Saturday, October 25, First Parish of Sudbury
Sunday, October 26, Old South Church, Boston, and livestreamed

Sonate Corellisante No. 6 in D Major, TWV 42:D8        Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
    Pastorale (Moderato)
    Corrente (Vivace)
    Gavotta (Allegro)
    Grave
    Vivace

L’Automne (from Le Printems ou Les Saisons amusantes)        Nicolas Chédeville (1705-1782)
    Allegro
    Largo
    Allegro

Concerto Grosso No. 2 in G Major        Charles Avison (1709 – 1770), after Domenico Scarlatti (1685 – 1757)
    Largo
    Allegro
    Andante
    Vivace

Adagio and Allegro for flute and strings, HWV 338        George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)

Italian Concerto, BWV 971,       Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
arranged for ensemble by Musicians of the Old Post Road
    [Without tempo designation]
    Andante
    Presto

Suzanne Stumpf, traverso
Sarah Darling and Jesse Irons, violins
Renée Hemsing, viola; Daniel Ryan, cello
Kelly Savage, harpsichord
 

 This program explores influences Baroque composers had on each other, both directly through collegial friendships and indirectly through admiration and emulation from afar. Handel is well-known for borrowing music from other composers and his friend Telemann was also influenced by and borrowed from Handel. Bach’s numerous arrangements of concertos by Italian masters were a form of study that proved crucial to his development as a composer, and both Chédeville and Avison arranged and adapted music of other composers, melding others’ works into their own musical styles.

The prolific Georg Philipp Telemann was a versatile composer who wrote in a wide range of styles, incorporating French, Italian, Polish, the nascent Empfindsamkeit, and the mixed-taste Franco-German styles. His Sonates Corellisantes, composed in 1735, closely follow the form and stylistic features of the sonata da camera popularized by Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713). The work heard on this program incorporates  Corellian dance movements that characterize this format, along with harmonic sequences and walking basses that were primary elements of Corelli’s style which were imitated widely by Baroque composers throughout Europe.

Nicolas Chédeville was a French Baroque oboist and hurdy-gurdy virtuoso whose works reflected the pseudo-rustic style that was fashionable in France during his time. Apparently eager to promote the hurdy-gurdy as a virtuoso instrument, he published many works featuring it, including a set of sonatas he falsely attributed to Vivaldi. His admiration for that Italian master is apparent in the many Vivaldi works he arranged. In 1739 he composed free arrangements of Vivaldi’s Op. 8 Four Seasons concertos along with others from the same opus under the title Le Printems ou Les Saisons amusantes. His arrangement of the Autumn concerto makes frequent departures from the original, with melodic and harmonic variations sure to surprise and delight the listener, bringing the pastoral quality of the work to the fore. In the original partbooks, the accompanying treble parts to the musette are designated “violino secondo” and “flauto ou violino terzo,” implying that a violin could substitute for the musette, an option we have employed in our performances.

Charles Avison was a composer and organist based in Newcastle, England. There he published his Essay on Musical Expression and several sets of concerti grossi, among them a set of twelve based on sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. The Naples-born Scarlatti, who was reputed to be an astounding harpsichordist, made a sensation in England in 1738 when his Essercizi per cembalo, a set of 30 harpsichord sonatas, was published there. These are among the most virtuoso of Scarlatti’s oeuvre and inspired Avison to refashion them and other Scarlatti sonatas as concerti grossi for strings and continuo. Published around 1744, Avison’s concertos are extensively re-imagined versions of Scarlatti’s works that are idiomatic to the instruments and genre. The first movement of Avison’s Concerto No. 2 is taken from the third movement of Scarlatti’s K. 91, a sonata for treble instrument and continuo, while the remaining movements are taken from Scarlatti’s Essercizi (K. 14, 4, and 2).

Telemann and George Frideric Handel became good friends early in their careers, with frequent visits and correspondences between the two beginning in 1701. Between 1708-14, Telemann composed a concerto for three violins and continuo that contains a characteristic “hammer-blow” motif. Handel borrowed that figure to great effect in three works composed around 1722: his Overture in D Major HWV 337, his Overture to Ottone, and in the last movement of his Adagio and Allegro, HWV 338. Whereas Telemann uses this theme only loosely imitatively, in HWV 338 Handel composes a full-fledged fugue that makes dramatic use of the motif in a variety of keys.

During J.S. Bach’s Weimar period, around 1714, he made a conscious decision to improve his compositional art. According to his first biographer Forkel:  “He soon began to feel that the eternal [keyboard] running and leaping led to nothing; that there must be order, connection, and proportion to the thoughts and that to attain such objectives, some kind of guide was necessary. Vivaldi’s concertos for the violin, which were then just published, served him for such a guide. He so often heard of them praised as admirable compositions that he conceived the happy idea of arranging them all for his clavier.”

This process had been referred to as Bach’s “musical thinking,” and his study of the concertos of Vivaldi and other Italians proved critical to his development as a composer, with his subsequent works having even greater clarity of structure. Through his transcription process, Bach contributed additional counterpoint and more elaborate figuration to the simpler originals. Another important outgrowth of this study is his adoption of the “concerto principle”—the alternation of tutti and solo sections—in many of his works across many genres.

His “Italian Concerto” (Concerto nach Italienischem Gusto), was published in 1735 as part of his Clavier-Übung series. This original work represents the culmination of Bach’s Italian concerto studies with its display of complexity and virtuosity. And, as with some of his earlier study arrangements, he provides extensive written-out ornamentation in the central slow movement.     In our re-imagining of this work for instrumental ensemble, we have attempted to “reverse-engineer” some of Bach’s processes, based on his treatment of the Italian originals as well as the orchestration practices of his other ensemble concertos.

—Daniel Ryan and Suzanne Stumpf