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Tomaso Albinoni, Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Christoph Pachelbel, Francesco Onofrio Manfredini
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni
was born in Venice in 1671, eldest son of a wealthy paper merchant. At
an early age he became proficient as a singer and, more notably, as a
violinist, though not being a member of the performers' guild he was
unable to play publicly so he turned his hand to composition. His first
opera, Zenobia, regina de Palmireni, was produced in Venice in 1694,
coinciding with his first collection of instrumental music, the 12
Sonate a tre, Op.1. Thereafter he divided his attention almost equally
between vocal composition (operas, serenatas and cantatas) and
instrumental composition (sonatas and concertos).
Until his father's death in 1709, he was able to cultivate music more
for pleasure than for profit, referring to himself as "Dilettante
Veneto" - a term which in 18th century Italy was totally devoid of
unfavorable connotations. Under the terms of his father's will he was
relieved of the duty (which he would normally have assumed as eldest
son) to take charge of the family business, this task being given to
his younger brothers. Henceforth he was to be a full-time musician, a
prolific composer who according to one report, also ran a successful
academy of singing.
A lifelong resident of Venice, Albnoni married an opera singer,
Margherita Raimondi (d 1721), and composed as many as 81 operas several
of which were performed in northern Europe from the 1720s onwards. In
1722 he traveled to Munich at the invitation of the Elector of Bavaria
to supervise performances of I veri amici and Il trionfo d'amore as
part of the wedding celebrations for the Prince-Elector and the
daughter of the late Emperor Joseph I.
Most of his operatic works have been lost, having not been published
during his lifetime. Nine collections of instrumental works were
however published, meeting with considerable success and consequent
reprints; thus it is as a composer of instrumental music (99 sonatas,
59 concertos and 9 sinfonias) that he is known today. In his lifetime
these works were favorably compared with those of Corelli and Vivaldi,
and his nine collections published in Italy, Amsterdam and London were
either dedicated to or sponsored by an impressive list of southern
European nobility.
Albinoni was particularly fond of the oboe, a relatively new
introduction in Italy, and is credited with being the first Italian to
compose oboe concertos (Op. 7, 1715). Prior to Op.7, Albinoni had not
published any compositions with parts for wind instruments.
The concerto, in particular, had been regarded as the province of
stringed instruments. It is likely that the first concertos featuring a
solo oboe appeared from German composers such as Telemann or Handel.
Nevertheless, the four concertos with one oboe (Nos. 3, 6, 9 and 12)
and the four with two oboes (Nos. 2, 5, 8 and 11) in Albinoni's Op.7
were the first of their kind to be published, and proved so successful
that the composer repeated the formula in Op.9 (1722).
The Italian
composer and violinist Arcangelo
Corelli
exercised a wide influence on his contemporaries and on the succeeding
generation of composers. Born in Fusignano, Italy, in 1653, a full
generation before Bach or Handel, he studied in Bologna, a
distinguished musical center, then established himself in Rome in the
1670s. By 1679 had entered the service of Queen Christina of Sweden,
who had taken up residence in Rome in 1655, after her abdication the
year before, and had established there an academy of literati that
later became the Arcadian Academy. Thanks to his musical achievements
and growing international reputation he found no trouble in obtaining
the support of a succession of influential patrons. History has
remembered him with such titles as "Founder of Modern Violin
Technique," the "World's First Great Violinist," and the "Father of the
Concerto Grosso."
His contributions can be divided three ways, as violinist, composer,
and teacher. It was his skill on the new instrument known as the violin
and his extensive and very popular concert tours throughout Europe
which did most to give that instrument its prominent place in music. It
is probably correct to say that Corelli's popularity as a violinist was
as great in his time as was Paganini's during the 19th century. Yet
Corelli was not a virtuoso in the contemporary sense, for a beautiful
singing tone alone distinguished great violinists in that day, and
Corelli's tone quality was the most remarkable in all Europe according
to reports. In addition, Corelli was the first person to organize the
basic elements of violin technique.
Corelli's popularity as a violinist was equaled by his acclaim as a
composer. His music was performed and honored throughout all Europe; in
fact, his was the most popular instrumental music. It is important to
note in this regard that a visit of respect to the great Corelli was an
important part of the Italian tour of the young Handel. Yet Corelli's
compositional output was rather small. All of his creations are
included in six opus numbers, most of them being devoted to serious and
popular sonatas and trio sonatas. In the Sonatas Opus 5 is found the
famous "La Folia" Variations for violin and accompaniment. One of
Corelli's famous students, Geminiani, thought so much of the Opus 5
Sonatas that he arranged all the works in that group as Concerti
Grossi. However, it is in his own Concerti Grossi Opus 6 that Corelli
reached his creative peak and climaxed all his musical contributions.
Although Corelli was not the inventor of the Concerto Grosso principle,
it was he who proved the potentialities of the form, popularized it,
and wrote the first great music for it. Through his efforts, it
achieved the same pre-eminent place in the baroque period of musical
history that the symphony did in the classical period. Without
Corelli's successful models, it would have been impossible for Vivaldi,
Handel, and Bach to have given us their Concerto Grosso masterpieces.
The Concerto Grosso form is built on the principle of contrasting two
differently sized instrumental groups. In Corelli's, the smaller group
consists of two violins and a cello, and the larger of a string
orchestra. Dynamic markings in all the music of this period were based
on the terrace principle; crescendo and diminuendi are unknown,
contrasts between forte and piano and between the large and small
string groups constituting the dynamic variety of the scores.
Of all his compositions it was upon his Opus 6 that Corelli labored
most diligently and devotedly. Even though he wouldn't allow them to be
published during his lifetime, they still became some of the most
famous music of the time. The date of composition is not certain, for
Corelli spent many years of his life writing and rewriting this music,
beginning while still in his twenties.
The Trio Sonata, an instrumental composition generally demanding the
services of four players reading from three part-books, assumed
enormous importance in baroque music, developing from its earlier
beginnings at the start of the seventeenth century to a late flowering
in the work of Handel, Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach and their
contemporaries, alter the earlier achievements of Arcangelo Corelli in
the form. Instrumentation of the trio sonata, possibly for commercial
reasons, allowed some freedom of choice. Nevertheless the most
frequently found arrangement became that for two violins and cello,
with a harpsichord or other chordal instrument to fill out the harmony.
The trio sonata was the foundation of the concerto grosso, the
instrumental concerto that contrasted a concertino group of the four
instruments of the trio sonata with the full string orchestra, which
might double louder passages.
Corelli's dedications of his Sonatas mark his progress among the great
patrons of Rome. He dedicated his first set of twelve Church Sonatas,
Opus 1, published in 1681, to Queen Christina, describing the work as
the first fruits of his studies. His second set of trio Sonatas,
Chamber Sonatas, Opus 2, was published in 1685 with a dedication to a
new patron, Cardinal Pamphili, whose service he entered in 1687, with
the violinist Fornari and cellist Lulier. A third set of trio sonatas,
a second group of twelve Church Sonatas, Opus 3, was issued in 1689,
with a dedication to Francesco II of Modena, and a final set of a dozen
Chamber Sonatas, Opus 4, was published in 1694 with a dedication to a
new patron, Cardinal Ottoboni, the young nephew of Pope Alexander VIII,
after Cardinal Pamphili's removal in 1690 to Bologna. Cardinal Ottoboni
became Corelli's main patron, who made it possible for Corelli to
pursue his career without monetary worries, and it would seem that no
composer has ever had a more devoted or understanding patron.
Corelli's achievements as a teacher were again outstanding. Among his
many students were included not only Geminiani but the famed Antonio
Vivaldi. It was Vivaldi who became Corelli's successor as a composer of
the great Concerti Grossi and who greatly influenced the music of Bach.
Corelli occupied a leading position in the musical life of Rome for
some thirty years, performing as a violinist and directing performances
often on occasions of the greatest public importance. His style of
composition was much imitated and provided a model, both through a wide
dissemination of works published in his lifetime and through the
performance of these works in Rome. Corelli died a wealthy man on
January 19, 1713, at Rome in the 59th year of his life. But long before
his death, he had taken a place among the immortal musicians of all
time, and he maintains that exalted position today.
Antonio Vivaldi
was born in Venice on March 4th, 1678. Though ordained a priest in
1703, according to his own account, within a year of being ordained
Vivaldi no longer wished to celebrate mass because of physical
complaints ("tightness of the chest") which pointed to angina pectoris,
asthmatic bronchitis, or a nervous disorder. It is also possible that
Vivaldi was simulating illness - there is a story that he sometimes
left the altar in order to quickly jot down a musical idea in the
sacristy.... In any event he had become a priest against his own will,
perhaps because in his day training for the priesthood was often the
only possible way for a poor family to obtain free schooling.
Though he wrote many fine and memorable concertos, such as the Four
Seasons and the Opus 3 for example, he also wrote many works which
sound like five-finger exercises for students. And this is precisely
what they were. Vivaldi was employed for most of his working life by
the Ospedale della Pietà. Often termed an "orphanage", this
Ospedale was in fact a home for the female offspring of noblemen and
their numerous dalliances with their mistresses. The Ospedale (see
illustration) was thus well endowed by the "anonymous" fathers; its
furnishings bordered on the opulent, the young ladies were well
looked-after, and the musical standards among the highest in Venice.
Many of Vivaldi's concerti were indeed exercises which he would play
with his many talented pupils.
Vivaldi's relationship with the Ospedale began right after his
ordination in 1703, when he was named as violin teacher there. Until
1709, Vivaldi's appointment was renewed every year and again after
1711. Between 1709 and 1711 Vivaldi was not attached to the Ospedale.
Perhaps in this period he was already working for the Teatro Sant'
Angelo, an opera theater. He also remained active as a composer - in
1711 twelve concertos he had written were published in Amsterdam by the
music publisher Estienne Roger under the title l'Estro armonico
(Harmonic Inspiration).
In 1713, Vivaldi was given a month's leave from the Ospedale della
Pietà in order to stage his first opera, Ottone in villa, in
Vicenza. In the 1713-4 season he was once again attached to the Teatro
Sant' Angelo, where he produced an opera by the composer Giovanni
Alberto Rostori (1692-1753).
As far as his theatrical activities were concerned, the end of 1716 was
a high point for Vivaldi. In November, he managed to have the Ospedale
della Pietà perform his first great oratorio, Juditha
Triumphans
devicta Holofernis barbaric. This work was an allegorical description
of the victory of the Venetians (the Christians) over the Turks (the
barbarians) in August 1716.
At the end of 1717 Vivaldi moved to Mantua for two years in order to
take up his post as Chamber Capellmeister at the court of Landgrave
Philips van Hessen-Darmstadt. His task there was to provide operas,
cantatas, and perhaps concert music, too. His opera Armida had already
been performed earlier in Mantua and in 1719 Teuzzone and Tito Manlio
followed. On the score of the latter are the words: "music by Vivaldi,
made in 5 days." Furthermore, in 1720 La Conduce o siano Li veri amici
was performed.
In 172O Vivaldi returned to Venice where he again staged new operas
written by himself in the Teatro Sant' Angelo. In Mantua he had made
the acquaintance of the singer Anna Giraud (or Giro), and she had moved
in to live with him. Vivaldi maintained that she was no more than a
housekeeper and good friend, just like Anna's sister, Paolina, who also
shared his house.
In his Memoires, the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni gave the
following portrait of Vivaldi and Giraud: "This priest, an excellent
violinist but a mediocre composer, has trained Miss Giraud to be a
singer. She was young, born in Venice, but the daughter of a French
wigmaker. She was not beautiful, though she was elegant, small in
stature, with beautiful eyes and a fascinating mouth. She had a small
voice, but many languages in which to harangue." Vivaldi stayed
together with her until his death.
Vivaldi also wrote works on commission from foreign rulers, such as the
French king, Louis XV - the serenade La Sena festeggiante (Festival on
the Seine), for example. This work cannot be dated precisely, but it
was certainly written after 1720.
In Rome Vivaldi found a patron in the person of Cardinal Pietro
Ottoboni, a great music lover, who earlier had been the patron of
Arcangelo Corelli. And if we can believe Vivaldi himself, the Pope
asked him to come and play the violin for him at a private audience.
Earlier, in the 1660's, musical life in Rome had been enormously
stimulated by the presence of Christina of Sweden in the city. The
"Pallas of the North," as she was called, abdicated from the Swedish
throne in 1654. A few years later she moved to Rome and took up
residence in the Palazzo Riario. There she organized musical events
that were attended by composers such as Corelli and Scarlatti. Other
composers, too, such as Geminiani and Handel worked in Rome for periods
of time. Like them, Vivaldi profited from the favorable cultural
climate in the city.
Despite his stay in Rome and other cities, Vivaldi remained in the
service of the Ospedale della Pietà, which nominated him
"Maestro di concerti." He was required only to send two concertos per
month to Venice (transport costs were to the account of the client) for
which he received a ducat per concerto. His presence was never
required. He also remained director of the Teatro Sant' Angelo, as he
did in the 1726, 7 and 8 seasons.
Between 1725 and 1728 some eight operas were premiered in Venice and
Florence. Abbot Conti wrote of his contemporary, Vivaldi: "In less than
three months Vivaldi has composed three operas, two for Venice and a
third for Florence; the last has given something of a boost to the name
of the theater of that city and he has earned a great deal of money."
During these years Vivaldi was also extremely active in the field of
concertos. In 1725 the publication Il Cimento dell' Armenia e
dell'invenzione (The trial of harmony and invention), opus 8, appeared
in Amsterdam. This consisted of twelve concertos, seven of which were
descriptive: The Four Seasons, Storm at Sea, Pleasure and The Hunt.
Vivaldi transformed the tradition of descriptive music into a typically
Italian musical style with its unmistakable timbre in which the strings
play a major role.
These concertos were enormously successful, particularly in France. In
the second half of the 18th century there even appeared some remarkable
adaptations of the Spring concerto: Michel Corrette (1709-1795) based
his motet Laudate Dominum de coelis of 1765 on this concerto and, in
1775, Jean-Jacques Rousseau reworked it into a version for solo flute.
"Spring" was also a firm favorite of King Louis XV, who would order it
to be performed at the most unexpected moments, and Vivaldi received
various commissions for further compositions from the court at
Versailles.
In 1730 Vivaldi, his father, and Anna Giraud traveled to Prague. In
this music-loving city (half a century later Mozart would celebrate his
first operatic triumphs there) Vivaldi met a Venetian opera company
which between 1724 and 1734 staged some sixty operas in the theater of
Count Franz Anton von Sporck (for whom incidentally, Bach produced his
Four Shorter Masses). In the 1730-1731 season, two new operas by
Vivaldi were premiered there after the previous season had closed with
his opera Farnace, a work the composer often used as his showpiece.
At the end of 1731 Vivaldi returned to Venice, but at the beginning of
1732 he left again for Mantua and Verona. In Mantua, Vivaldi's opera
Semimmide was performed and in Verona, on the occasion of the opening
of the new Teatro Filarmonico, La fida Ninfa, with a libretto by the
Veronese poet and man of letters, Scipione Maffei, was staged.
After his stay in Prague, Vivaldi concentrated mainly on operas. No
further collections of instrumental music were published. However
Vivaldi continued to write instrumental music, although it was only to
sell the manuscripts to private persons or to the Ospedale della
Pietà, which after 1735 paid him a fixed honorarium of 100
ducats a year. In 1733 he met the English traveler, Edward Holdsworth,
who had been commissioned to purchase a few of Vivaldi's compositions
for the man of letters, Charles Jennens, author of texts for oratorios
by Handel. Holdsworth wrote to Jennens: "I spoke with your friend
Vivaldi today. He told me that he had decided to publish no more
concertos because otherwise he can no longer sell his handwritten
compositions. He earns more with these, he said, and since he charges
one guinea per piece, that must be true if he finds a goodly number of
buyers."
In 1738 Vivaldi was in Amsterdam where he conducted a festive opening
concert for the 100th Anniversary of the Schouwburg Theater. Returning
to Venice, which was at that time suffering a severe economic downturn,
he resigned from the Ospedale in 1740, planning to move to Vienna under
the patronage of his admirer Charles VI. His stay in Vienna was to be
shortlived however, for he died on July 28th 1741 "of internal fire"
(probably the asthmatic bronchitis from which he suffered all his life)
and, like Mozart fifty years later, received a modest burial. Anna
Giraud returned to Venice, where she died in 1750.
Johann Christoph Pachelbel
(1653 - 1706) German composer and organist. He studied music with
Heinrich Schwemmer and G. C. Wecker, attended lectures at the
Auditorium aegidianum and entered the university at Altdorf in 1669,
where he also served as organist at the Lorenzkirche. He was forced to
leave the university after less than a year owing to lack of funds, and
became a scholarship student at the Gymnasium poeticum at Regensburg,
taking private instruction under Kaspar Prentz. In 1673 Pachelbel went
to Vienna and became deputy organist at St. Stephen's Cathedral; in
1677 he became organist in Thuringen at the Eisenach court, where he
served for slightly over a year. . This was an important move, since it
was here that he became a dose friend of the town’s most
prominent musician, Johann Ambrosius Bach, the future father of Johann
Sebastian, and his family.
In 1678, Pachelbel obtained the first of the two important positions he
was to hold during his lifetime when he became organist at the
Protestant Predigerkirche at Erfurt, where he established his
reputation as organist, composer, and teacher. Erfurt was, of course,
the ancestral home of the Bach family, and there he met Ambrosius'
eldest son, Johann Christoph (the Ohrdruf Bach), whom he knew from
Eisenach and who lived in Erfurt from 1686 to 1689. Pachelbel undertook
the musical education of the young man who, not many years later, would
teach his brother Johann Sebastian all he knew when the latter came to
live with his family following the death of their parents.
Pachelbel started a family in Erfurt; after the early death of his
first wife and their child, he remarried and produced a highly artistic
household: of the couple's seven children, two would later become
organists, including his eldest son Wilhelm Hieronymus who acted as
Pachelbel's successor at Nuremberg for thirty-nine years, another son
who became an instrument maker and a daughter who achieved recognition
as a painter and engraver. Pachelbel left Erfurt some years later,
apparently looking for a better appointment, musician and organist for
the Wurttemberg court at Stuttgart (1690-92), and then in Gotha
(1692-95), where he was town organist. His travels finally led him home
when he was invited to succeed Wecker as organist of St. Sebald,
Nuremberg, after his former teacher's death in 1695; he obtained his
release from Gotha that same year and remained at St. Sebald until his
death. He died in the first months of 1706 at the young age of 52.
Johann Pachelbel was one of the dominant figures of late
seventeenth-century European keyboard music. An exact contemporary of
Georg Muffat he belonged to the generation that included German
composers Böhm, Bruhns and Fischer, French composers Raison,
Jullien and François Couperin, and the Englishman Purcell,
and
that came chronologically between Buxtehude and Bach.
The young Johann Sebastian Bach, at the time on his way back from
Lübeck, probably never met him. Perhaps it is because he was
already familiar with the work of Pachelbel, which was well-known
throughout central Germany, that he chose Buxtehude as his mentor. Many
of Pachelbel's students, in particular, had actively transmitted his
inimitable art of chorale variation, including Johann Christoph Bach
who doubtless passed the knowledge on to his younger brother. Another
important link in the chain is Johann Gottfried Walther, a contemporary
and cousin of Bach who was his colleague in Weimar. Walther was born in
Erfurt during Pachelbel's stay and studied with several students of the
master, and then in Nuremberg with Pachelbel's son, which made him a
worthy disciple of the master of St. Sebald. Walther also studied with
Werckmeister, a friend of Buxtehude, and played a pivotal role in the
transmission of the German organ repertoire to future generations,
which was effected mainly through oral tradition and manuscript copies
of unpublished works.
Pachelbel, like many of this foremost contemporaries, was somehow able
to combine his professional activities as a church musician, secular
musician and teacher, not to mention his responsibilities as the father
of a large family, with his activities as a composer. in keeping with
the customs of the time, he published only a small number of his
compositions, since copper engraving was an expensive process and
published works had to have some special feature to make them
attractive to prospective purchasers. First, in Erfurt, he brought out
a small collection of four chorales with variations in 1683, which he
entitled Musicaliscbe Sterbensgedancken (Musical Thoughts on Death;
next, in Nuremberg, six Sonatas for two violins and bass, and the
collection Musicalissche Eigötzung (Musical Rejoicing, circa
1691), eight chorale preludes, Acht Choräle zum Praeambulieren
in
1693, and lastly, in 1699, his master work, Hexachordum Apollinis, the
Hexachord of Apollo, containing six Arias with variations in six
different keys for harpsichord (or organ), including the famous Aria
Sebaldina in F minor, and which includes a dedication to Buxtehude and
his Vienna contemporary Ferdinand Tobias Richter.
Pachelbel's secular output consisted of around twenty harpsichord
suites, sets of variations and various instrumental works. As a parish
musician, though, the bulk of this work was written for church
services, in particular Mass and Vespers, in which both singers and
instrumentalists took part. Around twenty-six motets, nineteen
spiritual songs, thirteen Magnificats, spiritual concerts and masses
have survived. Like both Schütz and Buxtehude, Pachelbel liked
to
experiment with various instrumental configurations, from the smallest
—voice, two violins and continuo—to the most
grandiose. The
spiritual concert Lobet den Herrn in seinem Heiligtum (Praise the Lord
in his Sanctuary) is scored for five voices, two flutes, bassoon, five
trumpets, trombone, drums, cymbals, harp, two violins, three violas,
continuo and organ. However, it is Pachelbel's organ music that takes
pride of place in his production, since the surviving corpus is one of
the most extensive of the period: with some two hundred and fifty
separate pieces it is, numerically, twice the size of Buxtehude's, and
evidence of other lost works has been found.
Much of the organ music was intended for service use. It is important
to remember that Luther's religious practice was articulated around two
matching places of prayer: the church for the parish community, and the
home for the family. Families came together each day around the head of
the household to hold a domestic worship service that mirrored the
Sunday service led by the Pastor. In both places chorales were sung,
with their numerous verses that provided both instruction and a support
for meditation. Any instrument, perhaps an oboe or a violin, could be
used to give the starting note and support the voices. This is why the
works of Pachelbel, and of many of his contemporaries, include chorale
preludes that do not require the use of an organ with pedals and can be
played on household keyboard instruments such as small virginals. in
any case, church organs in central and southern Germany were seldom
large. Like Frescobaldi and Bach, but unlike Buxtehude and Grigny,
Pachelbel had access only to relatively small organs: twenty-seven
stops on two manuals and pedal in Erfurt, a mere fourteen stops on two
manuals and pedal at Nuremberg. Both were well-proportioned small
instruments, although different in character. The reed chorus at Erfurt
and the mixtures at Nuremberg, and the highly individual sounds they
produced, act as a reminder that today's performers should aim, first,
to extract the full character of the elegant, delicate melodic arches
of Pachelbel's arias and chorales, rather than seek large-scale dynamic
contrast.
Pachelbel's geographical situation, midway between Vienna and Lubeck,
was mirrored in his musical situation, equally distant from the
harmonic subtleties of Richter as from the passionate vehemence of
Buxtehude. Through his music Pachelbel appears not as an eloquent
orator but as a specialist in intimate confidences. Often drawn towards
a soft and meditative style, Pachelbel was apparently satisfied with
the limited resources provided by his small instruments and sought to
cultivate neither the dramatic contrasts of the stylus phantasticus,
the enticements of chromaticism nor excessive ornamentation. A born
melodist, he directed his skills to the elaboration of subtle webs of
counterpoint based on pure, almost stark lines, although his ingenuity
is masked by the perfection of the writing that seems to flow
unimpeded. Clearly, Pachelbel inherited the great southern tradition
initiated by Frescobaldi and passed on by Kerll, Poglietti and
Froberger.
Pachelbel's art found its fullest expression in his treatment of the
chorale. He mastered all the forms current at the time for setting
chorale melodies, and generally presented the chorale unadorned in a
clearly recognizable form (the melismatic chorale was developed by
Buxtehude and, especially, Bach). His seventy-five chorale preludes
present a wide range of approaches, all designed to sustain musical
interest. Although some pieces use the ancient two-voice bicinium
technique, most are written in three or four voices; to meet the
requirements of the liturgy, the chorale melody is usually heard
unornamented in the soprano, or in long note-values as a cantus firmus.
However, Pachelbel is never restricted by formula, and the melody
sometimes moves to the tenor or the bass, or is enriched by a delicate
ornamental mantle. The accompanying voices incorporate fragments of the
chorale in augmentation or diminution, or sometimes in imitation,
recalling the fugal style at the heart of Pachelbel's art; fugue, after
all, amplifies and solemnizes the musical discourse by multiplying the
appearances of a single motif. Each phrase of the chorale is thus
introduced by a short fugato, or a preceded by a fugal preamble. Above
all, Pachelbel was drawn to composite structures, where all the
resources of his musical language could be used to illustrate the
spiritual atmosphere of the chorale: sorrowful chromaticism, passing
dissonance, delicate arabesque-like figures or expressive rhythmical
formulae. His variations on chorale melodies clearly served as a model
for the young Bach in his organ partitas.
Pachelbel's organ fugues and ricercares reflect the growing interest of
Baroque musicians in the learned world of dialogue and formal
elaboration, and their tendency to underline the theatrical aspect of
the musical discourse through the development of a single underlying
motif, the "subject" — at a time when, following the work of
Descartes, the focus was on the complexity of the "thinking subject."
In his three ricercares, Pachelbel provides an impressive demonstration
of his compositional skill, applied with more freedom in his fugues,
which include twenty-six isolated fugues and no less than ninety-five
fugues on the Magnificat (in fact, these fugues were for use with the
German Magnificat, or were based on free themes, rather than on the
actual themes of the Magnificat). They create a marvelous world of
sound and poetry and display Pachelbel's never-failing powers of
invention. Although the composer was probably not aware of it, his
fugue subjects define the various elements of his character and
constitute the fragments of a musical self-portrait that reveals a
melancholy side to his nature that sometimes tends, towards pathos.
Two sons, Carl and Wilhelm Hieronymus were also organists and composer,
the former emigrating to the New World and dyimg in Charleston, S.C.
Francesco Onofrio
Manfredini
(1684-1762) Much that we know of Francesco Onofrio Manfredini is
supposition and assumption. Indeed, apart from a few landmarks in his
career, he was obviously not of such significance as to merit
documentation. He was born in Italy in 1684, probably to a musical
family. He did take lessons in violin from the great Torelli, and must
have become a fine violinist, as we know that he held major playing
posts in Bologna. As a composer he left very little, with just 43
published works and a handful of manuscripts. We do know that he became
the head of music at St. Philip's Cathedral in Pistoia in 1727, where
he remained until his death in 1762. This makes it odd that he did not
leave a wealth of sacred music, or was it simply destroyed after his
death.
We do know that Manfredini composed oratorios, but only his orchestral
works remained in the repertoire. His groups of Concerti Grossi and
Sinfonias show a highly accomplished composer, well versed in the
mainstream Italian school of composition. Above all they are replete
with attractive melodic invention.
The group of twelve Concerti Grossi were published in 1718, and
dedicated to Prince Antoine, which may indicate that he was in the
Prince's service in Monaco. That would fill in a gap from 1711 where
Manfredini 'vanished' from the musical map. Each concerto is in three
movements, and while the composer does add a few variants, they are
basically in the fast - slow - fast format. Each of the movements is
brief, some lasting little more than half a minute. That allows for
little more than the statement of a melody, and while these are always
most pleasant in their nature, it is the rhythmic vitality that affords
them a ready attraction. They are scored just for strings, and in the
main are not concertos, as we now know them, but simply symphonic
movements. There are exceptions, such as the fiendishly difficult solo
violin writing in the final movement of the sixth, and the opening
movement of the seventh.
It is music calls for considerable dexterity among the musicians, with
little room left for interpretation. The work has largely become
popular for the Christmas pastorale, which forms the twelfth concerto.
Adagio
· Kanon & Gigue · Concerti grossi
· Alla rustica (Deutsche Grammophone , 1972)