MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
Program
Georg Muffat: Sonata for violin and continuo
(1645-1704)
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: Sonata V from 8 Sonatae a Violino Solo (1681)
(1644-1704)
Domenico Gabrielli: Sonata in G Major for cello and continuo
(1659-1690)
Grave
Allegro
Largo
Presto
George Frideric Handel: Sonata in g minor, Op.1#6, HWV 364
(1685-1759)
Arcangelo Corelli: Sonata Op.5#12, “La Folia”
(1653-1713)
INTERMISSION
Heinrich Schmelzer: Sonata quinta from Sonatae unarum fidium (1664)
(1623-1680)
J.S. Bach: Toccata in e minor, BWV 914
(1685-1750)
Paul Brantley: dux, comes (world premiere)
1. dux, comes
2. arabian night
Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi: La Biancuccia, Op.4#4
(fl. 1660-1669)
Program Notes
Our program examines the progress of Baroque music from its wild beginnings, to its formalized structure, to our viewpoint of it today.
The wild improvisatory early violin sonata is exemplified by a 1660 work by Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi. Pandolfi worked at the Innsbruck court of Archduke Ferdinand Karl, an avid music patron, and dedicated most of his sonatas to his Italian musical colleagues there. The most striking aspect of Pandolfi’s violin sonatas is the extraordinary harmonic and chromatic language, including use of the forbidden tritone. Like most fantastic style works, this piece is a single multi-sectioned movement with contrasting tempi and characters. This unrestricted form allowed for an extremely wide range of expressive possibilities and experimentation, challenging both the musical and instrumental limits of the time.
This Italian style of masters like Marini, Uccellini and Pandolfi fostered a similar virtuoso violin school of composition which flourished in Austria and Bohemia in the late 1600’s, exemplified by Heinrich von Schmelzer and Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. During a time when Italians dominated the musical scene across Europe, both were famous violin virtuosi, honored with nobility by the addition of “von” to their names. Schmelzer was born in 1620 in Austria, the son of baker. A violinist and cornettist, he worked in the Viennese imperial court orchestra and became the first non-Italian Kapellmeister in Vienna. His violin sonatas of 1664 were the first to be published by a non-Italian. Biber, born in 1644 in Bohemia, was deeply influenced by Schmelzer and may have studied violin with him. He worked as a court musician for a Moravian Count, then left without permission in 1670 for the Salzburg Kapelle, becoming Kapellmeister in 1684 and remaining there until his death in 1704.
Georg Muffat, born in 1653 in Savoy, was of Scottish descent. He enjoyed a cosmopolitan education, studying the French style in Paris with Lully and the Italian style in Rome with Corelli, the two monoliths of their day. Muffat strove to harmoniously blend the two styles in his composition. He studied law for a while in Bavaria, then moved to Vienna to work as musician and may have known Schmelzer there. He next went to Prague, where he wrote his violin sonata in 1677, in the German style of Schmelzer. He left Prague just three years before the plague killed 83,000 there, including Schmelzer, who ironically had fled there with the Viennese court to avoid the epidemic. Muffat then went to Salzburg as cathedral organist (1678-80) and fellow chamber musician with Biber at the Archbishop’s court.
Domenico Gabrielli, a virtuoso cellist and composer active in Bologna, contributed seven ricercares for solo cello and two sonatas for cello and continuo. At this time, the cello was just beginning to come out of its traditional basso continuo role and into the limelight where violinists and trumpet players displayed their technical facility. Inspired by the increasing virtuosity of the Bolognese concerto style, Gabrielli's G major Sonata reflects his awareness of the instrument's sonority and virtuosic capabilities through the use of chords, florid scale passages and active string crossings throughout the sonata's four soulful and energetic movements.
In many ways, the modern sonata was born in the hands of Arcangelo Corelli, who had a staggering and far-reaching influence in his day. He created some of the first expectations regarding the number and order of movements, and the symmetry of form. His popular variations on “La Folia” were written in 1700. The folia (literally “madness”) was a wild dance which originated in Portugal in the late 15th century, but was associated primarily with Spain and Italy by the early 1600’s. Like Greensleeves, its melody and bass pattern have been used extensively for variations by generations of composers, and indeed both tunes are still popular today!
Corelli’s form and structure evolved yet further into the high Baroque sonatas of Georg Frideric Handel and J.S. Bach. His movement structure and symmetry are clearly evident in Handel’s g minor sonata. J.S. Bach's Toccata BWV 914 in E minor probably dates from sometime before 1708. It is constructed in four main sections, beginning with a short but deliberate introduction, followed by a fugal section, a rhapsodic section with dramatic tremolo-like interjections, and a concluding fugue in a fast and exciting character.
What a long road the sonata has traveled from its early fantasia-like freedom to these formalized works, rigid with expectations to be either predictably followed or surprisingly thwarted! These established expectations must be either broken or played upon by today’s composers. They form a musical heritage that can’t be ignored, but must be copied, built upon, used as a point of departure, or rebelled against. Today we look at them from a new perspective over the continuum of history.
Ensemble and Performer Biographies
MUSIC OF THE SPHERES, formed in 2000 for a concurrent event at the Berkeley Early Music Festival, was a main event at the 2002 Bloomington and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, and has been featured on several broadcasts of “Harmonia” and “Performance Today.” Upcoming performances include an appearance at the Tage Alter Musik Festival in Regensburg, Germany. Music of the Spheres believes that music exists to captivate the imagination, stir memories, and evoke intensely personal emotions in both listener and performer alike, and we desire to bring a wider audience to classical music through performances which focus on these aspects.
JEANNE JOHNSON’s performances on series, tours, festivals and recordings in the United States and abroad have been hailed as “stunningly effusive,” and “delivered with gusto,” resulting in National Public Radio, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and local broadcasts. Jeanne won an Early Music America Professional Development Award in 2002, and has been featured on several "Harmonia" and "Performance Today" broadcasts. This April she will give a recital at the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments with harpsichordist Linda Skernick. Jeanne has toured with Vince Gill and Amy Grant, and has played with many groups including Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, Musica nel Chiostro in Tuscany, Portland Baroque, Apollo's Fire, Bloomington Baroque, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, and the Atlanta Symphony. Jeanne studied with James Buswell and Stanley Ritchie, receiving her bachelor's degree in performance with honors from Indiana University and her master's degree with distinction in performance and academics from New England Conservatory. She currently teaches at Clayton College & State University in Atlanta. In addition to playing violin, Jeanne writes and paints and has worked as classical radio announcer.
JOANNA BLENDULF, baroque cello, has performed as soloist and continuo player in leading period-instrument ensembles throughout the United States. Ms Blendulf holds performance degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Indiana University, where she studied with Stanley Ritchie, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Alan Harris. In 1998, she was awarded the prestigious Performer's Certificate for her accomplishments on baroque cello from Indiana University. Ms. Blendulf was a principal cellist of The New World Symphony under Michael Tilson-Thomas and has also performed with the Atlanta Symphony. She is currently a principal cellist of the Portland and Indianapolis Baroque Orchestras and American Bach Soloists and has also performed with Apollo's Fire Baroque Orchestra and the New York Collegium. Ms.Blendulf is also an active chamber musician, touring with American Baroque, Ensemble Mirable, Reconstruction, the Streicher Trio and Wildcat Viols. She was named runner-up in the 2000 Early Music America/Dorian Competition for her recording of the complete cello sonatas of Jean Zewalt Triemer. Ms.Blendulf's summer engagements have included performances at the Bloomington, Boston, Berkeley Early Music Festivals, the Aspen Music Festival as well as the Carmel Bach Festival.
YUKO TANAKA, a native of Tokyo, Japan, is active as harpsichord soloist, ensemble player, and educator. She is a soloist at the Carmel Bach Festival and has performed at the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, Bloomington Early Music Festival, and in broadcast events for National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She performs with numerous ensembles including Musica Pacifica, Music of the Spheres, El Mundo, American Bach Soloists, Musica Angelia Baroque Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and the The Women's Philharmonic. Yuko received a doctorate in early music from Stanford University and has studied with Margaret Fabrizio at Stanford, Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam, and Ketil Haugsand in Oslo, Norway. She has recorded for Koch International and Delos International. One of the highlights this season includes an appearance at the Istanbul International Music Festival in June, 2005.
Composer, cellist, and conductor PAUL BRANTLEY was educated at the Manhattan and Eastman Schools of Music, at the Curtis Institute, and at Tanglewood, where he received the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship and worked directly with Mr. Bernstein. Committed to hands-on, communicative music-making, Brantley has emphasized both composition and performance in his studies, his university teaching (at Syracuse University and at Washington and Lee), and his residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Banff Centre. Brantley's works comprise a broad range of pieces for his own instrument, including the widely performed The Silver in Yellow; The Eternal Return, for piano quintet; and other chamber music, several pieces for children's chorus, including The Playground, a twelve-minute choral opera; Rilke Sonnets, for baritone and string quartet, and much other vocal music; and arrangements of Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite and Bach's Fourteen "Goldberg" Canons, for piano trio, and of the Scherzo of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, for string quintet. He is currently at work on Circle of the Sun, a chamber opera, and a series of Études for solo cello. Brantley has studied with, been performed by, performed with, or recorded with musicians as diverse as Samuel Adler, the Atlanta Symphony, Leonard Bernstein, the Cassatt Quartet, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Alan Harris, Leon Kirchner, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Ned Rorem, Peter Stumpf, Chester Thompson, David Wells, Roy-el "Future Man" Wooten, and the Young People's Chorus of New York City. Paul Brantley lives in New York City and teaches conducting at the Manhattan School of Music. His music is published by Oxford University Press.