Tag: baroque

Credo in unum Deum

The gnawing fear I have about trying to sum up the life’s work of history’s most important composers is the certainty that I have left something very important out. But, at least with Bach, I have no such concerns because up today is Bach’s titanic Mass in B minor. I am not even going to attempt to analyze this music (or the numerology puzzles hidden in the Credo section). If you are interested in learning more, this is a great place to start your study: https://ahistoryofmusic.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/6c560-bachmassinbminorguide.pdf.

Bach wrote a lot of spiritual music for the church and every one of the great oratorios presented previously was done so on commission from a church (or church leader) or otherwise in hopes of securing a position with a church (or church leader). In contrast, the Mass in B minor was written for posterity, that is, for us. Largely unknown to audiences for generations, the B Minor Mass was finally published in 1845. Until then, it existed only as rumor–the greatest work by the greatest composer ever to live. Beethoven searched in vain for a copy, dying long before its eventual publication. Part of the reason for it remaining in obscurity for nearly 100 years after its completion is likely the monumental length, which makes the B Minor Mass makes it unsuitable for actual liturgical use, either in a Lutheran or Roman Catholic setting.

So why would such a deeply religious man like Bach write a mass that was unsuited for liturgical purposes? Bach was, I think, getting at something deeper here–the unification of his religious and musical creeds. In the B Minor Mass, Bach sums up music history to date, seamlessly combining forms, techniques and musical sensibilities from across the ages, all wrapped up in the absolute apex of Baroque sound. Bach also recycles many of his best known themes here, reworking them in new ways. For example, the opening of the Kyrie section recalls the opening of the St. John Passion, discussed here a few weeks ago, while the final Kyrie harkens back to Renaissance polyphony. Bach studied Palestrina’s scores and you can hear the old Roman master’s voice echoing through Bach at various points in the B Minor Mass, distilled and amplified through Baroque instrumental counterpoint. But the source material is largely Bach himself. Much of the Sanctus comes from the Christmas Oratorio, while the Agnus Dei recalls part of the Ascention Oratorio. Bach’s Concerto in A Minor and the Contrapunctus X from The Art of the Fugue also make appearances here. I’m sure there are many others.

In the B Minor Mass, Bach fuses academic musicology, devoute Lutheran faith, and glorious sound. You might say that we really didn’t need to listen to anything that came before—ab uno disce omnes. This is the ultimate Conversation–Bach, having a conversation with himself and so many of the great composers that predated him. For me, the B Minor Mass is the greatest single work of music ever composed. It is more that simply one of my Desert Island Discs: It is the whole Island.

I can think of no better way to spend the better part of two hours than listening to Bach’s ultimate summation work. The finale of the mass, a prayer for peace—Dona nobis pacem—was among the last things Bach ever composed. It is so absolutely and completely perfect—I like to imagine that Bach simply laid down is quill and called it a day on this Earth. And, in fact, that’s exactly where I will leave Bach after 12 weeks here, taking his body, mind, and the entire Baroque Period to the grave.

Credo in unum Deum.

J.S. Bach, Mass in B minor:

Bach, The Art of the Fugue, Part I

One thing is certain.  Even if few truly appreciated it at the time, Bach was very aware of his genius.  A humble Lutheran by nature and faith, Bach sought to cement his legacy at the end of his life through two monumental works.  Sick, going blind and dying, Bach set about to compose on both a small and massive scale.  In the Art of the Fugue, Bach delivers the ultimate summation on musical theory to date.  Included in this set of compositions are the most intricate, detailed and complex music ever written.  It’s as if Bach threw down his gauntlet, exclaiming “Decipher this!” 

Bach did not specify which instruments should perform these fugues and instrumentation varies widely in recorded versions.  I’ve selected a few here, but they are all worth careful listening and consideration, across multiple recordings.  These may not be among my truly favorite works of music, but they’d be on my Desert Island Discs for sure—I’d never, ever tire of hearing them.  For this first entry, I’ve selected two, the Eleventh and Seventh.  The Eleventh is perhaps the most complex fugue ever written.  Again, we have the familiar three subjects, which were taken from the Eighth. But, here, each of them is inverted and combined.  In the Seventh, the themes are so dense I can barely figure out what’s going on.  This is where my ear reaches a wall I cannot pass. As I said several weeks ago, Bach brought me to my knees musically, delivering a humbling realization that what mattered most to me was beyond my ability. Here, over 30 years later, he compounds that lesson. Every entry is in stretto—so each subject is imitated before it has even finished.  I hear chords in this that are so new for the period they seem to anticipate jazz.  And . . . that’s about all I can explain.  Bach continues to elude me after all these years—what was that Einstein quote again?

J.S. Bach, The Art of the Fugue

Contrapunctus XI (harpsichord):

Contrapunctus XI:

Contrapunctus VII (harpsichord):

Contrapunctus VII (brass quartet):  

Bach’s St. John Passion

In 1724, Bach unleashed his St. John Passion on Good Friday. Solemn music for the most solemn day in the Christian calendar. While Lutheran congregations would have expected an austere service, with a handful of Lutheran hymns, Bach had something new up his sleeve. As John Eliot Gardiner observes: “What greeted worshippers that day, however, was music of overwhelming descriptive and emotional power that would surely have shattered their perception of music itself.” More raw and unpolished than the St. Matthew Passion, which featured in this blog earlier in the week, this is for me the ultimate music for Easter. Goosebumps, right from the opening, Bach doesn’t relent during this two hour tour de force, an emotional rollercoaster for the ages. Fear, empathy, sorrow, despair, and, finally, transcendence.

Melt, my heart, in floods of tears.

J.S. Bach, St. John Passion:

John Eliot Gardiner and his frequent collaborators, the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir, recently released a new and remarkable recording of the St. John Passion. Recorded live at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre, during the height of the pandemic and with a socially distanced choir and soloists, the sound engineering of the recording replicates what must have been a truly enveloping sound on the day.

From Gardiner’s liner notes: “The incredible force and beauty of Bach’s music creates an extraordinary effect, a huge impact, and it offered us a chance to aspire to something much bigger than us and beyond us–the divine.”

Bach for Easter

Last Christmas, I published a playlist that looked at Christmas music over nearly 1,000 years. At Easter, it is all about Bach.

As mentioned earlier, Bach’s faith ran deep; while his great and frequent personal tragedies were never worn on his sleeve or visage, they poured out of him and into his music. The St. Matthew Passion is the second of his two Passion settings (his first, the St John Passion will feature later this week).

Here, Bach lets fly his full genius and grief: The flutes used to express the anguish of the apostles at Jesus’ revelation of his impending death (Buss un Reu), the relentless repeating savage diminished chords to symbolize the strokes of the lash during the Scourging (Erbarm es, Gott), and the anguished salvation of its finale (Wur setzen uns mit Tränen nieder).

It’s a brilliant work, which began developing the advanced harmonics of the Romantic Period. No wonder Mendelssohn and Schumann tirelessly promoted Bach’s music. And if the man’s opinion matters, Bach considered this to be his best.

In the comments to the video, you can find links to jump to the sections referenced, but the entire oratorio is worth a few hours of your time. Here is Bach approaching his zenith as a composer, melding religious and personal sorrow and loss into music like no one before or since.

J.S. Bach, St Matthew Passion:

A Light in the Darkness: Bach’s Goldberg Variations

The Goldberg Variations, composed towards the end of Bach’s life, are one of his “summation” works. In these works, and here on a single instrument no less, he presents the entire history of music, synthesizing diverse styles from Italian Aria to French Overture. Depending on how many of the repeats are taken, a performance can last upwards of eighty minutes. This is peak Bach, equal parts mathematical precision and human emotion fused as one. When they were published in 1741, Bach remarked that they were “prepared for the soul’s delight of lovers of music.” That’s just about right.

So, what makes the Goldberg Variations so special? They are, after all, 80 minutes of harpsichord largely in the key of G major. The same harmonies repeat over and over again, leading at least one critic jokingly to call the Goldberg Variations a monument to monotony. Yet within this deceptively simple compositional framework, Bach’s genius shines through. The theme is symetrically spaced, with 32 bars of the theme, replicated by the 30 variations plus the two framing themes. The fundamental bass is also 32 bars long. Variation 15, the halfway point, is the first of only three composed in minor key closes out the first set in melancholy fashion, only to be immediately reset by Variation 16, composed in grand French Overture style. Every note is exactly where it should be according to mathemtical precision. And yet this isn’t music composed by an unfeeling computer. Bach’s inherent joy comes spilling out of the music, lifting up both performer and audience alike.

The Goldberg Variations are grouped into ten sets of three variations, with each third variation written as a canon (i.e., a round like Row, Row, Row Your Boat). Adding to the complexity, each successive cannon sets the voices at progressively wider intervals. Trying to follow the themes in these is like trying to run through a maze at top speed—you keep hitting dead ends and completely losing your way.

The final variation is a “quodlibet”–an improvisation in which multiple songs are combined. The Bach family was fond of this sort of musical game and I like to think that Bach is saying here that this was, for him, his greatest joy in life: making music with those he loved.

This is truly the music of joy.

J.S. Bach, Goldberg Variations

On harpsichord:

Glenn Gould made two famous recordings of the Goldberg Variations, one in 1955 at the start of his career and the second in 1981, just before his untimely death. Both are remarkable, but given the choice, I prefer the 1981 version when Gould have fully realized his interpretation of Bach. Both versions are presented here.

Bach and Equal Temperament

Bach’s influence on keyboard instruments is unrivaled.  But before getting into his works for solo keyboard, it is important to talk about Equal Temperament, which solved for all time the problem of the Pythagorean Comma, which we discussed at the beginning of this blog.  To recap, Western music was based on a natural scale with each successive note having a 2/3 relationship to the next.  But the spacing between each note was slightly off, and increasingly so as you went up the scale.  By the time you got to the next octave, the pitch was noticeably off.  The historical compromise had been to discard 5 of the 12 tones.  To use more tones, composers developed keys—but each key required a unique tuning.  So switching between keys became difficult, if not impossible in many cases.  Equal temperament was developed to enable instruments to play in all keys in a single, uniform, tuning.  To do so required music to make a fundamental shift from nature—correcting the Pythagorean Comma so that each note was the exact same distance from the next changed the fundamental mathematics that linked music to the natural world of sound.  As Howard Goodell is fond of saying, due to Equal Temperment, every note you hear today is a monstrous lie.  Here, again, is the math:  https://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/scales.html

Bach wrote the two volumes of the Well-Tempered Klavier to prove that a single keyboard could play all the tones in each key without being re-tuned.  Bach did not write this to perform; he may not even have written it for teaching his students.  It is just possible that Bach wrote this as the proof of Equal Temperament.  But, oh, what a proof!  The reclusive pianist Glenn Gould brought the Well-Tempered Klavier into the concert hall and his recording of them became one of the true landmarks of recorded music.  Along with his classic recording of the Goldberg Variations, Gould is the modern master of Bach.  Only one problem—these pieces were not composed for the piano.

In Bach’s day, the dominant form of keyboard was the harpsichord, where strings are plucked rather than struck.  Harpsichords, however beautiful, cannot vary their volume.  Every note, no matter how forcefully struck, will be just as loud as any other.  As noted earlier in this blog, a harpsichord maker had invented a keyboard that could play both softly (piano, in Italian) and loudly (forte, in Italian).  So was born the “fortepiano”, the forerunner of our modern piano. 

These new fortepianos made their way to Germany and, naturally, one was presented to Bach.  If they were looking for an endorsement, however, they went away disappointed.  Bach was not impressed.  Thus, to really understand these pieces, you must hear them on the harpsichord.  Here, we have the Kenneth Gilbert recording, who plays a harpsichord from 1671!  From the very lengthy set across two books, I have selected Fugue No. 4 in C-Sharp Minor from the first book.  This fugue has the familiar three subjects, one inverted.  An inverted subject “retains the rhythm and the basic contour of the material, but flips it upside down: where the original moves up, the inversion moves down just as down changes to up.” It is a mirror image of the original.  There is no break in this fugue as the subjects gather one on top of the other.  It is a brilliant composition. I’ve also chosen the B minor Fugue from the first book.  It is particularly notable as the subject uses all twelve notes in the chromatic scale.  I’ve been looking for the earliest example of this, but I believe this is the first time that feat was achieved.  Conversation alert for the 20th century.

J.S. Bach, The Well-Tempered Klavier

Book 1, Fugue No. 4 in C-Sharp Minor (on harpsichord):

Book 1, Fugue No. 4 in C-Sharp Minor (on piano):

Book 1, Fugue No. 24 in B Minor (on harpsichord): 

Book 1, Fugue No. 24 in B Minor (on piano):

Baroque Music XII: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

“Bach is Bach, as God is God.” Hector Berlioz

“I had no idea of the historical evolution of music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.” Niccolai Rimsky-Korsakov

“Study Bach. There you will find everything.” Johannes Brahms

“And if we look at the works of JS Bach — a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity — on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered.” Claude Debussy

“This is what I have to say about Bach – listen, play, love, revere – and keep your trap shut.” Albert Einstein

Johann Sebastian Bach is the greatest composer of all time: His unparalleled gift for composition has never been equaled.  His influence on musical history unrivaled.  I can no more heap any greater superlatives on his legacy as explain, really, what is going on in his music.  So, at the great risk of embarrassing myself, I will try to do so through his music and biography. We will take our time here, so great is Bach’s legacy. It will take the best part of 12 weeks to work through his music. And even then, we will have only scratched the surface.

First, a few facts about Bach.  He was primarily known during his lifetime as a virtuoso organist.  Travel around Northern Germany and you will find several churches that are primarily famous for housing organs played by Bach.  He was decidedly less famous than his two compatriots Telemann and Handel, partly because Telemann and Handel traveled widely and also, I suspect, because they composed operas—the most popular music of the day.  There is also the fact that Bach’s music is difficult.  Difficult to play; difficult to understand.  Even the greatest composers and musicians say that they discover something new about nearly every Bach composition each time they play, hear or study it.  They are puzzles within puzzles, constantly referencing what came before, buried within successive layers of harmony.

The touchstone for understanding Bach is, I think, his personal narrative.  His Lutheran faith was very, very real.  Which is not to say that he did not struggle with his faith—he did, and that struggle is evident in much of his religious music.  Part of that struggle was due to his personal tragedies, of which there are almost too many to count.  If the most awful thing in the world is to bury your child, Bach suffered that particular fate too many times.  To top it off, the love of his life, his first wife, died young.  But despite all of that, the anecdotes of the man himself recall a Bob Cratchit-type.  Outwardly jovial, generous to a fault, and always spreading good cheer.  That too comes out in his music.  As one musician said of Bach:

Here is a man who was orphaned by the age of 10, who lost 11 of his 20 kids in infancy or childbirth, whose first wife and love of his life died suddenly.  So there’s Bach, drenched in grief, sleeping with groupies in the organ loft; a dueling, fighting, hard-drinking rock star with a work ethic that makes Obama look like a bum and producing music that still, 300 years later, inspires, stuns and rockets us into a fourth dimension of existence.

Bach composed some 1,100 works in his day—enough to fill several books.  So where to begin here?  No composer has presented such a challenge and I do not expect another to do so likewise.  This brief overview cannot begin to delve into the depths or breath of the Bach repertoire.  So what I have chosen to do is to divide his music into three sections: music for unaccompanied solo instruments, larger scale compositions, and late works.  I hope there is reason to this organization.

In college, I held the view that Bach’s Cello Suites were the greatest compositions of all time.  Unsurprisingly, this view is held by pretty much every cellist I’ve ever met.  I am not a cellist, but I likely held that view because I tried and failed to do justice to Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for violin.  And, of course, there are the two sets of truly revolutionary music for keyboard—The Well-Tempered Klavier and the Goldberg Variations.  I will have a lot more to say about them in a bit.  But, first up, the Violin Sonatas and Partitas.  Every violinist worth his salt has recorded these, but time and time again I return to Nathan Milstein’s landmark recording .  Milstein was the last of the great Russians who had escaped communism to settle in the West.  For this reason, I was fortunate to have seen him perform a few times towards the end of his career (and have a signed program as proof).  By 1970, Heifetz had stopped performing and Oistrakh had tragically died.  But Milstein soldiered on.  Some derided his playing as cold and overly analytical.  I disagree.  Absolutely stoic in performance, what he lacked in personality on stage was made up for in spades in his playing—sheer perfection itself.  I’ve attached a link to the complete recordings, but also to two in particular that warrant attention.  Amazingly, the second is an interview with Milstein followed by a performance when he was 82 and hardly at the peak of his powers.  Incredible.

Bach transcends the forms of his day to give us a meditation on existential agony.  I crashed my bow across these pieces to my own agony of not being remotely talented enough to do them justice.  It is Bach’s uncompromising demand for technical excellence that, in the end, caused me to reflect on the lunacy of pursuing a career in music and led me to Duke University and, ultimately, a career in law.  So you all can thank or blame Bach as the case may be.

J.S. Bach, Violin Sonatas and Partitas (complete):

Sonata No. 1 in G Minor:

Partita in D Minor (“Ciaccona”):

A Chiaccona or Chaccone is a dance, but surely no one could dance to this?  The critic Alex Ross describes it as “a grave dance before the Lord, the ballet of the soul in the course of life.” The dance is best heard in transcription for guitar, as demonstrated by the great Julian Bream:

J.S. Bach, Partita in D Minor, transcribed for guitar:

Handel and Opera

As much as I love Handel’s oratorios, his 42 operas are his supreme achievement. Another digression. I met my wife in the Spring of 1998 and we got together, in no small part, because my father developed a very serious tumor and was in the hospital for most of the next year. Over the course of that year, I took her to her first opera (to be detailed in a future post, but rest assured it was not your standard Italian fare) and my father literally yelled at me from his hospital bed that I was going to turn her off to opera and, presumably, to me. She loved it. For a second opera, I took her to see Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Same lecture; same result. Giulio Cesare remains, I believe, her favorite opera.

Glyndebourne, the great summer opera festival in England, invited William Christie and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment do this back when we were living in London. I was going to go, but got too busy at work: A major life regret. Here are a few highlights from the opera, using the great Glyndebourne production where possible. The story is one we all know–Julius Caesar’s conquest of Egypt.

George Frideric Handel, Giulio Cesare

Da tempeste il legno infranto:

‘Caro Bella:

Full opera:

Telemann may have been the favorite of the people and Bach the favorite of musicologists. But Handel was the favorite of his contemporaries and those composers who immediately succeeded him.

Handel’s Instrumental Music

Handel is best known for his oratorios and operas, but his instrumental music, often overlooked, reveals a brilliant mind at work.

Handel learned the concerto grosso form from Corelli during his time in Italy and took Corelli’s innovation to the next level. Haydn and the modern symphony are now mere decades away, getting closer all of the time. Here is a link to them being performed by Andrew Manze and the Academy of Ancient Music. I like this set very much, which is performed on original instruments and in a properly Baroque tempo. Some would say that Nos. 6 and 7 are the best, but I am partial to Nos. 5 and 10. There are links in the description that allow you to skip around if desired.

George Frideric Handel, Concerti grosso:

Theme and variation was a popular form for smaller compositions in the Baroque age.  The concept was simple:  take a basic theme and progress it through various rhythms, keys and ornamentations.  Handel’s Chaccone in G Major takes the familiar A-B-A form, with the B theme presented in the contrasting G minor, before the A theme returns to G major.  A classic Handel tune.

George Frideric Handel, Chaconne Variations in G Major:

Handel was also a prolific chamber music composer and his violin concertos have been in constant repertoire since their composition. This is one of my favorites. Despite the many wonderful midcentury recordings, modern instruments dull the composition. I am a huge fan of original instruments and this is as good a reason why. Here is another Andrew Manze performance from one of my favorite recordings. I think this concerto sums up Handel the best of any piece of music here.

George Frideric Handel, Violin Sonata in F Major, Op. 1, No. 12:

Baroque Music XI: George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

“Handel is the only person I would wish to see before I die, and the only person I would wish to be, were I not Bach.” J.S. Bach

“Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived… I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb.” Ludwig van Beethoven

The two titans of Baroque music, George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach, were born several weeks apart in 1685.  These two composers, collectively, brought music forward at an exponential rate.  While Bach was busy creating some of the most complex music ever composed, Handel was upping the dramatic urgency, particularly through his oratorios and operas.  As with the Baroque, the watchword was always more: more instruments, more singers, more complexity—more, more, more!  And no one met that challenge better than Handel.  I consider Bach to be the superior composer, but Handel gets more playtime in my home.  Everyone knows his Alleluiah chorus from the Messiah.  But he’s so much more than that one piece.

Born in Germany, Handel found his fame in London under what was then the new Hanover dynasty. No wonder Germans love London so much—the Queen is German, their greatest composer was German, and they love sausages and beer. But before he arrived in England, Handel, like many composers, spent time in Italy. While in Rome, he studied with both Corelli (and thus mastered orchestration) and Alessandro Scarlatti, from whom he learned about opera and composing for solo voice.

Hands down, my favorite work of Handel’s is an early one, composed in Rome around 1707—his great early oratorio, Dixit Dominus. Dixit Dominus is divided into eight movements, scored for a five-part chorus and five soloists. Composed at 22, this 30 minute piece is a blockbuster. In the raucous first movement, the strings’ arpeggios punctuated by the chorus repeating “dixit”, i.e., the Lord said—the synthesis of Corelli and Scarlatti, with a dash of German oomph (yes, that is a technical term). In the penultimate movement, “De Torrente in via bibet,” Handel unleashes a series of dissonant suspensions that are so unbelievably beautiful as to practically stop your heart. And while I have not checked the score, I do believe we hear the Circle of Fifths poke out from time to time.

This piece is very special for me. It was the first music that my daughter ever heard–starting on the first day of her life. We played this disc so much the (largely Dominican) nurses thought we were VERY Catholic and paid extra attention to her as a result. It was perhaps inevitable she ended up in Catholic school.

Religion aside, my interest in this music is far more prosaic. This is baroque rock n’ roll—proto-Led Zeppelin. You cannot play this one too loud—the horns, the chorus all benefit from more volume. Here is the full recording on YouTube and some selections on Spotify–the Spotify links are to my favorite recording of the work, the same one we played for my daughter on her first day of life.

George Frideric Handel, Dixit Dominus:

Interlude: At the side of the road with Dietrich Buxtehude

Next week, we will start more than five months devoted to the twin geniuses of the late Baroque: Handel and Bach. Together (and with a significant assist from Telemann), these two composers wrested the center of musical development away from Italy and planted music’s flag stoutly in the German states, where it would remain, more or less, through to the end of the Second World War. It would be wrong, however, to consider that the German School took flight only in the late Baroque. This “at the side of the road” interlude (which briefly acknowledges important composers I have overlooked in this series) presents the music of the key figure who links the late Baroque German School back to Heinrich Schütz, widely considered to be the father of the German Baroque School.

In 1705, J.S. Bach was not the titan of music that history remembers today. Rather, Johann was a mere lad of 17 who had yet to make his mark on history. That fall, Bach set out on one of the few significant journeys he would take during his lifetime, nearly 250 miles to the city of Lübeck. Bach’s objective was an audience with the leading Germanic composer of his day: the organist Dietrich Buxtehude. Bach was not alone in making a pilgrimige to seek an audience with Buxtehude–Handel and Telemann each had made similar journeys. Legend has it that Buxtehude offered Handel and Bach the opportunity to succeed him, the price being that they should agree to marry his daughter. What are we to make of this daughter, who was rejected by both great composers, or of Telemann, who apparently wasn’t deemed worthy of the offer?

Such details are lost to history. Also lost are many of Buxtehude’s compositions. Only a cache of his organ and choral works come down to us, many of which were rediscovered in the 20th century. The others survived thanks largely to Bach, who made several manuscript copies of Buxtehude’s music during his time in Lübeck. The influence that Buxtehude had over the next generation of German composers is undeniable. While Schütz had studied with Italians, Buxtehude had been schooled entirely by Germans and Germanic music had begun to take on its own unique (and uniquely complex) character. It is in his footsteps, that the centuries of successive German composers would tred.

Here are some links to Buxtehude’s best works. Buxtehude’s compositions would weave a powerful spell over the young Bach, whose own music became significantly more complex after 1705–that is, more like Buxtehude’s works. In the last entry, I questioned whether Bach’s Goldberg Variations were inspired by Scarlatti’s Esserchisi. The more likely explanation is that both Scarlatti and Bach were inspired by Buxtehude’s earlier La Capricciosa.

Such is the joy of studying music history. You listen for quotes, for stylistic and compositional influences. And just when you think you have found something, maybe a possible source or some unique chord, you find something else later on to make you question everything you once believed.

Dietrich Buxtehude, La Capricciosa

Dietrich Buxtehude, Passacaglia in D Minor

Dietrich Buxtehude, Membra Jesu Nostri

Baroque Music IX: Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

Of that generation of composers who were born in the decade between 1675 and 1685, there is a good argument to be made that Jean-Philippe Rameau had the greatest influence.  Not Bach.  Not Handel.  Not Vivaldi.  In fact, the term “baroque” was derived from a pejorative comment made about Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie: Jean-Baptiste Rousseau dismissed Rameau as a “distiller[] of baroque chords of which so many idiots are enamoured.”  Other critics complained that Rameau’s “misshaped composition lacked coherent melody, was overly dissonant and changed key and metre too much.” 

Rameau was savagely attacked during his lifetime by traditionalists who braced at his harmonic innovations.  And yet Rameau held on to his exalted position as court composer, much to the dismay of the so-called “Lullyists” who championed the cause and aesthetics of his predecessor.  Perhaps it is hard to hear today what caused passions to run so hot in Paris during the 1750s—but it is fair to say that Rameau’s opera subverted Lully’s conception of French opera completely—driving the entire composition through harmonic progression and changing overnight what French society deemed to have been unchangeable.  To find a parallel to the storm of controversy created by Rameau’s Hippolyte, we need to look to 20th century Paris and the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.  And that guy drank with The Rolling Stones.

So let’s listen to this revolutionary work.  In the Act IV conclusion to his controversial Hippolyte, we see opera take on a bigger, grander sound—perhaps even more so than Handel ever composed.  The discordant tones that so enraged the Lullyists back in the day are clearly discernable, even if their shock value has diminished over the centuries. 

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Hippolyte et Aricie, Act IV conclusion:

For my money, Rameau’s best opera is Les Indes Galantes, which I doubt will ever be performed again given the subject matter.  Rameau is often derided for lack of melody.  This selection puts that debate to rest.  

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Les Indes Galantes, Tendre Amour:

Rameau is the first true modern opera composer, laying down the maxim that has guided the art form to this day: “I conceal art with art,” he said, signaling his intent to unite all of the arts (music, fine art, architecture, decorative arts, dance, poetry, etc.) in opera itself.  Rameau was the originator; Wagner was its realization a century later. 

Personal note:  As some may know, my other passion lies in antitrust law and economic theory.  It is therefore unsurprising that Rameau is a personal favorite of mine, not only because of his music, but because he came to so dominate the French opera scene that a petition was circulated in 1740 seeking a royal order to limit his output in any given year.  Who doesn’t love output restraints in Baroque opera?

Christmas and the Baroque Oratorio

As I said, I love Christmas music. And while I love all forms of Christmas music (see yesterday’s playlist), it is no coincidence that my favorite form of music–Baroque oratorio–features prominently in the genre. The first half of the 1700s were awash in Christmas music, likely ignited by Corelli’s Christmas Concerto. Vivaldi followed suit with his own Christmas concerto. Bach composed several works for the holiday, including an oratorio of his own. And yet, during Christmastime, the nearly every orchestra and concert hall in the world programs the same work–Handel’s titanic oratorio, the Messiah. Well, not to throw coal in the stockings of classical music programmers across the world, but Handel’s oratorio was actually composed for Easter, hence the emphasis of the narrative on the Resurrection. I chose one part of that undeniably great oratorio for the Christmas playlist as a nod to tradition (and chose the chorus that celebrates Jesus’ birth), but it is not strictly Christmas music. Handel will get his nod in due course in this blog, but today I’ve chosen a different oratorio (and one that is decidedly shorter than the 2+ hours running time for the Messiah). It is not strictly Christmas music either, but at least for me, it sounds like Christmas. In any event, this is what I will be listening today–a candidate for the greatest oratorio ever composed, regardless of genre or period.

Now that the man in the red suit has completed his duties, let’s allow the Red Priest to take the baton.

Antonio Vivaldi, Gloria:

For those looking for the full version, here is a Spotify link:

And for those traditionalists, here is my favorite recording of the Messiah:

Telemann and the Orchestra

Telemann’s contributions to the development of the modern orchestra should be noted.  He wrote a ton of “overtures”—not necessarily for operas, but rather as proto-symphonies.  These multi-movement works are the bridge from the concerto grosso form to the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. 

Georg Philipp Telemann, Overture in B Minor:

Telemann’s favorite instrument may have been the trumpet.  The great Maurice Andre regularly played Telemann’s trumpet concertos in concert and are among the first works of music I fell in love with.  Here is is performing the adagio that opens the first trumpet concerto in D major, which is one of the great melodic lines in music history.  And, then, the opening allegro of the Concerto in F minor.

Georg Philipp Telemann, Trumpet Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Adagio:

Georg Philipp Telemann, Trumpet Concerto in F Minor, Allegro:

Interlude: At the side of the road

This morning, I was listening to Jakub Jozef Orlinski’s remarkable new album, Anima Aeterna, which not surprisingly for this gifted young countertenor, features a wealth of Baroque masterpieces. On this album, however, Jakub has drawn from the music of Baroque composers who, for lack of a better phrase, have been left by the side of the road. Of course, he leads with his compatriot, Jan Dismas Zelenka, considered in his day to rival Bach’s mastery of counterpoint. Works by Johann Joseph Fux, Francisco Antonio de Almedia, Bartolomeo Nucci and Gennaro Manna also appear on the album. We first got our glimpse of Jakub when he was still a student at Julliard, during the Eastern Regionals of the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions and then later that spring in the title role of Jonathan Dove’s Flight (more about that much later in this blog). This month he returns to the Met to debut Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice in what is for me the most eagerly awaited opera of the season.

Jakub’s album has inspired me to include as a running interlude, those composers who for one reason or another have been left on the side of the road in this blog. Zelenka is the first of these. He wrote two oratorios based on Psalm 50, the famous Miserere mei that we first encountered with Josquin and Allegri back in the Rennaisance. While his lengthier D Minor version (ZWV 56) garners the headlines for its innovative counterpoint and daring harmonies, I prefer the propulsive and utterly devestating C Minor version (ZWV 57).

Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitatem meam

Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my inequity.

Jan Dismas Zelenka, Misrerere in C Minor, ZWV 57: