Faculty Recital Lute music from France and Germany Professor Mark Rimple 11-course Baroque lute Monday, October 29, 2018 Ware Family Recital Hall Swope Music Building 7:30 PM
PROGRAM Prelude in C major (Dresden Ms.) ........................................................ Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687 - 1750) Sonate 2 in C major ........................................................................... Johann Gottfried Conradi (16?? – 1747) I. Prélude II. Allemande III. Courante IV. Menuet V. Gigue Phantasia in D minor ............................................................................................. David Kellner (c. 1670 - 1748) Prelude “A mi la mineur” ..................................................................................... Jacques Gallot (c. 1625 – 1695) Chaconne (Saizenay Ms.) ........................................................................................... Anonymous Courante “La belle Homicide” ................................................... Ennemond “Vieux” Gaultier (c. 1515 /17 – 1651) Repeats from Double pour la belle Homicide ........................................................ Charles Mouton (1617 – before 1699) Phantasia in A minor..........................................................................................................Kellner
Intermission Tombeau du Mareschal du Turenne, Allemande .............................................................Gallot Chaconne “La Comete”.......................................................................................................Gallot Sarabande “La belle Chromatique”. ...................................................................................Gallot Prelude in F Major (Dresden Ms.) ..................................................................................... Weiss Partita in F ............................................................................ Johann Anton Losy von Losinthal (1650 – 1721) I. Ouverture II. Allemande III. Courrente IV. Gavotte V. Menuette I & II VI. Bourree VII. Guige [sic]
Mark Rimple, 11 course Baroque lute (luthier: Cezar Mateus, 2016) Please Turn Off All Electronic Devices
NOTES The lute’s long ancestry contains a few evolutionary branches that completely changed the nature of its use and how composers wrote for it. In the transition from Arabic to medieval European lutes, this included changes of tuning, adaptation to different scales, the addition of 12 frets to fix pitches for the harmonic and melodic sounds of polyphony, and eventually, the favoring of finger-style over plectrum techniques. The “classic” Renaissance instrument with six courses (pairs of strings) was fixed around 1500, and for the next century the largest changes included the slow addition of bass courses to most instruments, resulting in 7, 8, 9, and eventually 10 courses. The addition of long bass extensions on the archlute and theorbo created a new phylum of its own, while the smaller lute continued to be played, even in its classic 6-course version, well into the 17th and even 18th centuries. In Italy, the viel ton (old tuning) continued especially in Rome, where the archlute became the continuo and solo instrument. But while the 10-course lute in viel ton continued to be used to accompany singers in France for much of the 17th century, new tunings were developed, mainly in Paris by René Mesangeau, still using a 10-course instrument, but also an Italian composer (P. P. Melii) who wrote for an extended-necked lute (liuto attiorbato). Mesangeau was a Musicien ordinaire du Roy from 1621, achieving wide fame. His most successful nouveau accord (“new tuning”), essentially a d-minor triad with several stepwise basses, took hold and was spread through his publications and his famous students, including the first of the great Gaultier family, Ennemond, the “old” Gaultier. An eleventh course was added early in the century, and this became the classic Baroque instrument for 17 th century French music, which was spread abroad in manuscripts like the famous Burwell lute tutor (compiled for a student of a Gaultier) in England and the Milleran and other manuscripts in Germany. Ennemond immortalized Mesangeau by writing the first lament, or tombeau, for him – an expressive Allemande full of dissonance and graceful ornaments that were so important to the French lute, and later, harpsichord styles of the 17th century. Many such works were written by lutenists and harpsichordists in this period for nobles, other musicians, and, as in another example on this program, military heroes. Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne (1611 – 1675), the Seneschal du Turenne, died in a cannon fusillade on the field in Germany in 1675 and was immortalized in music by Jacques Gallot. Turenne supported the monarchy throughout the Thirty Years War. Louis XIV appointed him the Marshall of France in 1643 and Marshall General in 1660. Because of his many military successes including famous victories in the Thirty Years’ War and the routing of the Spanish from the Netherlands, his statue was erected in Versailles. Some of the works by the best of the French style are characteristic dances, often with fanciful titles like “la belle chromatique”, “la belle homocide”, or “le Comet”, each of which could represent a particular courtier or even a type of person within French
society. The tradition of naming works enigmatically was found in court circles across early modern Europe (e.g., the “Lachrimae Pavin” of Dowland, or, much earlier, the istanpita “Principio di virtu” for Gian Galeazzo Visconti), and is perhaps best known to modern audiences through the fanciful titles of miniatures by French harpsichordistcomposers François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Reameau. These works have their origins in courtly dance, which was highly refined in the later seventeenth century, and had not yet quite begun to be arranged in ordres (suites) in all of the lute collections, as will be the case with Couperin. The courante was an especially important genre for French lutenist-composers; Robert Ballard published quite a number of these dances in the arpeggiated style early in the century for ten-course lute, and the “broken” figuration of these dances is quite characteristic of the change from the more transparently contrapuntal style of earlier lute music. Gaultier’s sarabande “La belle homicide” is a more melodically-driven version of a dance that originally consisted of strummed chords and little else; its slightly more prattling double (variation in smaller note values) by Charles Mouton was copied into a student’s lute book. The graces like port du voix, pincees and tremblements are also increased in Mouton’s version. One of the most colorful dance movement on the program is Gallot’s La belle Chromatique, which explores quite a number of flat keys – a dark place for a lute tuned in d minor – across the scope of the strings and fingerboard in such a way that the instrument truly shows its true colors. Another particularly French style is heard in Gallot’s unmeasured prelude, a genre begun by lutenists and adopted by harpsichordists. The chaconne, often in rondeau form (with recurring refrains), is heard on this program in Gallot’s sumptuous Comete, and a sparse but alluring work by an anonymous lutenist found in the Vaudrey de Saizenay manuscript, compiled by its namesake, a politician who lived at the end of the French lute’s dominance. By this time, the harpsichord had displaced the lute and lutenists left Paris to find employment abroad. The 11-course instrument had a second life in Germany and Eastern Europe, where composers at first adopted the French style wholesale and then began to develop their own repertory. Bach’s lute-playing friend and sometime collaborator, the great Sylvius Leopold Weiss, added two more courses. It used to be assumed that the four suites published by modern editors as Bach’s lute works were composed for the 13-course instrument, but evidence is poor that these works were originally destined for the instrument, and none is found in the composer’s own hand in lute tablature form. The 11-course lute continued to be used even after the invention of the 13-course instrument; in fact, it would be for the smaller instrument that the lute works by Kellner would be published in the late 1740s. One of the most famous galant composers for the lute was a very rich, Bohemian Count, Jan Antonín Losy, or Le Comte d’Logy (1650 – 1721). His lute works were
spread mostly in manuscript and are of varying quality. However, he was held in high esteem by the younger generation of German lutenists, especially due to his incorporation of the more mainstream melodic style of the Italian Baroque within the broken French style. His playing was compared to the very best of the French lutenists by his contemporaries. The German (originally Sileisian) lutenist Weiss’ most popular (then and now) works was a tombeau for Losy for 13-course lute. While Bohemia couldn’t boast the long lute traditions of Sileisa or of Vienna, Thomas Janowka noted that by 1700 “one could cover the roofs of the palaces of Prague with lutes”, so popular had the instrument become. Several different players and editors have compiled the suite on this program in various forms from scattered dances that seem to be related to one another. The suite includes a beautiful example of the French overture with the customary fugal middle section, in the style of Lully, whose music (and that of Fux) Logy was said to adore. This is followed by several different French dance movements, several of which use the same thoroughbass (harmonic) structure – a procedure described and modeled by the German theorist Friederich Niedt in his Musical Guide, Pt. 2 (1721). A familiar example of this large-scale formal device can be heard in J.S. Bach’s partita for unaccompanied violin, BWV 1004, which concludes with the famous chaconne. The allemande and courante are the most closely linked of Losy’s movements, though aspects of the allemande occur even in some of the chord voicings of the gavotte. Losy’s gigue (misspelled in the manuscript) begins with a common Italian bass pattern, the Romanesca, which was used by Corelli, Bononcini and Handel repeatedly for finale-like or frenetic arias and concerto finales. The C major lute suite by Johan Georg Conradi comes from his sole lute publication. Conradi wrote operas for the first German public opera house in Hamburg, where luminaries like Theile, Steffani, Pallavicino, Kaiser, Handel and Graupner had their successes with German-language opera. Later the theater was led by Telemann and saw premieres by Pergolesi, Hasse, and Gluck. His suite is more concise and more consistently effusive than Losy’s, indulging in the special effects available to the best lutenists – campanella (cross-string scales), a profusion of French graces (trills, mordents, and the like), and a more secure and varied harmonic palate. As in Losy’s suite, Conradi’s dances all partake of the same, broad harmonic motion. The opening overture contains many of the same virtuosic arpeggiation and scale techniques that are found in the work of Weiss and his contemporaries, and unlike Bach’s over-written lute works, is written with intimate knowledge of the instrument. The work of David Kellner, the organist, poet, lawyer, lutenist and composer whose music opens this program, is known (if at all) to modern historians of music theory because he wrote one of the best-selling continuo manuals (Truelicher Unterricht im Generalbass, Hamburg, 1732), where he was the first to show the circle of fifths in its modern form, and also advocated for a sort of equal temperament. Like Conradi (and unlike Bach), Kellner knew the 11-course instrument intimately, as two of his Phantasies from
his single lute collection, XVI. auserlesene Lauten-Stücke (1747, Hamburg), demonstrates. He was a contemporary of J.S. Bach, born near Leipzig, and found his employment in Sweden. He fought against the Polish and Saxons on the battlefield and nearly lost his life on a charge of treason against the Swedish, where he was a prisoner of war following a devastating loss to the Danes. He spent the remainder of his life almost entirely in Stockholm, where he was the carillon player (one of his lute works imitates this instrument) and organist at St. Jacob’s church, where his job description insisted on his ability to improvise in fugal style and perform extempore music on the organ. His continuo treatise, written in the last period of his career, praises Weiss’ lute accompaniment, and it is the lute collection that was to be his last publication. But Kenneth Sparr’s biographical study of Kellner demonstrates that these two examples are only joined by the use of lutes in one of his ensemble works, and so the lute is an enigmatic aspect of his career – much as it is for Conradi and J.S. Bach. Sparr does note that the composer’s stepdaughter, Regina, was probably associated with Weiss and to the lutenists in Germany where she lived and performed as a harpsichordist. A recent critic of Kellner’s lute works writing for Gramophone attacked the works of Kellner as “slight”, probably because the model of Germanic lute music for modern listeners is Weiss, and even Weiss has to “stand up” to Bach’s genius in his keyboard works for the Lautenwerke that have masqueraded as lute masterpieces. While Bach’s harmonic style is more ingenious and his counterpoint daring, Kellner is no slouch in his use of harmony as an expressive device. If you compare his work to the tradition that it concludes, these works gain a different grandeur. Certainly, they anticipate the Classic style that guitarists would pioneer in the next generations in Vienna and elsewhere (e.g., Giuliani’s Grand Overture and the sonatas of Fernando Sor) in their virtuosic figurations. But they also crown the venerable lute tradition of writing in a broken style that began with Robert Ballard, Michelanguolo Galilei, and later, Gaultier, Mouton, and Gallot, that continued in the German style of Conradi, Weiss and Bach, though on a keyboard, most likely (c.f. the Preludio, BWV 999 in c minor). While Bach is clearly the better composer, Kellner shows us what lutenists of the day could actually play, and what these players would pay good money to secure for their music stands. The period from the birth of the d-minor lute and its final work is barely a century and a half, but it demonstrates that the repertory and gestures created in early 17th century France were alive and well in Germany in the 18th century, modified by the love of the Italian style. The richness of the work for a single instrument over this period is certainly worth exploring, and I look forward to diving even deeper into this music in the future. - Mark Rimple
UPCOMING WELLS SCHOOL OF MUSIC EVENTS For full event details visit www.wcupa.edu/music or call (610) 436-2739 Thursday, November 1, 2018, 12:00 PM Madeleine Wing Adler Concert Series Emily Bullock, director Madeleine Wing Adler Grand Foyer Performing Arts Center Thursday, November 1, 2018, 8:15 PM Woodwind Chamber Recital Henry Grabb, director Ware Family Recital Hall Swope Music Building Friday, November 2, 2018, 6:00 PM Senior Recital: Lauren Longhi, soprano Randall Scarlata, director Ware Family Recital Hall Swope Music Building Friday, November 2, 2018, 7:30 PM Opera Production: A Bernstein Celebration Randall Scarlata, director Madeleine Wing Adler Theatre Performing Arts Center Saturday, November 3, 2018, 12:00 PM Senior Recital: Haley Cowan, percussion Ralph Sorrentino, director Ware Family Recital Hall Swope Music Building *Tickets required for this event.
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