American Bach Soloists

Antonio Vivaldi
In furore iustissimae irae

In 1703, Vivaldi was appointed maestro di violino at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, one of four Venetian institutions devoted to the care of orphans and which offered musical education for those girls among them who showed talent. Twice during his tenure at the Pietà (1713-17 and 1737-39), Vivaldi acted as interim maestro di coro, a post which required him to provide sacred music for the chorus at the Ospedale. Though Vivaldi’s reputation would have earned him outside commissions for sacred vocal music, the majority of his motets were undoubtedly composed for performance at the Ospedale during High Mass or Vespers. Sadly, of Vivaldi’s numerous motets (the Ospedale required two motets each month), only twelve have survived in complete form. The poetic structure of these works closely resembles that of the eighteenth-century secular solo cantata; Vivaldi’s preferred scheme consists of two da capo arias — connected by a brief recitative passage — and a final “Alleluia.” The expressive text of In furore provides ample opportunity for vocal bravura, exploiting the imageries of wrath and entreaty, fury and tears, which inform even the closing C-minor “Alleluia.”

Johann Sebastian Bach
Concerto in D Minor for Harpsichord and Orchestra

While, for a long time scholars assigned most of Bach’s chamber and ensemble music to the Cöthen years (1717 to 1723), it now seems that only the smaller part of the extant, or surviving instrumental ensemble music belongs to that period, while the greater part was composed at Leipzig, and principally for the Collegium Musicum which Bach directed from 1729 to the early 1740s. Bach’s concertos for harpsichord were frequently performed as part of the concerts given by the Collegium, an assembly of professionals and advanced students, and often in the popular venue of Zimmermann’s coffee house. But the “invention” of the harpsichord concerto dates back to the fifth Brandenburg Concerto, probably composed sometime between 1719 and 1721, and presented in 1721 to the Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, who lived in Berlin.

The Cöthen court’s well-documented 1719 acquisition of a large harpsichord from the Berlin instrument builder Michael Mietke might well have accounted for Bach’s ground-breaking experiment. That particular instrument was of a scale and sonority that was not previously familiar to Bach. Suitably impressed by its capabilities, Bach decided to incorporate the instrument within the group of ‘concertists’ or soloists of a concerto that also included the transverse flute, a very new instrument in German orchestras at the time. The appearance of the flute was novel enough, but imagine what the court audience must have thought when the harpsichordist—previously relegated to playing chords as a continuo player—began to play solo lines. Those parts would have been essentially inaudible when played on previous incarnations of the harpsichord, but the new Mietke instrument was full-bodied and provided the opportunity for Bach to compose extended and dazzling passages for the harpsichord alone, still cutting through the accompaniment of the ripieno string players. It was only a matter of time before Bach’s propensity for self-borrowing would inspire him to transcribe concertos originally for other obligato instruments to the harpsichord.

Bach’s first essays in emulating the Italian concerto took the form of keyboard transcriptions, or arrangements, of published concertos by Vivaldi and others. The transfer of the idiom from the orchestral originals to keyboard, whether organ or harpsichord, radically narrowed the range of contrast possible between the opposing sonorities, but it still afforded ample experience in manipulating the formal and technical devices of the Italians. Most important among these was the use of ritornello form as a structural principle. (In this type of form, a memorable block of music returns in various guises at strategic points in the piece as an audible musical marker, simultaneously establishing shape and coherence, through repetition, and generating considerable musical tension, by being recalled in various keys.) This principle later informs not only Bach’s grasp of the concerto proper, but virtually every genre in which he composed. Bach’s concerto transcriptions for keyboard arose during his employment as organist, and later Kapellmeister, at the ducal court of Weimar. Upon taking up duties as the Kapellmeister to the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, in 1717, Bach was expected to compose regularly for the court orchestra, and he transferred the concerto style back to its native, orchestral habitat, now in music of his own composition.

The Harpsichord Concerto in D minor almost certainly first appeared as a concerto for violin, composed at Cöthen, but transcribed about 15 years later at Leipzig. In fact, towards the end of the concerto’s first movement an extended passage makes use of a sort of “pedal point” – in this case, repeated octaves in the left hand – that suggest a highly idiomatic violin figuration. The second movement begins in a rather unusual way for Bach, but again in a manner that was often utilized by Vivaldi. All the strings – the “ripienists” or accompanying orchestral players – play an extended and rather angular melody in unison. Hence, the ritornello is a simple melodic line, but at its first repetition it immediately becomes the bass line above which the harpsichordist seems to improvise a descant of sorts that becomes more and more convoluted as the movement progresses to its end, a final statement of the melody/bass. The final movement, in a sprightly triple meter, again calls upon the harpsichordist to play figures that are idiomatic of writing for a violin.

Johann Sebastian Bach
Concerto in A Minor for Violin and Orchestra

Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, one of Bach’s patrons, was a Vivaldi enthusiast, collecting his publications and even going so far as to write his own concertos in that style. For him, Bach transcribed several of Vivaldi’s compositions, work that bore fruit in Cöthen when the influence had been fully absorbed. For Cöthen’s star violinist Johann Spiess, Bach wrote several concertos including this concerto in A minor. The soloist’s virtuosic turns, the quick movement from ritornello to solo episodes, the strong melodic profiles, as well as long melodic inventions over an ostinato bass are indebted to Vivaldi’s example. But we also find more complex phrasing and melodic elaborations in counterpoint as well as a different, more mobile harmonic sense that is clearly Bach’s response to the music of Vivaldi, known as the “red priest” due to his famously bright red hair. A lively gigue-like final movement uses as its theme a subject derived from the opening measures of the first movement, a device that Bach also used in his Concerto in E major for violin.

George Frideric Handel
Delirio amoroso

At the age of twenty-one, George Frideric Handel embarked on an expedition that would prove enjoyable, enlightening, profitable, and integral to his career. A Medici prince had invited Handel to visit Italy. He packed up his things in Hamburg and began his journey to Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice. Italy was the center of European music, and one of the most valuable traits of Italian music was the expressive style in which its composers wrote for the voice. Italian vocal writing was characterized by its qualities of suppleness, expansiveness, flexibility, and lyricism. Handel would quickly master the art, and Italian opera would become the bedrock of his career.

But in Rome, where he spent most of his time between 1706 and 1710, papal decrees had closed the public theatres. Opera was an unprofitable medium. The fach, or type of composition, that would provide him with the most opportunity to grow and to succeed as a composer was the Italian cantata. It was a popular genre, due in part to the constraints of the papal ban, and further supported by the patronage of foreign visitors and local aristocrats—even Church officials—who were eager to hear the considerable talent of Venetian singers put to good use, even if opera was out of the question. Performances of cantatas, which in some cases were actually operas in all ways except by name, were often presented in the “academies” held in the private theatres of discerning (and wealthy) patrons of the arts. These academies were the outgrowth of the scuole popular in Venice during the previous century.

One generous patron was the Marchese (later Prince) Francesco Maria Ruspoli, whose Roman palace and country estates were the venues for performances of Handel’s works. Handel had been engaged between 1707 and 1709 to compose a new secular cantata each week for performances every Sunday. But the Church scrutinized even these private productions. For example, in 1708 Ruspoli was commanded to replace a female singer with a castrato for the role of Mary Magdalene in a performance of Handel’s La Resurrezione.

Among the other patrons for whom Handel wrote cantatas were members of the Accademia dell’Arcadia, a literary society that welcomed Rome’s best musicians, and the cardinals Benedetto Pamphili and Pietro Ottoboni. Pamphili had some considerable talent as a poet and wrote several librettos that Handel would set to music, including Delirio amoroso (also known by the first line of its text, “Da quel giorno fatale”). This was probably the first major work that Handel composed while in Rome. Scored for soprano soloist, oboe, recorder, strings, and continuo, the cantata displays an extremely wide range of “operatic” devices, interesting shifts in perspective (the singer is first narrator, then the voice of Clori, and finally narrator again), a world of colors and emotions that rivals that found in Handel’s great Ode to St. Cecilia and Alexander’s Feast, and contains extremely difficult instrumental parts that demand virtuoso players. In fact, the leading violinist at the work’s premiere was a brilliant student of Arcangelo Corelli.

The opening sinfonia seems at first detached from the subject matter. Its seemingly sprightly nature, complicated by treacherously fast notes played by the whole ensemble, is positioned briefly against another apparently detached episode in the form of what sounds like the accompaniment to a recitative, but without a voice part. At the entrance of the soprano, as the first recitative takes shape, we realize that what we have heard were the conflicting emotions of the protagonist: just as Clori, distraught at the loss of her lover Tirsi, moves from one passion and emotion to another, in retrospect the opening sinfonia did the same. As the soprano now assumes the role of Clori, the first aria is a frenetic display of feverish love and torment. Even the first violinist is called upon to contribute (significantly) to the hysteria. The recitative that follows, extremely operatic in its range of expression, finds Clori at first determined to steal Tirsi from the flames of hell, then bewildered and lost in sorrow. The next aria, certainly the most beautiful of the work, features a violoncello obligato. The relatively low tessitura of the instrumental parts echoes perhaps the depth of Clori’s confusion and misery. As her inner discord begins to resolve, the recorder is introduced to lend a gentler tone, and at least some degree of peace and tranquility is found at Lethe, a source in the underworld of Greek mythology by which the dead forget their earthly past by drinking the water. More references are made to Greek mythology: Phlegethon is a river of fire in the underworld, and Acheron is a river which led to the entrance to the underworld. A marvelous Entrée sets the new tone, followed by a minuet in which we are told of a new world and newfound contentedness.

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