Tag Archives: Baroque era

by | February 5, 2021 · 6:00 am

Giovanni Stefani’s song anthologies

In 2020 A-R Editions issued Giovanni Stefani’s song anthologies (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2020-14972), which brings together for the first time all three of Stefani’s anthologies in modern transcription, allowing performers to play either from the original alfabeto notation or from a modern realization, given both in modern guitar chord symbols and harmonies in staff notation, making it possible for all instruments to participate in the continuo band.

The three song anthologies of Giovanni Stefani survive as the most abundantly printed seventeenth-century songbooks with the chordal guitar notation known in Italy as alfabeto. Printed in multiple editions from 1618 to 1626, Stefani’s books anthologize nearly one hundred songs, many of which appear copied in numerous other manuscripts, attesting to their widespread appeal in early modern Italy.

While beginners will be drawn to their simplicity, experienced performers will delight in the improvisational opportunities made available by songs built on the spagnoletta, folia, ciaconna, and romanesca.

Above, the cover of Stefani’s first anthology, Affetti amorosi; below, Costanza amorosa as it appears therein.

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by | July 23, 2020 · 6:00 am

Serenatas for Dublin

Johann Sigismund Kusser (or, as he was known in England and Ireland, John Sigismond Cousser) was a Hungarian-born musician who, after a varied and successful career in the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire, settled in Ireland in July 1707.

In Dublin Kusser composed and directed the performances of at least 21 festive serenatas that marked important state occasions in Dublin between 1709 and his death in late 1727. Presented before the elite of local society in semistaged productions featuring costumes, stage machinery, and dancing, these works functioned as something of an operatic substitute in the city’s cultural life.

In 2020 A-R Editions issued Kusser: Serenatas for Dublin (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2020-1963), a critical edition comprising the three serenatas for which music remains extant. Two of these can be proven definitively to be of Kusser’s own composition, and the third, due to its musical style, overall structure, and subject matter, is almost certainly his creation as well. These works provide remarkably rare musical evidence of a key component of the artistic offerings of Dublin’s viceregal court during the early decades of the eighteenth century.

Below, “Come, lovely peace, the conqu’ror calls” from An idylle on the peace, one of the works included in the volume.

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by | December 23, 2019 · 6:00 am

A Baroque Christmas parody Mass

 

Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe minuit de Noël, H.9, is a rare example of a Baroque parody Mass.

Composed in the 1690s while Charpentier worked at the Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis in Paris (above), the Messe minuit de Noël is based on 11 French noëls—popular monophonic songs associated with Christmas—which are used as the structural basis of several sections of the Mass, and are integrated alongside newly composed musical material.

Several of the eleven noëls are themselves derived from secular chansons and are linked to Renaissance and early-Baroque dances, especially the branle, the basse danse, and the menuet. The rhythmic organization of the noël-based sections of the Mass reflects the roots of each noël in dance.

Interestingly, this type of rhythmic organization often conflicts with the metrical organization implied by the time signature. Charpentier’s Mass is fascinating due to the distinction and the interaction between the borrowed non-metrical noëls and his newly composed music, and the competing layers of stress and accent that emerge in performance.

This according to “Dance rhythms in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe minuit de Noël” by Steven Grives (Choral journal XLIX/6 [December 2008] pp. 36–44).

Below, the Deutsch-Französischer Chor Dresden performs the work.

Photograph of the Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis 2013 by Zinneke.

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by | September 10, 2019 · 6:00 am

Restoration music for three violins, bass viol and continuo

 

In 2018 Stainer & Bell issued Restoration music for three violins, bass viol and continuo, a critical edition of a small yet distinctive corpus of instrumental music at the Restoration court of Charles II and in the Catholic chapel of James II.

Introduced to England by the German violinist Thomas Baltzar, the genre was adopted by John Jenkins, whose ten fantasia-suites for three violins, bass viol, and continuo, together with five sonatas for the same group of instruments by Gottfried Finger (above), constitute the bulk of this volume.

Below, Finger’s Sonata in D major, op. 1, no. 9, one of the works included in the collection.

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by | August 19, 2019 · 6:00 am

Livre d’airs et de simphonies mélez de quelques fragmens d’opéra

 

In 2018 A-R Editions issued Livre d’airs et de simphonies mélez de quelques fragmens d’opéra, a critical edition of a collection of works by Pierre Gillier that was first published in 1697.

The appetite for amateur music making in late seventeenth-century France led to an unprecedented demand for published chamber music. Gillier’s volume, comprising 64 small-scale vocal and instrumental works with basso continuo accompaniment, was one of a number of publications designed to meet this demand.

The collection is unusual in offering a variety of genres and is especially noteworthy for Gillier’s strategy of organizing the pieces “in order to make small chamber concerts out of them.”

Below, an excerpt featuring the voice of Sara Macliver.

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by | July 15, 2019 · 6:00 am

Villancicos from Mexico City

 

In 2019 A-R Editions issued Manuel de Sumaya: Villancicos from Mexico City, a critical edition of all 34 villancicos with music by Sumaya conserved at the Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de María in Mexico City.

Recognized as the most significant composer from New Spain in the early eighteenth century, Manuel de Sumaya oversaw musical activity at the Cathedral during a time of stylistic change. Locally born and ordained as a priest, Sumaya wrote music that mixes the counterpoint and rhythmic vigor of seventeenth-century Hispanic music with more modern Italianate gestures prescient of international taste in the eighteenth century.

Scored for one to 12 voices with basso continuo and sometimes violins, these pieces communicate theological, doctrinal, and historical ideas about St. Peter, St. Rose of Lima, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Christmas, Corpus Christi, and other celebrations of the Catholic Church. Complete translations of the Baroque texts into English and commentary on historical performance practices included in the edition aim to facilitate revival of this key repertoire of colonial music.

Above, the composer; below, Hoy sube arrebatada, one of the works included in the edition.

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by | February 7, 2019 · 6:00 am

John Eccles: The judgment of Paris

 

In 2018 A-R Editions issued the first critical edition of John Eccles’s opera The judgment of Paris.

The work was one of at least four operas on the same libretto (written by William Congreve) composed for the 1701 Prize Musick competition sponsored by London’s Kit-Cat Club with the aim of promoting native English, all-sung opera; it won second place in the competition, after John Weldon’s setting, though it later became the most popular of the settings composed for the competition.

Scored for soloists, chorus, strings and continuo, with individual movements featuring transverse flute, recorders, and trumpets and timpani, the opera unfolds within a single act and depicts the mythological story of Paris and the three goddesses. Below, the opening of a 2016 performance by the Columbia New Opera Workshop.

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by | November 10, 2018 · 6:00 am

Couperin and aesthetic reconciliation

 

François Couperin’s first attempts to reconcile French and Italian musical tastes came shortly after 1700, at the height of a prolonged conflict between the two musical nationalities. Despite Couperin’s authority, this contention was not to abate until the close of the 18th century, when both Italians and French were confronted with the rise of German music.

Already in the last decades of the 17th century, an Italianizing tendency had appeared under the tyranny of Lully and his followers in both Paris and the provinces. When Couperin intervened as a mediator in the resulting polemic he was not the first to do so—others less eminent had preceded him.

While his celebrated trio sonatas (1691–92) were strongly influenced by Corelli, the greater part of his output was purely French in character. But toward the end of his career, Couperin’s Les gouts rénuis (1724) and Le Parnasse ou l’apothéose de Corelli (1725), provided eloquent testimony to his desire to appropriate without partiality the best features of the different styles.

This according to “François Couperin et la conciliation des goûts français et italien” by Marc Pincherle (Chigiana XXV/5 [1968] pp. 69–80).

Today is Couperin’s 350th birthday! Below, Gli Incogniti plays l’Apothéose de Corelli.

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by | November 29, 2011 · 1:00 am

Bach Cantatas Website

Bach Cantatas Website is a comprehensive open-access resource covering all aspects of  Bach’s cantatas and his other vocal works, including discussions and detailed discographies of each cantata and other vocal works, performers, and general topics.

The website also provides texts and translations, scores, musical examples, articles and interviews, and over 8,000 short biographies of performers of Bach’s vocal works and players of his keyboard and lute works, as well as of poets and composers associated with Bach.

Also included are relevant resources such as the Lutheran church year, a  database of chorale texts and melodies and their authors, detailed discographies and discussions of many Bach’s instrumental works—including solo keyboard and lute works as well as Die Kunst der Fuge and Musikalisches Opfer—and their performers, reviews, and transcriptions.

Further resources include lists of books and films on Bach, terms and abbreviations, concerts of Bach’s vocal works, Bach festivals, and cantata series; as well as a guide to Bach, a discussion of Bach in arts and memorabilia, and thousands of links to other relevant resources.

More posts about J.S. Bach are here.

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by | June 25, 2011 · 1:00 am

Music stamps redux

Music philately began with the issuance of some of the very first postage stamps in the mid-nineteenth century: The inaugural issues of several European countries included images of post horns. Purists may argue that post horns were mere signaling devices, but at that time they were already being used in classical compositions, so their depictions may be considered musical images.

Other nineteenth-century stamps featured depictions of prominent political figures who were also musicians—for example, Argentina issued a stamp honoring the statesman and composer Juan Bautista Alberdi in 1888 (left)—but they were concerned with politics rather than music. The first explicitly musical stamp was Poland’s issuance honoring Ignacy Jan Paderewski in 1919.

Through the 1950s countries increasingly celebrated Western classical musicians and composers. In the 1960s all aspects of musical life became potential subjects—institutions, festivals, instruments, dancers, and so on—and non-European countries asserted their national identities with images of their own traditional and historical music cultures. In the later twentieth century images of popular and jazz musicians gained increasing demand .

This according to A checklist of postage stamps about music by Johann A. Norstedt (London: Philatelic Music Circle, 1997), which lists some 14,000 stamps with music-related images.

Above, stamps issued in Northern Cyprus in 1985, which was designated European Music Year by the Europa Federation (click images to enlarge). Below, a curious video about Robert Burns iconography.

Related article: Postage stamps.

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