<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Program Notes -- Musica Pacifica</title> <!-- Edit this! --> <meta name="author" content="Paul K. Stockmeyer"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1"> </head> <body bgcolor="#CFFFFF" link="#000080" alink="#000080" vlink="#000080"> <center> <img src="CMSWlogo.gif" width="298" height="140" alt="Chamber Music Society Logo"><br> <h2><i>The Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg</i></h2> </center> <br> <table width="740" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="180" valign="top"> <p><a href="index.html">Home</a></p> <p>Our <a href="2011.html">2011-2012</a><br> Season</p> <p>Past Seasons:</p> <p><a href="2010.html">2010--2011</a> <br> <a href="2009.html">2009--2010</a><br> <a href="2008.html">2008--2009</a><br> <a href="2007.html">2007--2008</a><br> <a href="2006.html">2006--2007</a><br> <a href="2005.html">2005--2006</a><br> <a href="2004.html">2004--2005</a></p> <p><a href="tickets.html">Subscriptions</a><br> <a href="tickets.html">and Tickets</a></p> <p><a href="contact.html">Contact Us</a></p></td> <td width="500" valign="top"> <!-- Here is where you put stuff specific to this page. --> <center><h3>PROGRAM NOTES</h3></center> <p>The program highlights two of the musical hotbeds of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Italy and Germany. Italy gave birth to the revolutionary style called <i>"la seconda prattica"</i> which gave primacy to a single vocal line, leading to the development of opera, sonatas for solo instruments, and, eventually, the concerto. Meanwhile, composers from the German-speaking countries continued to be trained in the older traditions of complex, imitative counterpoint. Composers from both worlds sought opportunities in both education and employment by traveling back and forth across the Alps. Through these contacts, Italian wit and invention were continually brought to new levels of excellence by several generations of cosmopolitan composers from Austria and Germany.</p> <br> <b>VIVALDI. <i>Concerto in F Major, RV100</i></b> <p>Antonio Vivaldi is credited as the inventor of the concerto as we know it: a technical showpiece for a soloist set against a backdrop of strings. While this model became a definitive genre emulated throughout Europe, Vivaldi also explored another type of concerto setting, one that never achieved the same popularity in his time, but which nevertheless influenced both Bach and Telemann, as well as other German composers of the period: the chamber concerto for an ensemble of two to four solo instruments plus basso continuo. Here, instead of the orchestral strings serving as the "back-up band," the soloists themselves function as the orchestral <i>tutti,</i> performing the recurring thematic material, or <i>ritornellos,</i> and then take turns playing the more virtuosic solo passages in between.</p> <br> <b>BUXTEHUDE. <i>Sonata in B-flat Major</i></b> <p>Dietrich Buxtehude was one of the towering figures in German music during the late 17th century -- a brilliant organist and composer with an international reputation for excellence. (The 20- year-old J.S. Bach famously walked many wintry miles on foot just to hear him play.) The set of pieces from which our selection is taken contains seven sonatas for violin, viola da gamba and continuo, all of which are consistently inventive, attractive, and technically and musically challenging.</p> <br> <b>SCHMELZER. <i>Sonata Quarta in D Major</i></b> <p>Johann Schmelzer, one of the leading violin virtuosi of his generation, was among the first composers north of the Alps to take the fecund Italian style and work it into something distinctively Austrian. In his hands, the then-current sectional sonata form expanded considerably in length, and, in sonatas for several instruments, an accomplished contrapuntalism was a frequent element, contributing to a greater sense of gravity and richness.</p> <br> <b>MERULA. <i>Conzona "La Strada" (1637)</i></b> <p>Tarquinio Merula was born in Cremona, probably in 1594 or 1595, and died there in 1665. He spent most of his life employed as <i>maestro di capella</i> at the cathedrals in Cremona and Bergamo. Although he was well-known during his lifetime as a composer of sacred works (many of which were based on secular songs and dances), he is also remembered for his innovative instrumental pieces, which combine solid compositional craftsmanship with an offhand, nearly casual gift for musical juxtaposition.</p> <br> <b>FALCONIERI. <i>Passacalle</i></b> <p>Born and initially trained in Naples (at that time under the Spanish crown), Andrea Falconieri moved to northern Italy shortly after 1600, where he was employed as a musician at the most prestigious courts. After extended travels to Spain and France, he eventually returned to his hometown to become <i>maestro di capella</i> of the royal chapel until his death. His music appropriately incorporates a range of national styles and spans a dramatic period of musical transition, representing the past with its old-fashioned contrapuntal canzone and the future with its clearly tonally-oriented harmonic language.</p> <br> <b>ROSSI. <i>Sonata Sopra L'Aria Di Ruggierro</i></b> <p>Salamone Rossi was unique as a Jewish composer at the Catholic court of Mantua. His works include Italian madrigals and canzonets, and a number of sacred vocal works in Hebrew for use in synagogue services. He is credited with originating the trio sonata in his <i>Sinfonie e Galiarde</i> (1607).</p> <br> <b>BACH. <i>Trio Sonata in C Major</i></b> <p>Although J.S. Bach never traveled to Italy (in fact, he never left his home country), he was nevertheless greatly influenced by the music of Italian composers, among them Frescobaldi, Corelli, Marcello, and especially Vivaldi, whose works he copied out by hand in his youth, and later made arrangements of some of them. While working as cantor at the Thomasschule in Leipzig during the last 27 years of his life, Bach compiled a set of six organ sonatas, or "trios," for two manuals and obbligato pedal. Composed in three independent parts throughout, with an unusually active pedal part, the sonatas are in true Italianate trio-sonata texture, and many of them in fact may have originated as works for chamber ensemble.</p> <br> <b>SAMMARTINI. <i>Sonata IV, Op. 2</i></b> <p>Born in Milan, Giuseppe Sammartini was best known during his lifetime as an oboist. In 1726, the great flutist/composer Johann Joachim Quantz heard him in the Milan opera orchestra and ranked him with Vivaldi as one of Italy s finest instrumentalists. Sammartini moved to England around 1728 and began working in the opera orchestras under Bononcini and Handel, performing the most important oboe solos and doubling on flute and recorder as well. The music historian Sir John Hawkins praised him as "the greatest [oboist] that the world had ever known".</p> <br> <b>TELEMANN. <i>Concerto No. 2 in D Major</i></b> <p>Georg Philipp Telemann was perhaps the most popular German composer of the High Baroque, and certainly the most prolific. Copious and often-reprinted (and pirated) editions of his works ensured their dissemination to all parts of Europe; however, Telemann s "international" style fusing the best of French, Italian, and German characteristics must also surely have contributed to his popularity and fame during his lifetime. Telemann wrote almost 50 works for three melodic parts over a bass; and the D Major quartet on today s program was one of his first essays in the quartet medium.</p> <table><tr><td width="480" align="right"><i>-- Program Notes by Musica Pacifica</i></td></tr></table> <!-- End of stuff specific to this page. --> </td> <td width="60"> </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>