Music of the Pleasure Gardens
Aspect Foundation for Music & Art
The Four Nations Ensemble
Thursday, April 28, 2022, at 7:30 PM
Bohemian National Hall, NYC
Microcosm of London, 1809, bu Rudolph Ackermann
THE ARTISTS
Pascale Beaudin, soprano
Olivier Brault, violin
Charles Brink, flute
Thomas Cooley, tenor
Chloe Fedor, violin
Kristen Linfante, viola
Loretta O'Sullivan, cello
Andrew Appel, harpsichord & director
THE PROGRAM
G. F. Handel:
Sonata in D major for violin & continuo
Waft her, Angels (Jeptha)
Sweet Bird (L'Allegro)
J. C. Bach:
Quartet in C major for flute, violin, viola & cello
Thomas Chilcott:
Orpheus with his Lute
F. J. Haydn:
Three Scot Songs
Symphony 104 London arr for flute, string quartet & keyboard
George Frideric Handel by Balthasar Denner
When Handel arrived in London he was 27 years old. He was young and a genius: Handsome, energetic, and a sponge for every available influence both old and new. He had mastered the skills of the North German organ school and his counterpoint was adept and personal. In Hamburg where an international opera house exhibited an undefined marriage of styles, promising but failing to create a German national opera, he heard and wrote trilingual stage works with moments in French, Italian and German. He grew comfortable setting all three languages. He departed for Italy where he enjoyed the admiration of the greatest patrons and poets and the guidance of the finest elders (Corelli and Scarlatti). He nurtured close friendships with young men who would participate in his future career including Caldara, Domenico Scarlatti, and Giovanni Bononcini.
When Handel arrived in London, Henry Purcell had been dead for 17 years. London had been on the verge of creating an English national opera that may have changed much of music history had Purcell not died so young and if there had been a native composer of similar powers to lead. In the height of his career, when being favorably compared to Henry Purcell, Handel’s response was, “O got ter teffel. If Purcell had lived, he would have composed better music than this.”
When Handel arrived in London, the sprouts of English opera had been strangled by the invasive species of Opera Seria. The English seemed only interested in things Italian from old master painters to castrato singers. King Arthur and The Fairy Queen had been dethroned by Orlando and Cleopatra.
Handel was able to serve up an Italian opera with speed and greater quality than older composers from Venice or competiting contemporaries in London. However, not everyone was able to recognize that his bel canto style, equaled by Porpora in vocal beauty, was uniquely insightful into motivation and personality. Mad scenes, dream sequences, and the heart’s voyage were exposed in the operas that made him a celebrity then and a staple of the opera house now in the 21st century.
Had Handel been entirely successful and satisfied with this output of violin sonatas in the mode of Corelli and opera a la Scarlatti, he would not have become the spirit of British music and a national hero. But Purcell’s music seduced and Milton’s poetry inspired. And after some unsuccessful seasons, Handel saw both a general fatigue with Opera Seria and a growing attraction to sentimentalized religion and the Bible. Combining the oratorio tradition he knew from Rome and adding yet another language to his palate, he created the English oratorio and a tradition of writing, performing, and listening to music that thrived in England for centuries to come. The cult of Handel placed him as a star at Vauxhall and saint at Westminster Abbey.
Johann Sebastian Bach (aged 61) by Elias Gottlob Haussmann
When Johann Christian Bach arrived in London he had not been a sponge for skills and values of the past. He ignored the demands of his father’s music as well as the mercurial searching in the compositions of his two older brothers, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. Like Handel, he left for Italy, converted to Roman Catholicism, changed his name to Giovanni, and with the most modern of ears, adopted the lyricism of mid-century Italian vocal music and the clarity and gallant simplicity of the Sammartini brothers’ concertos and sonatas. His music became gracious.
When J. C. Bach arrived in London Handel had been dead for three years. Music historians like Charles Burney held close to the school of Corelli and distrusted new music that showed no trace of the earlier styles. For them, Handel was the gauge against which all musicians were to be measured. Johann, who had become Giovanni, changed his name to John.
In correspondence between brothers, Carl Philipp asks John Bach why he writes music fit for children. Carl Philipp believed in the “Kenner” or the connoisseur as guardian of art. John Bach and his friend Carl Friedrich Abel created the first series of public subscription concerts. They were dependent on the approval of recently successful merchants and their kin. They were charged with creating evenings of music and socializing that reflected the peace and wellbeing of England. John Bach told his brother that he wrote for his patrons and this audience.
But do not be fooled. As comfortably and easily as Bach’s music appeals, it is skillful and brilliantly composed to give us such enjoyment. As an example: some years ago I was performing a series of J.C. Bach arias with limited forces. The string band lacked a viola and we were accompanying with two violins, cello, and harpsichord rather than the full quartet with keyboard. The aria in question was pretty enough but somehow never reached a level of beauty that satisfied. I referred to the full score and noticed one or two notes in the viola part that were missing from our version. We incorporated those notes into the strings and immediately the grace and beauty of the aria shimmered. Just one note here and one there changed run of the mill “gallant” into voluptuous music. John Bach knew just how to make a canvas of sound as warm and flavorful as the finest portrait of Gainsborough. If he was not able to enter the English pantheon, he was able to grow a passionate and engaged London audience and provide a music that appealed to every household boasting sons and daughters for whom life was enlivened and expressed with duets, quartets, and canzonets.
Joseph Haydn by Thomas Hardy
When Joseph Haydn arrived in London John Bach had been dead for nine years and Haydn was not a young man. He was the most famous musician in Europe and his compositions were a staple of the concert stage in every city including London. He did not need to incorporate new influences, though he never closed his mind to new options. He was respected and beloved of Mozart and admired by Beethoven. Haydn was a beacon of light at the tail end of the Enlightenment and the cusp of a new Romantic era. He was welcomed by English society, aristocratic and scientific. They felt honored to have Haydn among them.
It was Johann Peter Salomon, the violinist and impresario continuing the tradition of the Abel-Bach concerts, who arranged for Haydn’s stays in London and arranged the symphonies written for these trips for chamber ensemble. Salomon also wanted to bring Mozart to London. The traveling virtuosi and singing idols may have been, for the most part, Italian but the backbone of London musical life had been immigrant Germans from Handel, through John Bach and now Haydn (Mendelssohn would be next). Salomon with his invitations was continuing both a tradition of public concerts inaugurated by J. C. Bach a generation earlier and bringing the high musical art of Vienna to London. Haydn’s two sojourns inspired English songs, piano sonatas, piano trios, string quartets, two great Handel-inspired oratorios (The Creation and The Seasons), an Italian opera, and twelve great symphonies. Each of the Salomon symphonies is a high point in Classical music. These compositions have the complexity and coherence of the novel, the emotional vitality and variety of romantic voyages, and the ability to delight each and every audience.
Andrew Appel
April 4, 2022
Craryville, NY