manuals. He proceeds through numerous rhythmic patterns, and the gradual crescendo of rhythmic intensity is appealingly counter-balanced by passages senza pedale, where the thematic bass drops away and only the tonal skeleton remains. In some of the specific melodic/ rhythmic patterns, one may hear harbingers of Bach’s famous D-minor chaconne for solo violin, though the harmonic structure is more clearly redolent of the contemporaneous Dido and Aeneas. The dissonance is of a type usually reserved for theatrical music, a genre in which the accompanying text demanded greater freedom in dissonance treatment.

Rather than use repeat signs, Buxtehude has written out paired variations that are nearly always identical (e.g., 1-2, 3-4, 5-6…). After the first ten variations, the pairing breaks down into a more spontaneous, freely composed interlude (vars. 11-15). Pairing begins again at variation 16, played without pedal, and at variation 20 Buxtehude fills out the ostinato lament bass with chromatic passing tones. The next structural marker comes at variation 26, as the most active pedal line in the piece strides in after having been silent for four variations. From here Buxtehude builds to his climactic finish. In a piece with very rigid local structure and ornamental options limited by stylistic convention, one notes in this Ciacona the way rhythmic crescendo and textural variety are relied upon to maintain dramatic interest.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries the concerto came to be a form of musical drama, pitting the soloist against the orchestra in a battle for control of the tonal unfolding. Audiences and composers preferred the tension between the one and the many rather than the Baroque tradition of concerto grosso, in which a small group of soloists – note the plural – periodically emerge from and recede back into the full orchestra. Although some composers, e.g. Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms, continued to create concertos for multiple soloists, these are certainly the exception to the rule. Ensemble concertos were essentially a thing of the past by the time Mozart died.

For Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), composing concertos between roughly 1720 and 1750, all options were still on the table. Bach wrote numerous concertos for one, two, three, and even more soloists, usually harpsichordists. BWV 1061, for two harpsichords and string orchestra, ranks among the more important of his fourteen works in the genre of keyboard concerto. Beginning perhaps in Weimar in 1708 but taking deeper root during his tenures in Köthen (1717-1723) and Leipzig (1723-1750), Bach absorbed the rising influence of the Italian instrumental concerto style and infused it with what mattered most to him: polyphony, motivic elaboration and technical brilliance. BWV 1061 may have been written as early as 1730 – making it one of Bach’s first keyboard concertos – and is one of the very few that is not an arrangement of material either used in or intended for some other composition.

In the opening movement the solo parts mimic each other quite often, though Bach usually takes advantage of the added solo part to write close harmony. Longer solo passages are given to one keyboard at a time in a kind of “anything you can do…” imitation. Slow movements of large concertos nearly always feature a reduced texture, and the case of BWV 1061 is no exception. Bach goes a step further, however, and writes a poignant Adagio for just the two harpsichords. For the finale one might have guessed where Bach’s penchant would lead him: a massive fugue and fantasia with lengthy solo episodes and all manner of figuration and polyphony.

© Jason Stell, 2024

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