Friday, November 6, 2015, 7:30 pm, First Parish of Sudbury
Saturday, November 7, 2015, 8 pm, Emmanuel Church, Boston

Sonata in Imitation of Birds        William Williams  (1675–1701)
    Adagio • Allegro  
    Grave • Allegro

Sonata Representativa           Heinrich Biber (1644–1704)

Cu’ckoo Concerto                  John Frederick Lampe (1702–1751)
    Vivace • Adagio • Allegro    reconstructed by Daniel Ryan

Intermission

Il Novembre        Gregor Josef Werner (1693–1766)
    Il studioso melanconico (Allegro assai)    
    Menuett (il giorno di 10 hore/la notte di 14 hore)
    La Tempestà di mare (Tempo de bon gusto)
    Menuett (il giorno di 9 hore /la notte di 15 hore)
    Il Molino (Tempo passato)
    
Les Papillons        François Couperin (1668–1733)
Le Rossignol-en-amour    Couperin
Les Rappel des Oiseuax    Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764)

Concerto in D Major, op. 10, no. 3, RV 428 “Il Gardellino”   Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741)
    Allegro • Cantabile • Allegro   

Suzanne Stumpf, traverso; Sarah Darling and Jesse Irons, violins
Andrew Waid, viola; Daniel Ryan, cello; Michael Bahmann, harpsichord

The Sudbury concert  is co-presented by the Sudbury Historical Society 
and is funded, in part, by the Sudbury Cultural Council, a local agency which is 
supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Green Season Program Partner: Sudbury Valley Trustees

Program Notes

The possibility that music can use the sounds of nature as a colorful contribution to its artful complexities has been utilized by composers for centuries. From the Chant des oiseaux chanson of Janequin to the “Pastoral” symphony of Beethoven to the bird works of Messiaen, composers have especially delighted in including the songs of birds in their works—for birds are singers, and their calls are identifiable (and imitable) songs. All the works heard on this program contain depictions of natural and other “non-musical” sounds intended to enchant the listener not so much by their resemblance to the originals, but by the composer’s incorporation of the “natural” with the “artful.”

Among the most literal and charming of Baroque works to evoke bird calls is the “Sonata in Imitation of Birds” by the English composer William Williams. Like his contemporary Henry Purcell, Williams lived a very short life. His untimely death was marked by his contemporaries with pieces written in his honor and benefit concerts organized for his wife and children. Williams’ sonata is cast in the four-movement Italian form and shows a stylistic affinity to Corelli. The bird imitations occur mainly in its first and second movements, where the bird call figurations are passed in a lively, engaging banter between the two treble instruments.

Heinrich Biber was an Austrian composer and violinist of Bohemian birth. Although he wrote many operas and polychoral works, he is mainly known today for his extraordinary virtuoso violin sonatas, many of which use alternate tunings of the instrument. His Sonata Representativa was likely composed while he was in the service of the Bishop of Olmütz (now in the Czech Republic). In this work, Biber puts his musical imagination and virtuosity in the service of creating astonishing effects on the instrument that imitate a panoply of birds and other animals. See the box for a list of natural sounds that are imitated in this work.

One of the most frequently used bird calls imitated in Baroque musical works is the cuckoo’s due to its two-note simplicity. The Cu’ckoo Concerto by John Frederick Lampe is a work that, especially in its third movement, effectively and humorously uses the cuckoo’s call. Lampe was a German-born composer and bassoonist who immigrated to England where he became a leading composer of English opera. While not a direct rival to Handel, he parodied Handel’s style in his comic operas. Lampe’s Cu’ckoo Concerto survives only in the form of a keyboard short score, with the solo line in the upper staff and a figured bass in the lower staff. This source lists Lampe’s original instrumentation of flute, strings, and continuo, inspiring the ensemble to create a reconstruction of the original version modeled on other concerto orchestrations of the period.

Gregor Joseph Werner was an organist and composer who served as Kapellmeister of the Esterházy court when the young Joseph Haydn was hired in 1761. Though he became relegated to the role of a church music composer after Haydn’s arrival, Werner also composed symphonies and trio sonatas in which representational effects are used. His Neuer und sehr curios Musicalischer Instrumental-Calendar, published in 1748, consists of twelve suites, each representing a month of the year. The suite Il Novembre [November] opens with a depiction of the melancholy student, with falling octaves and whiny, sinewy figuration passed between the violins. Other descriptive movements include a sea storm with effective passages depicting the driving wind and rolling waves and, in the last movement, the machinery of a grinding mill.

The harpsichord works of Couperin and Rameau selected for this program are each taken from one of their many ordres or suites. Most of the movements of these suites bear characteristic titles, some which are purely evocative, others more evidently descriptive. In Le Rossignol-en-amour, Couperin creates a haunting, tender melody which characterizes the plaintive sighs of love. To this, the warbling call of the nightingale is introduced as ornamentation, particularly in the double. In Les Papillons, it is the visual imagery of butterflies in flight that is captured. Rameau’s Le Rappel des oiseaux evokes the cacaphony of a managerie of birds.

Among the hundreds of concertos composed by Vivaldi, many bear descriptive titles and involve sometimes quite elaborate musical depictions and representations, the most well known of these being the “Four Seasons” concertos from opus 8. The Gardellino concerto, from the opus 2 set of flute concertos published around 1728, centers on the distinctive call of the goldfinch. Vivaldi gives this call fanciful representations in the opening cadenza of the flute and in fragments used to create themes in the tuttis and a pervasive motivic “chatter” in many episodes.        

— Daniel Ryan and Suzanne Stumpf
 

Saturday, December 5, 2015, 3 pm, Emmanuel Church, Boston
Sunday, December 6, 2015, 4 pm, First Unitarian Church, Worcester

Chant de L’Eglise en Concerto       Esprit-Joseph-Antoine Blanchard
Conditor alme siderum • C’est a la venue de Noel • Or nous dites Marie    (1696–1770)
Ou s’en vont ces gays Bergers • Les Bourgois de Châtres • Vous qui desiré sans fin
Notre bon pere Noé • O créateur • Savez-vous, mon cher voisin • A minuit fut fait en Reveil
(title unidentified) • Grace soit rendüe a Dieu de la Sus

L’Hiver     Charles-Hubert Gervais (1671–1744)

Intermission

Sinfonia VI for traverso, violin, viola, and continuo    Michel Corrette (1707–1795)
From Six Symphonies en Quatuor contenant les plus beaux Noëls      
    Allegro (Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres)
    Amoroso (Quoy ma voisine est tu fâché)
    Allegro (Bon Joseph ecoutez moi)

Lauter Wonne, lauter Freude    Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767)

    
Songs set to Shakespeare texts    Thomas Augustine Arne (1710-1778)
    Under the Greenwood Tree      
    Blow, blow thou winter Wind
    The Owl

Greensleeves    16th-century English

Jonas Budris, tenor
Suzanne Stumpf, traverso; Sarah Darling and Megumi Stohs Lewis, violins
Daniel Ryan, cello; Michael Bahmann, harpsichord

Green Season Program Partner: Tower Hill Botanic Garden

Program Notes

The depiction of the seasons through music has a long history dating back to Medieval times. While Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons violin concertos are the most well-known example of a composer’s depiction of all four seasons, there were certainly many predecessors and contemporaries. For this program, we focus on music from the Winter season—the time of year that possesses the harshest weather along with some of the most festive celebrations. Our chosen repertoire explores both of these aspects.

The French noël’s origins can be traced to the 13th century. By the 15th century, the noël developed into the form that characterized it through the 18th century—a strophic song sung in the vernacular, often of folksong origin. By the 17th century, completely instrumental noëls began to appear. Michel Corrette and E.-J.-A Blanchard were two of many French Baroque composers who created instrumental settings of popular noël melodies.

Blanchard received his early musical training in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence and served as maître de musique at various churches in southern France before his appointment as one of the sous-maître de musique at the Chapelle Royale in Versailles. As a composer of church music, he became well-known for the works he wrote for the chapelle and for the Concert Spirituel. His noël settings, which receive their regional premiere on these concerts, are his only surviving instrumental works. Composed for orchestra and including many wind instruments, these inventive settings make a rather comprehensive use of instrument pairings and juxtapositions that enhance the varied characters of the noëls. Although his instrumentation is lavish, the work is never composed in more than four parts, making it easily adaptable to our ensemble’s instrumentation.

Michel Corrette made an important contribution to French musical life as an author of numerous musical instruction books as well as through his compositions. He was an ardent advocate of the 
Italian style, and his works show the influence of Vivaldi and other Italian composers. It is his internationalism and lively imagination which shine through in his Symphonies de noëls. His variations on the noël melodies include virtuosic figuration in the Italian style in the outer movements, with a middle movement in the champêtre style imitative of bagpipes.

Charles-Hubert Gervais was primarily a composer of operas and cantatas. However, he received substantial recognition for his motets which were enthusiastically received at the Concert Spirituel. After 1726, along with Campra and Bernier, he held the position of sous-maître de musique at the Chapelle Royale. (Blanchard was one of the musicians appointed to assist them in 1738.) Gervais’ compositional style blends both French and Italian tastes. His cantata L’Hiver also receives its regional premiere in these concerts. It displays virtuosic Italianate aspects in the furious winter winds unleashed by the instruments in the first aria and in its evocation of the festive jocularity of winter by the unison trebles in their imitative dialogue with the bass in the concluding aria. In contrast, the poised French ornaments for the flute and voice in the second aria gracefully depict the gifts of the milder seasons.

The prolific and seemingly tireless Georg Philipp Telemann composed at least twenty annual cycles of cantatas totaling over 1,700 for the cities of Eisenach, Frankfurt, and Hamburg. Due to Telemann’s talent and industry as a publisher, his cantatas received wide circulation throughout Germany. The cantata presented on this program is from a published cycle Telemann engraved himself and sold by subscription. Composed for the fourth Sunday of Advent, Lauter Wonne, lauter Freude describes two entirely different fates—the bliss that the believers will experience as captured in the joyful flute figuration in the first aria versus the unhappiness that frustrates non-believers portrayed in the halting phrases and mocking laughter motif in the second aria.

Thomas Augustine Arne enjoyed a long, colorful career as a composer for the theaters and pleasure gardens of London. Among his most famous vocal works are settings he made of songs from 
Shakespeare’s plays. Arne’s settings of Under the Greenwood tree and Blow, blow thou winter Wind were written for a 1740 revival of As You Like It at the Drury Lane theater. For this revival, the play was
renamed Love in a Forest and also incorporated songs from Love’s Labour’s Lost, including Arne’s 
charming setting of The Owl.

— Daniel Ryan and Suzanne Stumpf

Friday, March 11, 2016, 7:30 pm, First Parish, Wayland
Saturday, March 12, 2016, 3:00 pm, Emmanuel Church, Boston

Variations sur la Romance de Une Folie, op. 14       Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837)
 

Sonata no. 3 in Bb Major for piano and violin   George Frederick Pinto (1785–1806)
    Allegro moderato con espressione con spirito    
    Adagio affetuoso e con sentimento
    Rondo (Allegro moderato)

Intermission

Divertimento à 3 in Bb Major , K. 254  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
    Allegro assai    
    Adagio
    Rondeau (Tempo di menuetto)

Trio in G Major, WoO37  Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
    Allegro    
    Adagio
    Thema andante con variazioni

Suzanne Stumpf, flute; Sarah Darling, violin
Daniel Ryan, cello; Michael Bahmann, fortepiano

Green Season Program Partner: Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary

Program Notes

This program presents excellent early works by four of the most prominent musical prodigies of the Classical era. While Mozart was most widely known as an extraordinary child prodigy during his lifetime, all four composers represented on this program had significant musical accomplishments at an early age. It is interesting to note that two of the other composers on our program—Pinto and Beethoven—were each predicted early in their lives by their respective teachers to “become a second Mozart,” while our other featured composer—Hummel—was taken in by Mozart himself in his youth due to his promise.

The works by Mozart and Pinto heard on this program are in the vein of accompanied keyboard sonatas. Mozart’s Divertimento à 3 is his first mature piano trio, composed in Salzburg in 1776 at the age of twenty. Probably first conceived for harpsichord, Mozart is known to have played this work on the piano during a visit to Munich in 1777. While the keyboard part dominates in this work, the violin frequently alternates with the keyboard’s right-hand in the melodic material, particularly in the wistful adagio movement.

George Frederick Pinto was an English violinist, pianist, and composer. A student of the prominent violinist and impresario Johan Peter Salomon, Pinto was a child prodigy who was already performing publicly at 11 years of age and concertized internationally until 1804. His tragic death at the age of twenty was attributed to the catchall term of the time, “dissipation,” his teacher Salomon referring to his inability to “resist the allurements of society.” Pinto’s contemporaries were enthusiastic about his musical genius as was his teacher. Among the last works he composed are the piano and violin sonatas. These forward–looking works show a romantic sensibility. In his third sonata, the piano writing is quite advanced for its time, with great attention to the texture and timbre of the instrument in its frequently full-voiced chords. The violin part, following contemporary practice, is generally subservient to the piano part, but there are lovely solo passages in the haunting adagio and some independent thematic material in the pastoral Rondo.

Johann Nepomuk Hummel was born in Pressburg (now Bratislava). His family moved to Vienna when he was eight where his father became the music director at the Theater auf der Wieden. It was at that time that Hummel was taken in by Mozart. He was so impressed with the prodigy that he taught him for free and took him into his household as a de facto family member. Hummel met many musicians who visited the family, including Haydn. After a couple of years, Mozart recommended that Hummel’s father take the young prodigy on a Grand Tour to make his musical talents known to a wider public, such as Mozart had done as a youth. The Hummel family traveled broadly across Europe for several years.

Hummel’s op. 14 variations were written in 1804 when Hummel was twenty-four, shortly after he had been appointed to work at the Esterházy court. The theme is the aria Je suis encor dans mon Printemps from the opera Une Folie (1802) by Etienne Nicolas Méhul (1763-1817). This was a popular aria from the opera—Louis Spohr, a contemporary of Hummel, also penned a set of variations for solo harp on the same theme. A master of serious opera, Méhul was a leading French composer in Paris during the Revolution, Consulate, and Empire. Une Folie was a well-received work. It was written in the lighter comic opera style that was popular during the Consulate at the turn of the century. This theme possesses interesting harmonic modulations, and Hummel captures these moments with skill and variety as he moves through the variations. The work also displays sophisticated duet writing through the suave integration of the flute into the texture of each variation rather than the simple treble accompaniments that were more typical at that time. In the Adagio, the flute even comes to the fore, and his writing is quite passionate and florid. The playful character of the Finale is possibly reflective of comical elements of the original opera.

Beethoven’s Trio in G Major for piano, flute, and bassoon was written in 1786 when he was about fifteen years of age. The work was found among his papers after his death and not published until 1888. We could not resist including this delightful piece using our instrumentation as the bassoon part fits rather nicely on the cello. It is believed to have been written for the family of Count Friedrich Von Westerholt, a bassoonist, whose daughter Anna Maria studied piano with Beethoven. Perhaps because it is an early work, there are some inconsistencies with expressive markings in the score, calling for creative interpretation on the part of the performers. In the piano writing, there is little integration between the hands, as if the right hand were a treble part and the left hand a bass part. These details indicate the work may have been conceived the harpsichord. Beethoven gives special attention to minute changes in articulation and slight adjustments in the melodic writing of repeated phrases that evidence that he was very carefully considering variety of expression in his message.

— Daniel Ryan and Suzanne Stumpf
 

Friday, April 22, 2016, 8:00 pm, Old South Church, Boston
Sunday, April 24, 2016, 4:00 pm, Worcester Historical Museum, Worcester

Mentre Clori la bella           Johann Adolf Hasse or Alessandro Scarlatti
                                      (1699-1783)     (1660-1725)

Trio Sonata in D Minor for two violins and continuo, La Follia, RV63  Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Mi palpita il cor         George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Intermission

Sonata in G Minor for violin and continuo          Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770)
    Larghetto affectuoso    
    Tempo giusto della scuola Tartinista
    Andante-Allegro assai

Nice e Tirsi             Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692-1753)>

    
    
Lianne Coble, soprano
Suzanne Stumpf, traverso; Sarah Darling and Jesse Irons, violins
Marcia Cassidy, viola; Daniel Ryan, cello; Michael Bahmann, harpsichord

The Worcester concert is co-presented by the Worcester Historical Museum. 

Green Season Program Partner: The Gardens at Elm Bank – Massachusetts Horticultural Society

Program Notes

This program brings together passionate music of the late Baroque era by Italian composers and German composers writing in the Italian style. While the instrumental selections of Vivaldi and Tartini focus on  visceral feats of virtuosity, our chosen cantatas are set to texts that explore the emotional turmoil of unrequited love.

The cantata Mentre Clori la bella has been attributed to both Johann Adolf Hasse and Alessandro Scarlatti. Although the manuscript source we obtained names Hasse as composer, stylistic considerations favor Scarlatti. The work is Baroque in character rather than the more light-hearted, naturalistic galant style of Hasse’s writing. Additionally, the use of instrumental ritornellos at the end of each aria is a structure found in other cantatas by Scarlatti. Written from the perspective of a jilted lover, a spirit of spite and truculence pervades the work, including sinewy descending scales in the bass upon which ride a taunting triplet motif in the opening aria.

Antonio Vivaldi’s op. 1 set of twelve trio sonatas was published in 1705. The straightforward, concise construction of these works show similarities to those of his Venetian contemporaries Caldara, Gentili, and Albinoni. These sonatas are largely organized as dance suites, with the great exception being the single movement La Follia sonata, which consists of variations on a recurring chord progression. Possibly of Spanish origin, this chord progression (known as La Follia) was used as a basis for works by many composers including Corelli, whose opus 5 sonata of the same name may have served as a model. Vivaldi’s variations demonstrate the inventive prowess and exuberance that was to become a hallmark of his style. There is much variety of interaction among the three parts in the succession of the variations, including some lively motivic sparring between the violins and energetic passagework in the continuo. While not composed as a dance suite, this sonata contains variations that resemble dance movements, including a sarabande, siciliano, and gigue.

George Frideric Handel’s undated cantata Mi palpita il cor was probably composed during his two-year residence in Rome for the private concerts of his patron, the Marchese Ruspoli. The work survives in three versions—for soprano and continuo, for alto, flute and continuo, and for soprano, oboe, and continuo. The cantata creatively conveys the torments of unrequited love, from the anxiety captured by the heart-throbbing and virtuosic text-painting in the passionate opening recitative, to the plaintive suffering felt in the tenderness of the first aria, to the joyful fantasy that unfolds in the concluding aria.

The most famous work of the violin virtuoso Giuseppe Tartini is undoubtedly the “Devil’s Trill” sonata, not only because of impressive virtuosity, but also due to the story behind it. This tale was first related by Tartini himself to the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande, and published in Lalande’s Voyage d’un François en Italie:

One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Eve-rything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the “Devil’s Trill”, but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.

Despite Tartini’s account, scholars believe the work was more likely composed in the 1740s. It was first published in 1799 in J.-B. Cartier’s massive anthology L’Art du violon. The most virtuosic uses of the trill occur in the last movement where extended trills are sustained simultaneously with other moving notes.

Giovanni Alberto Ristori was born in 1692, possibly in Bologna, and died in Dresden in 1753. He had a diverse career both as court and church musician, and although much of his life was spent in culturally-rich Dresden, he made forays to Russia and Poland, among other places. One of his positions included an appointment as director of the Capella Polacca that accompanied Elector August II on his excursions to Poland (with Franz Benda and J.J. Quantz among the dozen instrumentalists in the group). He is so little known today because so much of his compositional output was lost in the bombardment of Dresden in 1760 and in the bombings of World War II.

In his cantata Nice e Tirsi, which receives its regional premiere on these concerts, the pervasiveness of extended recitative accompanied by the full ensemble, rather than continuo only, is striking. The rhetorical quality of the writing, with its imaginative rhythmic motifs and colorful melodic gestures, appears to invite expressive rubato in the interjections made by the full instrumental forces. Giovanni’s flair for expression and theatre that is evidenced here was likely influenced by his father Tomasso, who ran a traveling company of comedic Italian actors and gave Giovanni his first job as composer for the Italian comic theatre that Tomasso ran in Dresden when the family relocated there in I717.

Although the general topic of the cantata is not extraordinary for the time—in the story line, our protagonist is more obsessed with the machinations of Cupid rather than those of the wayward or unresponsive lover—the musical devices that Ristori calls into play are quite inventive. In addition to the unusual construct of the extended recitatives, the first aria alternates between contrasting meters that seem to reflect the narrator’s confused state of mind. Instead of the standard two-character contrast found in Baroque arias, Ristori vacillates multiple times between these meters in each section of the aria, reflecting the protagonist’s varying fantastical interpretations of events.

— Daniel Ryan and Suzanne Stumpf