Concert Notes
Faculty member Stephen Buck is sometimes a writer of concert notes, and we thought it appropriate to post some of his more recent notes. We hope you learn something and enjoy them.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Partita in c minor, BWV 826
Italy enjoyed a paradoxical position in 18th century Europe. One the one hand, it was a politically fractured land, colonized and coveted by stronger nation-states to the north. On the other hand, it was the focal point for European culture, the country that produced artists, writers, musicians and philosophers who inspired the rest of the continent. In music, the style of the Italian composers became the standard international language. Different nations would respond to these Italian influences in their own ways (German Baroque music and French Baroque music sound quite different from each other), but the harmonic, contrapuntal, and formal musical elements all traced their roots to Italy.
Bach’s Partitas are a reflection of this Italian-based, yet international style. A simple look at the title of the set and the various dances within reveals a curious mixture of Italian and French. The very term “partita” is Italian, and dates back to the late 16th century. It has had various definitions at various times, but Bach used it in the sense that we know today, that of a loose collection of pieces, specifically dance works. Looking at the titles of the dances of the C Minor Partita, BWV 826, we see the Italian Sinfonia and Capriccio, but most of the dances have French titles: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Rondeaux. The cosmopolitanism of the time is even more apparent when one considers the origins of some of these dances: the Sarabande has its roots in Spain, and the Allemande refers to Germany.
Besides dance forms, the partitas include keyboard works intended for listening, such as the Sinfonia and Capriccio. The Sinfonia itself is a combination of international styles, beginning with the typical dotted rhythms of the French overture style, continuing with Italianate vocal style, and culminating with a fugue, a technique dating back to the Franco-Flemish Renaissance, and Bach’s particular forte. The Capriccio likewise uses fugue, though technically not according to the strict rules the form usually requires (which perhaps is why Bach chose the title).
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1787): Sonata in B Minor, K. 87
Italy exported not only its culture, but its musicians and artists as well. Domenico Scarlatti, who came from an illustrious family of musicians, was one such export, finding long employ in the royal court of Spain. The imperial Spanish court, loaded with the wealth of its colonies in the New World, had long and lavishly sponsored the arts, and Scarlatti, whose reputation across Europe as a keyboard virtuoso was on a par with Handel’s, became yet another jewel in the crown.
Scarlatti, a native of Naples, is thought to have worked local Spanish tunes into his keyboard sonatas, in keeping with his plebeian origins. In various sonatas, we find sounds similar to the strumming of a guitar, the piping of a flute, the drone of bagpipes, and other instruments. The Sonata in B Minor, K. 87, is somewhat unusual for Scarlatti, in that he didn’t give it a tempo marking. The notes themselves seem to imply a slower tempo, and most performers seem to find the same implication. Scarlatti’s sonatas are generally known for their virtuosic display, their wit, and their charm, so this one is unusual again in its very serious mood. It also seems to be rather archaic for Scarlatti, who often wrote with clear melody and harmony; this sonata finds a wealth of expression among the inner voices, while the melody remains more static.
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832): Sonata in B Minor, Op. 40 No. 2
If we fast forward a century or so, we find Italy still exporting its musicians. The play and film Amadeus fancifully chronicle the life of the Italian composer Salieri in Vienna, where he happened to be a contemporary of Mozart. Muzio Clementi, also a contemporary of Mozart, spent much of his life in England, which while far from the musical capital of Vienna, nonetheless was a wealthy country eager to support foreign musicians. How Clementi came to England is worth noting: a wealthy Englishman literally “bought him of his father for seven years,” for which time Clementi was kept in lonely practice and study. “Export” may be too right a word for such an event.
Clementi, like Scarlatti, was a renowned keyboard virtuoso, and once engaged in a competition with Mozart before Joseph II of Austria and his guests, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Russia. Of this famous contest, later Clementi wrote of his unquestioning admiration for Mozart; Mozart, on the other hand, gave grudging credit to Clementi for his technique, but otherwise seemed unimpressed. Clementi’s B Minor Sonata, Op. 40 No. 2, is more than an excellent example of his demanding keyboard writing. This sonata, composed in 1802, also shows how Clementi was in the avant-garde of music. Experimental in its use of harmony and form, the three sonatas of Clementi’s Op. 40 demonstrate that Italy, rather than simply being a repository of inspirational material, could still produce artists and works that contributed to the artistic discourse of the day. Though Clementi is now far overshadowed by his contemporaries Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, his keyboard writing would influence the coming generation of Romantic composers.
Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Tre Sonnetti di Petrarca Après une lecture du Dante, Fantasia quasi Sonata
Franz Liszt is a colossus of 19th century music. Every musician of the day had to have an opinion of him, and musical Europe was polarized by those who adored him (the vast majority) and those who abhorred his style (a vocal minority). Love him or not, his influence on music in his own day and into the present is unmistakable: he created the concepts of the solo recital and performing from memory, and invented new piano techniques that have kept conservatory students busy for generations since.
Liszt’s keyboard compositions were created primarily for his own use in his early days as a traveling virtuoso. Some of his greatest compositions for the piano were written during these tours, and eventually collected into volumes based on the particular parts of Europe that inspired them. These volumes, known as the Années de pélerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”), describe in music many of Liszt’s experiences. The second volume, Italie, includes the works to be heard this evening.
Petrarch, the Italian poet of the 14th century, was a prime mover of the Renaissance and a figure popular with Romantics. His poems to his unattainable (and perhaps fictitious) love, Laura, teem with images that have inspired artists for centuries. Liszt, encountering these poems on his journeys through Italy, set three of them for voice and piano, but later did away with the voice altogether, leaving us with the current versions for piano solo.
Each of the Sonnetti presents a different aspect of love. The first poem is breathless in its declaration of love: “Blessed be the day and the month and the year and the season and the time and the hour and the instant and the beautiful countryside and the place where I was struck by the two lovely eyes that have bound me.” The second describes the agony of unrequited love: “Peace I do not find, and I have no wish to make war; and I fear and I hope, and burn and am of ice; and I fly above the heavens and lie on the ground; and I grsp nothing and embrace all the world.” The third compares the beloved Laura to angelic choirs: “I saw on Earth angelic qualities and heavenly beauties unique in the world, so that the memory pleases and pins me, for whatever I look on seems dreams, shadows, and smoke.”
The final piece in Italie, Aprés un lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi sonata was inspired by a reading of Dante’s Inferno. Set in D minor, the traditional key for musical descriptions of Hades, the piece begins with the interval of a tritone, considered by Medieval theologians to be the Devil’s interval, and with this our journey into the Underworld begins. While Liszt left behind no specific description of which themes refer to what, there is circumstantial evidence for the following interpretation (Walker, Franz Liszt: the Virtuoso Years, 1811-1847). The next theme, a chromatic descending line in octaves, represents the wailing of the souls trapped in Hell. This theme is transformed into a brilliant chorale in F# Major, with crashing and thundering octaves, that is a musical description of Lucifer himself, “the creature eminent in beauty once.” These three ideas, the tritone, the chromatic line, and the chorale, are transformed in an astonishing array of guises until the piece finds redemption in the key of D Major.
