The Roman Garden: The Arcadians
Thursday, January 20th, 2022 at 7:30 PM
Church of the Heavenly Rest, NYC
THE ARTISTS
Pascale Beaudin, soprano
Olivier Brault & Evan Few, violin
Loretta O'Sullivan, cello
Scott Pauley, lute
Andrew Appel, harpsichord & director
THE PROGRAM
Sonatas for 2 violins & continuo (opus 1 # 9 & opus 3 #10)--A, Corelli
Sonata for cello & continuo--G. Bononcini
Four Sonatas for harpsichord--D. Scarlatti
Sinfonia for violin & cello--A. Stradella
Aria: A chi spero aita, o Cieli?--Stradella
Cantata: Lungi dal mio bel nume--G. F. Handel
In 1681 Arcangelo Corelli published his opus 1 collection of 12 sonatas for 2 violins and continuo and dedicated the works to Queen Christina of Sweden. She had abdicated her throne, converted to Catholicism, and migrated to Rome leaving behind the colder world of Lutherans and Viking-minded men. She immersed herself in the Counter-Reformation world of Princes of the Church, Classical Rome, ancient, aristocratic families, art, music, and poetry. She was a passionate art lover and collector, counting Bernini, Stradella, scientists and philosophers as friends. Similar to several women before her, she established a salon for patrons and savants to discuss the nature of poetry and expression. This opportunity for conversation supplied the root for the Arcadian Academy whose conversazioni lived on through the 19th century.
Queen Christina was a colorful and complex personality. In casting the gorgeous Greta Garbo as Christina, Hollywood overlooked Christina’s ambiguous gender identification and sexual preferences, her physical irregularities, her shocking disregard of anything decorous, and her monumental intelligence.
Arcangelo Corelli was one of many composers who were included in this society of Arcadians and his first published sonatas mark chapter one of possibly the most influential compositions in music history. For more than a century Corelli’s sonatas served as the model for composers writing instrumental works, both in Italy and in the north. Handel, Bach, Couperin, Leclair, all looked to Corelli’s work for guidance and blueprints.
Formed in a musical world of Baroque drama, mercurial expression, flexible and unstable forms, Corelli establishes a contrasting classicism in the 18th century sonata. From opus 1, #1 he demonstrates elegant, poised lyricism. He is a master of counterpoint. He understands balance and proportion. Some have complained (as they have about Palestrina and Rossini) of a virtuosity which leaves no room for sentiment. But Corelli’s palate, that runs from the military vitality of the G major sonata (opus 1, #9) to the Lully overture in the A minor sonata (opus 3, #10), has its focus on physical beauty and engaging content. Add to this what we know about his performing qualities and ability to elaborate and ornament his music, these sonatas and concertos lack nothing.
We may stand with wonder as we listen to Corelli’s works the way we are thrilled by the genius and virtuosity of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne.
The young Handel was taken under the wings of Corelli and noble patrons who found him brilliant and attractive. It is rare that I can compare my own experiences with those of Handel but my first professional stay in Italy introduced me to a world of magnificent art, remarkably alluring people, food that redefined sensual pleasure, and an attitude towards life that valued delight over labor. All our chamber concerts in Spoleto were followed by midday parties attended by music-loving patrons from Rome. The rooftop garden events were Fellini-esque and made me acknowledge that I was a lucky bumpkin. Towards the end of the festival, a prince from the ancient Sicilian family of Sanfelice di Bagnoli took me under his wing and off to Rome for an unforgettable week.
1981 was an important year in Rome. The City was celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of Bernini. A flag marked each building where one could find a Bernini stature. The Prince shepherded me through Rome. We located each masterpiece of Bernini adding to this treasure hunt the paintings of Caravaggio. It was a Baroque festival.
I think of the young Handel, arriving in Italy from Hamburg, a red headed, handsome, genius bumpkin newly immersed in a world of radiant sunshine, enjoying a celebration of the senses through food, art, and Italian life and religion, so different from his dark gray German Lutheran formation. Handel found himself under the protection of many princes. Ruspoli, Colonna, Ottoboni, were patrons who could both offer him employment and usher him around Rome to see Bernini and Caravaggio masterworks.
Handel, in looking at Bernini’s David or Apollo and Daphne must have seen in the sculptor’s hand the same perfection and poise, the same surety in craft that he heard in the works of his friend and mentor, Archangelo Corelli.
By contrast, did Handel, in getting to know the paintings of Caravaggio, Saul on the Road to Damascus, see the humanity in these works, the explosive drama, the mercurial nature of this art? Did he connect that heightened emotion to the oratorios of Stradella?
Stradella’s music, like Caravaggio’s paintings, are volatile. The poise and suave beauty of Corelli and Bernini are not values shared by both the murdered painter and murdered composer. Thrilling and dangerous. The virtuosity of Caravaggio, Stradella, and Handel, though often lyrical, are in the service of heated and even distorting passions. Whether it is Susanna lamenting the price of her own beauty and facing death, Lucretia humiliated and at the edge of suicide, or a shepherd expressing his longing, this is music of psychological insight. Handel used this power of confession, learned in Italy, in his later operas and oratorios.
My Roman friend and patron counted among his circle a gentleman who lived in one of the palazzi of Queen Christina. I was able to visit this place where in 1656 she inaugurated her salon for poets, patrons and composers. They met to discuss the nature and purpose of poetry. They took on imaginative classical bucolic names. The Arcadians were solidified in 1690 in Christina’s memory and these meetings included a roster of composers we admire today: Stradella, Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, Giovanni Bononcini, the young Domenico Scarlatti, and Handel. Along with poets, their central purpose was to divest writing of the magical and fantastical and demand that it speak or sing pure, honest expressions of the heart: shepherds and not sorceresses. The simple sentiment of Bononcini’s cello sonata usurped the throne of complex fugue and confusing toccata. Domenico Scarlatti was liberated to look to Spanish folk music that subsequently inspired him to become the most original keyboard composer of any century.
And our hero Handel…What did he digest thanks to his patrons and colleagues, these faux shepherds? The final aria of the cantata Lungi dal mio bel nume is a triumph of Arcadian values. It is the tender longing from the shepherd’s heart. Yet it is as musically sophisticated, seductive, and alluring as an afternoon walk with an object of desire through the hills of Umbria.
Andrew Appel
Craryville, NY
February 7, 2022