Works for Soprano or Alto with Two Flutes, Bassoon, and Basso continuo from A-Wn, Mus.Hs.17587 Edited by Lawrence Bennett Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 212 xv, 3, 162pp. ISBN 978-1-9872-0533-6. $190
One of four manuscripts of cantatas by Antonio Maria Bononcini (1677–1726), Mus.Hs.17587 contains three works each for solo soprano and alto with two recorders and basso continuo. The fact that it is only acknowledged in a footnote that the upper woodwinds are NOT flutes makes me suspicious of everything else about the edition. For example, the fact that Mus.Hs.15931/7–9 contain parts, one of which is for bassoon, does not of itself give these sufficient authority to include a separate line throughout the edition as if it were an obbligato instrument. To me, a far more sensible solution would have been to add [senza Fag.] instructions above those passages where the wind instrument should drop out – by the editor’s own admission, these (and, indeed, the score) are the work of a professional copyist, not the composer, after all.
Each cantata has either three or four movements (the latter adding a recitative before the first aria). In one of the arias in each cantata, there is only one line for recorders; in cantata 2, this is marked as a Recorder 1 solo, while both instruments play in unison (as they do in other Viennese cantatas of the period, by Caldara, for example) in the others. There is no denying the quality of the music; Bononcini knew well how to write both for the voice and for instruments. No points for guessing the subject matter, or for imagining that they are open to some very dramatic performances! Singers will need to combine their acting skills with some real vocal agility, and the recorder players, in particular, will require nimble fingers!
Andante for Clarinet and Orchestra, [2] Intermezzi from The Masque of Pandora Recent Researches in Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 78 Edited by Ian Graham-Jones ix, 2, 65pp. ISBN 978-1-9872-0452-0. $144
This is the latest of several volumes Ian Graham-Smith has devoted to Alice Mary Smith. An acknowledged expert on the lady and her output, his introduction to these three works is positively bulging with background information.
The clarinet solo began its life as the middle movement of a sonata with piano. The dedicatee and original performer, Henry Lazarus, commissioned the orchestration and played it with universal approbation. Whether or not the composer (who had also been the “accompanist” at its premiere) ever produced a full concerto (as it is described in at least some of the press coverage of performances) is unclear.*
The two intermezzi also originated in a larger work, this time a “grand choral cantata” setting words by Longfellow. “After the storm”, an Andante movement moving from common time into 9/8 then back again, was transposed from its original B flat minor down a semitone to facilitate a more gentle segue into “In the garden”, which is in A major and 9/8.
These are, indeed, brief pieces – at 148 bars, the clarinet solo is longer than both of the others put together. Yet, there is a charm to all three (and not a little virtuosity about the Andante for clarinet!) which makes them ideal introductions to the composer and her music.
Edited by Alexander J. Fisher xviii, 5, 63pp. Recent Researches in Music of the Baroque Era, 211 ISBN 978-1-8972-0549-7 $100
Throughout his life, Gregor Aichinger was associated with the “richest family in the world”, the Fuggers. Sponsored by them to travel and study in Italy, he repaid them with many publications (and doubtless other musical tributes), among them this set of eight a cappella motets. They set texts by Marcus Welser, a wealthy city official in Augsburg, where (among other duties) Aichinger played the organ (financed – of course – by the Fuggers) at the church of SS Ulrich und Afra. The building houses a large bronze “Crucifixion” by Hans Reichle (the first of five illustrations in the edition) which was completed in 1605 – the year after the publication of Aichinger’s music. Fisher’s “loose connection” between the three (though he acknowledges the striking thematic links) is surely an overdose of academic caution!
Although Aichinger studied in Venice with Gabrieli, there is little evidence of that in these motets. That is why, in addition to the Baroque tag, I have added a Renaissance tag, too – this music inhabits the grey world of musical stylistic change around 1600. The first seven short pieces are scored for five voices (SMATB), while the last adds a second tenor. Mostly cast in 4/2 bars, Fisher opts to represent tripla (3) in 3/1 in the fourth motet but in 3/2 in the final piece. I cannot help thinking that this is because he (like others) is afraid to acknowledge that our modern barring system (and subsequently some of our understanding of the interrelationship between time signatures) just does not like joins, where half of a bar is notionally a triplet version of the other half. That said, this is a well laid-out volume with minimal editorial intervention. Having such a clean page allows one to appreciate one aspect of the music that Fisher draws attention to in his rich introduction: the way Aichinger respects the clarity of Welser’s texts.
Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 115 Edited by Austin Glatthorn xxiv, three plates, 166pp. A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 978-1-9872-0456-8. $270
The latest volume in this excellent series from A-R Editions includes not only Benda’s version of his last melodrama, but also the revised version of some movements (made by the glass harmonica player, Johann Ludwig Röllig, who commissioned it) for performances in Prague (the original Viennese production having been cancelled). Unlike Benda’s other melodramas, Philon und Theone (which tells of lovers separated by a sea storm, her protection by spirits, and their ultimate reconciliation) is not restricted to instrumental music interspersed with narrative; Theone is a sung role and the spirits sing two- and four-voice choruses. This, as the thorough and impressive introduction explains, brings the work closer to Singspiel and opera, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Schikaneder and/or Mozart (the latter certainly knew of Benda’s music) were acquainted with the work. The original version (for a string orchestra with pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets with timpani) runs to p. 103, and the remainder is given over to Röllig’s Almansor und Nadine (the revision). The translation is given of all the words, and the music looks lively and effective, as Benda’s output tends to be – it still surprises me how few performances and recordings there are on the market! Congratulations to Glatthorn and A-R Editions on a very fine publication.
Edited by Lawrence Mays, libretto translated with assitance from Grazia Miccichè Part 1: Introductory Materials and Act 1 lxii, 6 plates + 243pp. Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 112 A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 978-1-9872-0215-1 $415 Part 2: Act 2, Act 3, and Critical Report vi + pp. [245]-555. Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 113 A-R EDitions, Inc. ISBN 978-1-9872-0300-4 $415
This three-act opera is unusual in that it is set on the moon! Unlike other moon-themed operas of the Baroque and Classical periods, the libretto tells of the visit of some Earth-living humans to a society where women are very much in control, peace reigns and the desire to be successful in business is viewed rather disapprovingly. Thus the men in the party get into difficulties trying to boast their way into the lunar princess’s good books, and the Earth-women decide the moon is such fun they’d rather stay than go home!
Piccinni’s original setting of 1770 for Milan is lost, so Mays’s edition is based on materials for the Dresden revivals later in the decade, where it is scored for pairs of oboes, horns and trumpets with drums, strings. The seven characters are two sopranos, a mezzo, two tenors, a baritone and a bass. Arias were cut from the Milan libretto for the Dresden performances and it is noticeable that while there are six arias in Act 1, there are only four in Act, and only one in Act 3; conversely, the number of ensemble pieces rises as the opera progresses and the secco recitative gradually gives way to accompagnati. The music is hardly sophisticated (like many contemporary operas, there is a little too much repetition built into the phrases for that) – nor indeed is much of the libretto! – but it is tuneful and full of the necessary energy to carry the action.
A welcome addition to the catalogue of available operas – will someone take on a production?
Edited by Drew Edward Davies Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 206 xliii, [6 plates] + 231pp. A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 978-1-9872-0202-1 $275 (Violin parts available $14)
Manuel de Sumaya (c. 1678-1755) was chapel master at the cathedral in Mexico City from 1715-39 and the 32 complete works in this impressive volume (plus transcriptions of two further fragments) date from this period.
The villancico form has a verse and refrain basis. Sumaya’s Mexico city pieces include 14 for one “choir” (of between two and four voices, two with added violins), 14 more for two “choirs” (four to eight voices, again two with strings), and four for three “choirs” (11-12 voices). It is difficult to look at music for choirs where the bottom line of each is called bass and the rhythm mostly matches the voices above (and thus diverges from the basso seguente at the bottom of the texture) and not assume that these lines must have been sung too; but that is superimposing European expectations – played by the instruments Davies suggests in his detailed introduction, the lack of a texted bass part might be irrelevant.
Some of his translations of the texts are a little less literal than they could be, but a great help for performers is the fact that all of the verses are underlaid so there is no need for the mental gymnastics required with other editions on how to elide the various words ending and beginning with vowels so that the text is properly stressed! One of the strangest pieces is no. 20, for the feast of the Assumption, Hoy sube arrebatada. As well as a tenor voice, it features two violins with bass, as well as untexted treble and bass parts that make up “choir one”. As elsewhere, the string writing is more elaborate than that for voices; Davies’s suggestion that the untexted treble be played on a wind instrument (and the bass, too, presumably) might make sense of something that just looks quite odd!
In all honesty, I cannot see choirs queueing up to pay so much for what is a very worthwhile volume of interesting music, so I sincerely hope that A-R Editions can be persuaded to authorise off-prints for inclusion in concerts.
Edited by Michael Burden Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 209 xxvii, [6 plates] + 97pp. A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 978-1-9872-0306-6 $180
For those whose historical knowledge of the late 17th century is a little sketchy, the Treaty of Ryswick was signed at the conclusion of the Nine Years War, fought between France under Louis XIV and a Grand (and somewhat unusual) Alliance between Protestant England and Holland on the one hand and Catholic Spain and the Holy Roman Empire on the other.
Kathryn Lowerre (one of the General Editors of this “complete works of Eccles” sub series from A-R Editions) has written extensively about the piece and both its background and contents. Michael Burden’s fine edition supplements that with illustrations, a fully annotated (and, when necessary, translated) libretto (with those sections of Motteux that were omitted from performance in one of three appendices) and a thorough but remarkably short Critical Report.
As usual, my only reservation about the edition is the sometimes impractical layout; numbers 8 and 9, for example, cover two pages but they both have page turns – in the case of number 9, that means turning to play five bars and then turning back. Someone should think about the possibility that these volumes may not be destined to languish on scholars’ shelves and that musicians might be inspired by Anthony Rooley’s foreword to the edition and actually stage a performance; then all the hard work would finally be shown to have been worthwhile.
In her extensive introduction to this 106-bar devotional song for three male voices, Rebecca Herissone makes a convincing case for re-assessing Philip Hayes’ role as a collector and copyist of Purcell’s music in general and for re-instating this to the catalogue of the composer’s canon in particular.
Given the amount of detail she gives, it is surprising that she decided to omit the figured bass symbols on the grounds that it was impossible to distinguish between Hayes’s 18th-century additions (as witnessed in his other transcriptions of Purcell sources that still exist) and what might have been in the original; I should have thought making that statement would have been enough explanation had she left them in rather than (rather shadily) using them “to inform choices in the editorial continuo part”.
She casts the piece as a “homosocial” duet for high and normal tenor voices with a bass joining in for a refrain (in which it really does very little that add text and rhythm to the continuo line). The angular melodies and piquant harmonies are typical of the composer’s style. It is a pity that the three-part section (which neatly fits on to two pages) could not have been laid out on a spread rather than have a page turn in the middle of it both times.
Haydn: Sinfonie F-Dur, Hob. I:89 Edited by Andreas Friesenhagen (originally 2010, in Joseph Haydn Werke I:14) [VI]+46pp, HN 9057, ISMN 979-0-2018-9057-9
If there is one thing you can rely on with G. Henle Verlag it is quality, both in terms of the fine presentation and of the contents. These three additions to the catalogue (the first two as off-prints from the full-sized complete edition) contain the introductions in three languages (German, English and French) and the commentary in the first two. Despite (obviously) being much smaller than their library shelves cousins, they retain the clarity of print that makes both a pleasure to use.
I confess myself to have been ignorant of these two Haydn symphonies. My eye was caught by the editor’s note that while “solo” meant “you have the tune” in the second movement Largo, in the trio section of the following movement it meant “only one player”. Clearly I wasn’t alone in being slightly confused by this apparent lack of logic (since all the parts were copied by the same person, and – since the original score is lost – the fact that Haydn had made corrections to them, they are given the authority of Primary Source); in a recording I listened to online, in fact, the cello part in the Largo *was* played as a solo. I do like the fact that Haydn only introduces the trumpets and timps in that same second movement – he liked keeping listeners on their toes!
Following the score as I listened to Malcolm Bilson play the Mozart concerto reminded me of my days as a student, when we were encouraged to do so as part of classes in orchestration – no matter how good one’s ears are, there are always details than one misses without having access to the notes. It also rather reminded me that my regular listening has become a little too narrow – my ears need to get out more! So that’s another reason to thank Henle for producing such attractive and conventiently sized scores. I have only praise for them.
Schickhardt: Principes de la Flûte avec Quarante deux Airs à deux Flutes Edited by Nicola Sansone vi + 43pp. FL29 ISMN 979-0-2153-2555-5 £18.95 (UK retail; from website €16.95 + P&P)
After what must be the briefest introduction to notation ever (Schickhardt’s four tables with explanations in French and Flemish), and a fingering chart including trills, it is straight into the music. The first piece is all of six bars and played in unison; the second is shorter but has more notes and tonguing indications, then the third is already conceived in two voices, introduces binary form and only has tonguing marks for certain parts, then the remaining 39 pieces work their way through a variety of keys and dance styles as well as occasional through-composed movements. While the upper voice might “take the lead” more, it certainly does not hog the limelight; the composer is very careful to involve both players in a thoroughly musical dialogue. None of the pieces is longer than two pages, and the majority are far shorter, so these are study rather than recital pieces. That said, I can definitely see a market for this nicely printed volume.
Buchner: 2 Sonate a Tre from Plectrum musicum Op. 4 (Frankfurt 1662) Edited by Nicola Sansone iv + 16pp. FL30 – ISMN 979-0-2153-2556-2 £21.95 (UK retail; from website €19.95 + P&P)
Ostensibly published as a set of sonatas for strings, the “Viola da braccio” part-book for these two sonatas (nos. 10 & 11 in the set) give the scoring as “Flautto vel Viola da braccio”, so the editor is correct to publish them as recorder music but sadly a little hopeful in describing the piece on the cover as “Treble Recorder in G” – unless, of course, that is a misunderstanding of the English usage of Treble in this context to refer to Alto. Printed originally in the soprano clef (middle C on the bottom line), the opening phrase of Sonata X extends to E which is below the instrument’s standard range. But worse is to come – just in case someone was screaming at the screen about fudging that note – as bar 67 has a D, and then bar 78 has a C. Sonata XI has the same range, so there is little doubt that the music is actually far better suited to a Tenor Recorder. Were I to have edited this piece for publication, I would have ignored that fact that there is a separate bass part, since it is identical to the continuo line; rather than fifteen staves per page with the (also identical) figured bass squeezed into the available space, the layout would be much more comfortable. The music is well worth playing, and groups programming – for example – sonatas and concertos by Telemann for the same line-up should not hesitate to deploy these as variety.
Chaconnes and Grounds from English Baroque Masters Edited by Nicola Sansone v + 30pp. HS253 – ISMN 979-0-2153-2542-5 £23.50 (UK retail; from website €20.95 + P&P)
The eight pieces in this very useful volume are by Thomas Williams and Gottfried Keller (one ground each) and Gottfried Finger (three grounds and three chaconnes), all of them taken from four volumes printed in Amsterdam at the beginning of the 18th century. The range of the solo part suites the treble (=alto) recorder perfectly and the music here is far more demanding than in the Schickhardt collection above. Violinists should not be put off, though, as there is much elegant music here which will help younger players in particular to find ways to differentiate between each iteration of the theme above which they must weave their filigree. Ut orpheus has already published the source books (FL2, FL6, FL11 and FL17), should you fancy playing more of the repertoire than variations on a bass!
Manuel Rodrigues Coelho: Flores de Musica (1620) Vol. I: Tentos (1st-4th tone) ECHO Collection of Historical Organ Music [volume 3] Edited by João Vaz xxvi + 128pp. ECHOM3 – ISMN 979-0-2153-2606-4 £56.50 (UK retail; from website €50.95 + P&P)
I am by no stretch of the imagination a keyboard player. That said, in order to develop something akin to a reasonable technique, I remember shutting myself away in a practice room at university and devoting hours to playing Andrea Gabrieli’s organ music; it had the perfect blend (from my perspective, at least!) of sustained chords and moving parts, limited harmonic movement and few – if any – demanding leaps (especially in the left hand). That is also how I would described the contents of this excellent volume which contains 12 Tentos (three in each of the four modes). The original (as shown in the facsimiles dotted throughout the book) was printed on four staves; in compressing them on to two, the editor has (to my mind) sometimes been a little too pedantic (why print a superfluous bar’s rest when there are two other parts vying for the space on the staff at the time?) and not pedantic enough at others (where a note is inflected in one voice but not in the other, if the second accidental is not in the original, should it not be bracketed as an editorial insertion?) One small quirk of the printing is the notation of triplets; instead of the standard chunky 3 over the middle of the figure, this volume prints small 3s over the first note of each group which, in keyboard music, made me think they were fingering instructions. These are, however, minor faults in such an excellent volume. If I had access to an organ (or even a piano!), I think I might be tempted to sit down and play these pieces!
