J.S. Bach:

Concerto in C minor for oboe, violin, strings, and basso continuo, BWV 1060

Sinfonia in D minor, BWV 35 Sinfonia in F Major, BWV 156 Sinfonia in D minor, BWV 35

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major for flute, violin, obbligato       harpsichord, strings, and basso continuo, BWV 1050

Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major for two recorders, violin, strings,        and basso continuo, BWV 1049

Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major for recorder, oboe, trumpet, violin,        strings, and basso continuo, BWV 1047

Moving this series from the private to the public Bach, the Aulos Ensemble - one of America's first and finest original instrument ensembles - returns to Caramoor with a program featuring three of the Brandenburg concerti.

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750)

Concerto and Sinfonia

The term “concerto” is one of the most commonly encountered words in Baroque music, one that appears over the span of 150 years with very diverse meanings—connotations quite different from those we learn in our experience of Romantic concertos composed in the 19th century. The first known use of “concerto” in a musical context dates from 1519 and refers to a vocal ensemble, but the term mostly seems to derive from the Latin verb concertare, “to contend, to dispute, to debate,” with the implication of competition between the participants. From the early 17th century on, concerti are found everywhere consisting of as little as two voices or instruments and a continuo bass—and the two upper instruments do indeed “contend” or compete with one another.
 
Over the next century and a half, the word concerto is increasingly applied to larger ensembles in which a group of instruments (and later just one solo instrument) normally stands out from the rest, at first by simple echo effects, but increasingly by means of greater virtuosity in the solo parts. At first the most common texture called for two “concertizing” parts—two violins, two trumpets, two oboes, trumpet and soprano, and so on. But there were also ensemble concertos in which every instrument competed with every other, in a kind of “concerto for orchestra,” to use a popular modern term.

The solo concerto was a later development of this concerto principle, ultimately leading to the Romantic notion of the concerto. The establishment of the concerto as a flexible and powerful genre in its own right was largely the work of Antonio Vivaldi, whose publications covered the continent of Europe and taught many composers who had never made the journey to Venice (where they might have heard Vivaldi concertos on their home ground) exactly how the orchestral ritornello could serve to unify movements, first presenting the basic material, then recalling portions of it in different keys as the movement progresses, then finally restating the whole in the home key to conclude the process.

One respect in which the Baroque concerto tended to differ from the concertos of the Romantic era is the size of the respective ensembles. In the earlier period, the performance took place with what we might think of as a larger chamber ensemble, with one instrument on a part. In the Romantic era, the concerto took on the aspect of a David-versus-Goliath struggle, in which the lone soloist was pitted against a much larger orchestra and had to battle for victory by virtue of greater speed, articulation, expression, range, and so on—all of the elements defined as virtuosic.

The other commonly heard term for an orchestral movement in the Baroque era is sinfonia. This is obviously the same word that is still used in Italian for the later classical symphony (and in English, “symphony” was the translation used at the time), but it is a totally different creature. In the Baroque, the sinfonia often referred to the opera overture or else (as it is used here) to a single movement inserted into a work that was predominantly vocal. This might accompany action in an opera, such as an important arrival (of, say, a god coming down from the heavens in a chariot); or it might simply offer an orchestral interlude between scenes in an opera or an oratorio (such as the famous “Pastoral symphony” in the middle of Part I of Handel’s Messiah). During Bach’s lifetime, “sinfonia” or “symphony” did not yet refer to the cyclic four-movement genre that we know from Haydn, Mozart, and later composers. Formally it could be almost any kind of orchestral music. In fact, the three sinfonie from Bach cantatas that appear on the present program are all structurally concerto movements; they were almost certainly borrowed from concertos and inserted into the cantatas, where each one became, perforce, a sinfonia.

Johann Sebastian Bach had been gripped by the frenzy of discovery when he encountered the Vivaldi concertos during his twenties, when he was in Weimar (1708 17). He became a Vivaldi disciple through the close study of some of his works and the sincere flattery of imitation, transcribing a number of them, violin concertos into keyboard concertos in the process, so that when he came to write his own original concertos, he had fully absorbed the latest style. Scholars have learned enough about Bach’s extensive practice of borrowing from himself and rewriting his older music in newer forms that it has been possible to work backwards from the later concerto for two keyboards and reconstruct the presumed original work for violin and oboe.
Bach composed most of his instrumental concertos during two different periods of his life. The first was during his years as the court composer in Cöthen (1717  1723). There, for the first time, he was not primarily involved in the production of church music (the court was Calvinist, and music played little part in the services beyond unaccompanied hymns); he began to compose a great many chamber works and concertos.

The second period of intense concerto creativity came in the 1730s. By that time Bach had become disillusioned with the circumstances under which he labored as director of the music for the principal churches of Leipzig. It was clear to him that the town fathers had no intention of putting up hard cash for what he called “a well-ordered church music.” So he settled into the routine of recycling his older cantatas for the most part and turned his creative energies in other directions. One fruitful activity was the university-connected Collegium Musicum, founded by Telemann in 1704 and directed by Bach between 1729 and 1741. For this group, Bach prepared all of his surviving keyboard concertos.

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Concerto in C minor for Oboe, Violin, Strings, and basso continuo, BWV 1060

During the Cöthen years, Bach wrote many instrumental works, including the six Brandenburg concertos, at least two of the orchestral suites, and probably the present concerto for violin and oboe. However his manuscript of the work in that form has disappeared; we know the piece only because Bach himself later—probably sometime in the 1730s—rewrote the concerto for two harpsichords and orchestra. But it is clear from the sources in which the keyboard concerto is found that it was not entirely new. It had evidently existed in a different form at some earlier time, and Bach had simply transcribed it for the performers available in the Collegium. In some cases, the earlier material actually survives, so we can compare the original form with Bach’s later transcription. But in the case of the violin-and-oboe concerto to be performed here, all that survives is the later version for two harpsichords. What you will hear is a scholarly reconstruction by Wilhelm Fischer, who has “composed backwards,” using the models of Bach’s other concerto transformations, to create the hypothetical earlier concerto believed to have existed in the Cöthen years.

Throughout the concerto the two soloists and the orchestra intertwine in elaborate variations, soloists together against the orchestra, soloists in competition with one another, and so on. That kind of competitive spirit, vigorous, yet always changing, lies at the heart of Bach’s concertos.

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Sinfonia in D minor, BWV 35
Sinfonia in F Major, BWV 156
Sinfonia in D minor, BWV 35

The three sinfonie grouped here come from two different cantatas. Very often the instrumental passages that serve as a kind of “overture” to a cantata were drawn from pre-existing self-standing compositions—most often concertos—and inserted into the cantata to get further use out of the material.
 
Cantata No. 35, Geist und Seele wird verwirret, which Bach apparently composed in September 1726, is cast in two parts (performed before and after the sermon, respectively). Each of these begins with a concerto-like movement in a fast tempo. It is all but certain that these movements were the first and third of a lost concerto; in fact, we have just 9 measures of a fragmentary D-minor concerto (BWV 1059) that correspond to the opening of this cantata. It has long been suspected that the opening aria of the cantata, in a slow tempo and the key of F major with a similar obbligato organ part, was derived from the original slow movement.
 
For the present performance, a similar F-major slow movement has been taken from Cantata 156, Ich stehe mit einem Fuss im Grabe, probably from January 1729. It is a brief Adagio, which here serves as the slow movement for a kind of “assembled” concerto.

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Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050

The “Brandenburg Concertos” have immortalized the name of the Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, to whom on March 24, 1721, Bach sent his lavishly beautiful presentation manuscript containing six splendid concertos representing a variety of different approaches to the concerto idea. The nickname of the set comes from the first great Bach scholar Philipp Spitta, and it has stuck. But the form in which we have these six works certainly owes more to the ensemble that Bach directed in Cöthen than to any possible Brandenburgian inspiration. Bach surely performed all of these works with his own ensemble and conceived the solo parts for musicians he knew well. The number of instruments called for in this set of concertos accords perfectly with the make-up of the ensemble at Cöthen. There is no evidence that any of these magnificent concertos was ever performed in Brandenburg, nor could the Margrave’s small orchestra have undertaken most of them.

All six of the Brandenburgs are essentially orchestral concertos rather than solo concertos, despite the presence of prominent solo parts. The Fourth and Fifth concertos come closest in structure to the “standard” organization of tutti and solo sections, and  No. 5 comes the closest to offering a real keyboard concerto—perhaps the first ever in the history of music. For various reasons, these two concertos are regarded as the latest to have been composed.

As the opening movement (Allegro) unfolds, the keyboard instrument—at first willing to play its subservient role as part of the continuo—becomes more and more assertive until finally it bursts forth into an astonishing cadenza of tremendous difficulty. Violin and flute share the solo spot at the beginning, but once the cadenza begins, they are cast completely into the shade. At the opening of the cadenza, we are listening to the dying strains of the keyboard as mere continuo accompaniment and the birth of the virtuoso piano concerto.

The second movement, Affettuoso (“tenderly, lovingly”), is a chamber piece for the solo instruments with continuo (this was very common in the Baroque concerto). The finale, an Allegro like the opening movement, is written in 2/4 time, but the beats are subdivided by triplets, which gives to the ear the impression of a rollicking jig, to close the concerto in high spirits.

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Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major, BWV 1049

The fourth of the Brandenburgs is one of the richest in thematic detail, but, paradoxically, one of the lightest and sunniest in sonority, with its employment of violin and two flutes as the solo ensemble. Whenever Bach used the word “flute” (Flöte) he meant the recorder (Blockflöte); if he explicitly wanted the transverse flute, he employed the French term “traversière.” In this case, Bach uses the unusual phrase “flauti d=echo” (echo flutes), which has generated a lot of debate as to his meaning. It may be nothing more than an allusion to the fact that the flutes echo the violin in the slow movement, but it would be nice to know for sure.

Though the concertino ostensibly consists of solo violin and two flutes, Bach almost turns the brilliantly joyous opening movement into a violin concerto with two obbligato flutes. Here, too, the flutes “echo” by tossing tiny fragments back and forth behind the elaborate solo part.  In the slow movement, the flutes echo the violin, which here takes second billing to the winds.  Both solo and tutti join in the vigorous broad fugue of the finale, projected over running eighth notes.  The flutes accompany the violin, with a fugal stretto, at the first solo entrance, but soon the violin abandons all pretext of sharing the lead with the flutes and takes off in virtuosic show.

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Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047

The Second Brandenburg Concerto has a most unusual solo ensemble in Bach’s presentation manuscript, consisting of trumpet, flute, oboe, and violin. We tend to think of the trumpet as a particularly loud instrument and the recorder as very soft, though the instruments of Bach’s day would have been better balanced in terms of sheer volume, and in the modest-sized rooms in which this music was performed, the flute would project quite well. While it is possible that Bach composed for these four solo instruments simply because they were there, it is equally likely that he chose them precisely for their diversity. The fact that each sounds so different from the other makes it easier to keep track of their doings throughout the concerto.

Another possibility arises—one that you will be able to hear today: Bach identified the brass instrument as tromba, which normally means trumpet, in this case a high instrument in the key of F. But he rarely, if ever, wrote for trumpet in F elsewhere, whereas he often composed for a horn in F, and a when a copyist wrote out this part in 1750, he called it “trumpet or horn,” suggesting that the mellower and lower-pitched instrument would serve as well—and balance better with the other three soloists.

The opening movement of the second concerto is astonishingly rich in the inventive ways Bach treats his material and brings the four principal soloists into action with one another and with the rest of the ensemble. At climactic moments, when every part is playing a different thematic idea, the ease with which the ear distinguishes the sound of the four soloists is a real advantage to following this elegant game.

As was typical of the time, Bach allowed the trumpet/horn to rest during the slow middle movement. This was also a practical decision, because the brass instrument could not yet play the complete scale, making it difficult to fit it in the more intimate middle movement. So the three quieter instruments have a chance to intertwine in elaborating the opening phrase in the violin to produce a movement that is pure chamber music.

The final movement brings back the brass instrument, which opens the proceedings with a fanfare melody obviously designed for the purpose, which serves as the subject of a lively fugue. The four instruments enter in turn with the fugue subject (trumpet) and answer (oboe), subject (violin) and answer (flute).

                                                                  - Program notes © Steven Ledbetter  (www.stevenledbetter.com)

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