From the Musical Heritage Society vault: American oboe virtuoso Humbert Lucarelli performs the six partitas from Georg Philipp Telemann's Kleine Kammermusik and selections from Die getreue Musik-Meister with harpsichordist Gerald Ranck and bassoonist Alan Brown, newly restored in HD sound and available in digital format for the first time.
NOTES by Douglas Townsend
Telemann was born in Magdeburg in 1681, four years before Bach and Handel. Not only did he outlive them both by many years; he lived on into an era which witnessed the birth of the symphony and a completely changed musical culture. His music, to some extent, reflects these changes. Among his compositions are cantatas and choral works almost worthy of his friend Bach (to whom some of these pieces were at first attributed) and comic operas whose general style approaches that of Pergolesi. His instrumental music also reflects the Baroque as well as the galant. Some of his orchestral works are in the style of the Baroque suite, and some combine elements of the concert grosso and concerto, and at least one of Telemann’s solo concertos calls for an orchestra almost the size of Mozart’s at its largest including flutes, oboes, horns, trumpets, and strings. This fine work shows Telemann at his most ‘modern’ and despite its suite- like structure of seven movements (several utilizing dance forms) parts of it r mind us of J. C. Bach whom he did not know, and Rameau, whom he did. This apparent conflict between the old and new styles as they appear in the works of one man becomes understandable if we keep in mind the fact that Telemann was born in 1681. When he died, in 1767, at the age of 86, Mozart was eleven years old and Beethoven’s birth was only three years away.
Telemann’s personality and attitudes towards life and music are implied as well as stated in his autobiography and letters. As a child he was forbidden to learn music, although he managed to take some secret clavier lessons. At the age of twelve he began composing and having his music performed under a pseudonym. An opera of his was given a performance, and he later wrote that “the enemies of music came in a host to see my mother and represent to her that I
would become a charlatan, a tightrope walker, a mummer, a trainer of monkeys, etc. ... if music were not prohibited! No sooner said than done; they took from He was sent to a distant school where he did very well in geometry and also composed a cantata to fulfill a commission for the schoolmaster who had (conveniently ?) become ill. He was then thirteen and was so small he had to stand on a little bench so that the members of the orchestra could see him. “The worthy mountaineers,’” he wrote, “’touched by my appearance rather than my harmonies, carried me in triumph on their shoulders.” To the schoolmaster’s credit, it should be added, Telemann was then allowed to study music in addition to geometry.
When he was seventeen, he moved to Hildesheim, where he attended the gymnasium, to study logic. He also continued his musical studies by teaching himself and by composing. As his models he used Corelli, Caldara and other composers whose styles were representative of the new German and Italian composers and because he found their music “full of invention, cantabile, and at the same well written.’” He once expressed his preference for the graceful and melodic and his dislike for the contrapuntal style by remarking that the young musician should avoid the teachings of old men who “write compositions for fifteen or twenty voices in which not even Diogenes with his lantern could discover a drop of melody.” Paradoxically, his lifelong friend Handel once declared that Telemann could write in eight parts (eight different melodies!) as easily as most people could write a letter.
At the age of twenty, Telemann moved to Leipzig, with the intention of studying law. On his way he passed through Halle where he met the sixteen-year-old Handel, also supposed to be studying law. The two struck up a friendship which endured despite the inevitable parting as Telemann resumed his journey to Leipzig.
At the university in Leipzig, Telemann claimed that his roommate found a psalm of his in his trunk and before long the work was played to the delight of those who heard it. A short time later, Telemann’s mother finally relented and gave her permission for him to become a musician.
Now that a musician’s life was to be his, Telemann became very active as an opera conductor, organist, and teacher. Most important from an historical viewpoint, he put on a series of concerts at which the students and professors performed. These he called Collegium Musicum. These concerts were held in a tobacconist’s shop and were attended only by members and their friends.
In 1705, Telemann became Kapellmeister at the court of Graf Erdmann von Promnitz in Sorau, where he became familiar with French music. In his own words, he studied the French overtures of “Lully, Campra, and other good artists. I applied myself
almost entirely to this style, so that in two years I wrote as many as two hundred overtures.” From the court of Graf von Promnitz, Telemann went to Eisenach where he soon met Bach and became godfather to C. P. E. Bach. In 1713 Telemann founded a Collegium Musicum in Frankfurt, but unlike similar concerts in Leipzig, these were not private.
Telemann concluded his nomadic existence in 1721 by making Hamburg his permanent home. Once again he established a Collegium Musicum which met twice a week and to which the public was admitted for a small fee. These concerts were attended by all the important people of the city and were followed avidly by the critics. They became so popular that many years later a large warm concert hall was built specifically for the use of Telemann’s performers and their audience.
One of Telemann’s most unusual undertakings occurred at this time. This was the first of twenty-five four-page music publications, which he called “Der getreue Musik meister” (The Faithful Music-master). Each of these leaflets contained compositions by Telemann and various other composers. These works, which included instrumental and vocal compositions, were written with the musical amateur in mind so that the pieces were interesting enough to please the professional musician but not too difficult for the average home music-maker. These publications had an interesting “cliff-hang” feature in that one composition was only printed in part, “to be concluded’” in the following issue. In his old age Telemann divided his life between two great loves; music and flowers. In some of his letters from 1742, he writes that he is “insatiable where hyacinths and tulips are concerned, greedy for ranunculi, and especially for anemones.” There is warmth and charm in a note on one of his songs written in 1762 (at the age of 81) when he was regarded as one of Germany’s leading composers: “With an ink too thick, with foul pens, with bad sight, in gloomy weather, under a dim lamp I have composed these pages. Do not scold me!"
Although history has shown that Telemann was not as great a composer as Bach or Handel, he was, perhaps, more “’modern” than either in his approach to music. He once wrote to a fellow composer: “One must never say to art “Thou shalt go no further.’ One is always going further. If there is no longer anything new to be found in melody, it must be sought in harmony . .. They tell me that one must not go too far. And I reply that one must go to the very depths if one would deserve the name of a true master. This is what I wished to justify in my systemn of Intervals, and for this I expect not reproaches, but rather a gratias, at least in the future.’”
The composer-conductor-critic J. A. Scheibe, in the preface to his “Treatise on Intervals’” (1739) confirmed Telemann in his theory of intervals when he wrote “all the
intervals which occur in my system were employed by Telemann in the most graceful manner, and in a fashion so expressive, so moving, so exactly appropriate to the degree of emotion that it is impossible to find any fault with them short of finding fault with Nature herself.”
In the realm of music description, C. P. E. Bach once described Telemann as “a great painter. Among other things he played for me an air in which he expressed the amazement and terror caused by the apparition of a spirit; even without the words, which were wretched, one immediately understood what the music sought to express.”
Although there is no written record of Leopold Mozart’s opinion of Telemann, the little notebook of keyboard works and songs which he compiled for the instruction of young Wolfgang contain more works by Telemann than by any other composer. Since this slim volume was designed to direct the boy’s attention towards what father Leopold considered the finer things in music, we can assume that he considered Telemann one of the better composers of the time.
In 1737, on Telemann’s return from an eight month stay in Paris, the “Hamburgische Berichte von gelehrten Sachen’” suggested that “Herr Telemann will greatly oblige the connoisseurs of music if, as he promises, he will describe the present condition of music in Paris as he came to know it by his own experience, and if he will in this way seek to make French music, which he has done much to bring to fashion, even more highly valued in Germany than it is.” Telemann began to carry out the plan, but it was never completed, and his notes have disappeared.
It is not known exactly how much music Telemann composed, but we arrive at some idea of the quantity by quoting his own figures: Between 1720 and 1740, Telemann estimated that he composed twelve complete cycles of sacred music for all the Sundays and feast days of the year; 19 passions, 20 operas and comic operas, 20 oratorios, 40 serenades, 600 overtures, trios, concertos, clavier works, 700 songs, etc. This does not include the music he wrote before 1720 (including the 200 overtures (suites) he com posed in 1705-1707) or the works he composed between 1740 and the time of his death in 1767. In all it has been estimated that he wrote over 2000 compositions more. There are several extant manuscripts of the Kleine Kammermusik, which was composed in 1716. The present version is based on a printed edition of 1716, although the embellishment in the oboe part was done by Mr. Lucarelli, and the realization of the figured bass was done by Mr. Ranck.
Die Kleine Kammermusik consists of six partitas (or suites) each of which is in six movements. Each
partita opens with a slow movement, all except one of whích are designated simply “con affetto,” or ‘adagio’” (Partitas 1 and 3). Although a partita is made up of several dances, most of the movements of the six suites in Die Kleine Kammermusik are designated “aria.” Those who performed the music when it was first published, however, imme diately recognized the fact that the fifth aria from partita No. 2 is a bourrée, the first aria from No. 3 is a gavotte and so on. While most of the “’arias’” are dances, there are several which are not only in the nature of abstract music, they are virtually highly concentrated types of orchestral movements. Such movements as the "grave: of No. 4, the ‘andante” of No. 5 and the “aria 5” of No. 6 are more characteristic of orchestral music than of the chamber suite. In each of these movements, Telemann’s counterpoint is somewhat more involved than in most of the dances. The "grave” of No. 4 is especially interesting because the ex- pressive melody with which it opens is really the subject of a miniature two-part fugue between the melody and bass.
PARTITA No. I IN B FLAT opens with a “con affetto” which is structurally related to a concerto slow movement, the solo instrument represented by the opening melody, the orchestra by the answering phrase played by the continuo, in this case the bassoon. Formally, the movement is in three parts the first and third in a major key, the second in the minor. Of the next two “arias’” (‘presto’ and “dolce”), the first is undoubtedly a dance ; its rhythms having elements of the bourrée and gavotte. The second also contains certain affinities to the dance; in this case because of its symmetrical structure and certain melodic characteristics, the folk dance. “Aria 3. Vivace” is a jig and “Aria 4. Largo” is a sarabande. Telemann’s music abounds in rhythmic surprises, and it is partly this element of the unexpected which places him above so many of his contemporaries. The syncopated rhythms of “Aria 5,” which, incidentally has no tempo designation, and the rhythmic changes of “Aria 6. Allegro” catch us unawares and Telemann, like a good craftsman, uses the effect sparingly and effectively.
PARTITA No. 2 IN G begins with a “Siciliana,’” which was a very popular dance during the early 18th century. The next two movements resemble a bourrée and jig, while “Aria 3. Allegro” resembles a rejouissance which was an early 18th century dance of rejoicing. The “Aria 4. Affettuoso” is very much in the style of the French galant, while “Aria 5. Presto’”’ is actually a bourrée. “Aria 6. Tempo di Minuet’” is a minuet with a middle section which serves the place of a trio, though it is not so indicated in the music.
There is a quality of nobility about the “Adagio” of the PARTITA No. 3 IN C MINOR which suggests an opera aria, or one of those long sustained melodies generally associated with Handel, “Aria 1. Presto’” is a gavotte and “Aria 2. Vivace’” resembles an allemande. There is some of the character of the
forlane (an Italian dance which Bach used in the first orchestral suite) in “Aria 3. Vivace.” The remaining “’arias’” of the suite are based on dances though it is not possible at this time to identify them in more detail.
PARTITA No. 4 IN G MINOR begins with a slow (grave) two-voice fugue. “Aria 2. Allegro” is a gavotte. An unusual feature of this movement is the “running” bass which doesn’t stop until the end of the movement. “Aria 3. Tempo di Minuet” is followed by two movements which appear to bear out the original meaning of the word “air,” as applied to the suite, meaning a movement which is not necessarily a dance.
The first movement of PARTITA No. 5 IN E MINOR is orchestral in its lowing melodies, and resembles a movement to one of the Telemann concerti which Bach arranged for harpsichord solo. Arias 1-3 resemble various early 18th century dances, without any dances actually being named. “Aria 4.” It is called “Siciliana”” by the composer and arias 5 and 6 are obviously a jig and bourrée without actually being labeled as such.
PARTITA No. 6 IN E FLAT begins with an ”Affettuoso’” which once again reminds us of a slow movement by Handel. “Aria 1. Presto” is rhythmically similar to a bourrée. While “Aria 2. Vivace” is similar to a jig. In “Aria 3. Tempo di Ciaconna,’” Telemann has managed to concentrate into a few dozen measures the musical ingredients for a movement several times this length. A "ciaconna’” (or chaconne) consists of a series of variations generally over a melodic bass which is constantly repeated. Telemann’s “Ciaconna” includes not only an interlude and eleven variations, but a coda as well. It is due to this type of craftsmanship that he was regarded as one of the finest miniaturists of his time. “”Aria 4. Allegro” is a jig, while “”Aria 5. Allegro,” like several other airs in these partitas, is not really a dance at all, but more in the nature of purely instrumental music.
THE OBOE SONATA IN A MINOR is from "Der Musik- meister,’” and was composed in 1728. Its four movement form is in the baroque tradition of the sonata da chiesa. The waning of the baroque era is also present in this work, since the first movement is a dance (Siciliana) and would have been most unusual in a composition composed twenty years carlier. The second movement, spirituoso, is similar in style to some of the violin sonatas of Telemann’s Italian con temporary Vivaldi. The third movement (andante) also brings to mind some of the arioso qualities of many of Vivaldi’s slow movements. Although written for the oboe, the middle of the last movement, vivace, offers so few opportunities for the player to catch his breath it appears that Telemann had an alternate instrument, the violin, in mind.
The four little pieces on this record are also from "Der Getreue Musikmeister” and represent
Telemann as a miniaturist. L'HIVER (Winter) may lack the extra-musical meaning for us which its title implies, but it is clear from its tunefulness and harmonic variety why the composer was so well thought of by his contemporaries. NIAISE, the name of the next movement, is the feminine form, in French, of “’something silly.” Telemann wrote the piece for a “Mamlle Kelp” who was a dancer, and intended it as a kind of joke since his tempo marks indicate that it should be played with a dragging and unsteady rhythm.
NAPOLITANA is a short character piece, while AIR TROMPETTE is the kind of work which easily have been played on a trumpet in Telemann’s time, as it lies well within the range of that instrument.
