PROGRAM NOTES

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

“Paris Quartet” No. 1: Concerto in G Major, TWV 43:G1

Telemann’s “Paris Quartets” are among his most well-known and beloved works. They collectively refer to a set of 12 quartets for flute, violin, viola da gamba (or cello), and continuo, though this is a bit of a misnomer as the first six quartets, or Quadri, were written in Hamburg and predated Telemann’s 1737 Paris sojourn by seven years. However, they were already well known in Paris before Telemann’s visit, as they had been published there in a pirated edition by Charles-Nicolas Le Clerc in 1736.

These 1730 Quadri expertly blended French, Italian, and German musical styles into the so-called “mixed taste” that exemplified much of Telemann’s compositional output. The set begins with the Concerto in G Major, TWV 43:G1, which features a rhapsodic opening movement that sounds almost like the quasi-improvisatory preludes of so many French instrumental sonatas of the era. Its fast movements feature lively interplay between the flute and violin that blend German fugal elements with the pronounced virtuosity and rapid alternation of solo and tutti textures of the Italian concerto genre.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Adagio, from Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001

Fuga in G minor, BWV 1026

Though he is primarily known today as a keyboardist and the composer of such monumental choral masterworks as the St. Matthew Passion and B minor Mass, Bach was also a noted violinist in his day, having learned the instrument at a very young age from his professional violinist father, Johann Ambrosius Bach. According to a 1774 letter by Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel, his father “understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments [as] evidenced by his solos for the violin and for the violoncello without bass.” One remarkable feature of these Sei Solo a Violino senza Basso accompagnato (Six Solos for Violin without Bass accompaniment) is Bach’s masterful treatment of his signature Vollstimmigkeit or “all-embracing polyphony” (in the words of Bach’s friend and student Johann Friderich Agricola) on a four-stringed instrument that should not be capable of simultaneously articulating multiple lines of music.

The set of Six Violin Solos dates from around 1720, during Bach’s tenure as capellmeister in Cöthen. The Cöthen court under Bach’s patron, Prince Leopold, practiced Calvinism and concerted music was largely forbidden in church. This gave Bach considerable time and flexibility to write secular instrumental music and led to the genesis of such beloved works as the Six Brandenburg Concertos, Six Cello Suites, and the Six Violin Solos. The first of these, the Sonata in G Minor, BWV 1001, opens with an imposing and impassioned Adagio full of rich four-voiced chords connected by fleet-fingered ornamental passagework.

In place of the Fugue that usually follows as its second movement, we have elected to perform the seldom-heard Fuga in G Minor, BWV 1026, for violin and continuo. Dating from around 1712, the authorship of this single-movement work (or fragment) had long been disputed until it was authenticated in 2005 by the noted musicologist Peter Wollny, making it one of Bach’s earliest surviving pieces of chamber music. Its extraordinary virtuosity and prodigious application of double and triple stops (playing two and three strings at once) offer a tantalizing preview of the musical possibilities soon to come in the Six Violin Solos.

Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

Trio Sonata in C Minor, Op. 2 No. 4, BuxWV 262

Dieterich Buxtehude was a Danish-German composer and organist who figured prominently in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. As a young composer just starting his career, the 20-year-old Bach took a leave of absence from his church duties in Arnstadt and made a 250-mile pilgrimage to Lübeck to meet his musical idol, Buxtehude. In his desire to “comprehend one thing or another about his art”, Bach overstayed his leave by about four months, earning him a censure from the church authorities in Arnstadt upon his return. As music director at St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck, Buxtehude presented immensely popular series of Abendmusiken concerts around Advent each year. Bach very likely heard and may have even performed on some of these concerts, which would have featured vocal and instrumental chamber works like this trio sonata.

Buxtehude was a major proponent of the Stylus Phantasticus in his keyboard and instrumental writing. As described by the 17th century German polymath Athanasius Kircher, this “fantastical style” was “the most free and unrestrained manner of composing, singing and playing that one can imagine,” in which “all kinds of otherwise unusual progressions, hidden ornaments, ingenious turns and embellishments are brought forth…with the intent to please, to overtake and to astonish.” This shock-and-awe approach to composing is very much found in the “unrestrained character” of Buxtehude’s trio sonatas, with its many contrasting sections flowing seamlessly from one tempo and character to another, as if the piece were being made up on the spot.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Sonata in E minor for Violin and Continuo, BWV 1023

The Sonata in E minor, BWV 1023, is a striking work distinguished in part by its expansive toccata-like opening reminiscent of Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin. Over a long E held over 30 bars by the viola da gamba, the solo violin embarks on a harmonic journey of ascending and descending arpeggios that lead right into an emotionally fraught Adagio ma non tanto movement. The sonata concludes with two

dances: a stately Allemande and a rollicking Gigue. Unlike Bach’s far more well-known set of Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019, which include fully written-out harpsichord parts and function as trio sonatas for the violin and the keyboardist’s right and left hands, this E minor Sonata features the harpsichord in its more typical role as continuo instrument—doubling the viola da gamba’s bass line in the left hand and improvising a chordal accompaniment in the right.

Georg Philipp Telemann

“Paris Quartet” No. 12: Quatuor in E Minor, TWV 43:e4

Telemann’s 1737 visit to France was one of the highlights of his career, and an event he recounted in great detail in his 1740 autobiography: “My long anticipated trip to Paris, where I had been invited several years earlier by some virtuosos…commenced during Michaelmas 1737 and lasted for eight months. There…I had engraved on copper plates new quartets. The admirable manner in which the quartets were played by Blavet, flutist; Guignon, violinist; Forqueray the younger, gambist; and Eduoard, cellist; would merit a description here if only words were adequate to the task.”

These Nouveaux quatours en six suites were written for and premiered by the aforementioned musicians—four of the most famous French virtuosos of their day and likely the very friends who invited Telemann to Paris in the first place. Telemann mentioned that these works “quickly earned me a nearly universal honor” among both Parisians and European musical connoisseurs at large. The collection was published and sold by subscription to such musical luminaries as the Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman, the virtuoso violinist Johann Georg Pisendel, and Telemann’s dear friend and colleague in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach.

The sixth Nouveaux Quatuor in E minor, TWV 43:e4, begins with a French overture, with its dramatic opening and closing sections punctuated by dotted rhythms and a lively triple meter section in between. In the inner movements, the spirited exchange of musical ideas among the instruments cleverly represents the “Art of Conversation,” that beloved pastime of refined 18th century Parisian salon society. The quartet closes with an expansive chaconne, an iconic French Baroque dance that features 19 increasingly florid variations for the flute, violin, and viola da gamba over a repeating bass line of six notes in the cello and harpsichord.

Notes by Jason J. Moy