Another chance encounter

Kim Clow, my colleague in New York, was recently given a tip off about a manuscript in a rather obscure archive (at least for musicians) in Vienna, which purported to contain a concerto for recorder by Telemann.

That sort of thing is the stuff of legend: of all the “early music” instruments, the recorder is possibly the most widely played, being relatively easily mastered; of all the composers of the baroque who wrote for the instrument, Telemann was undoubtedly king – his solo and trio sonatas are among the most popular pieces in recitals.

So Kim ordered copies of the manuscript and, sure enough, it contains six parts for a three movement concerto in G minor for treble recorder, strings and continuo (there are separate parts for stringed bass and cembalo). The music is catchy and entirely in Telemann’s style. The parts were copied in a hand I recognised from my Fasch research – there is a small collection in the University of Uppsala’s manuscript collection of 18th-century German instrumental music (including three concertos and an incomplete ouverture suite by Fasch), all of which features a distinctive double dot after the final bar of each movement. I’m awaiting feedback from Vienna on the watermarks of the paper used for the “Telemann” concerto to see if that ties in closer with the Uppsala collection.

But what is extraordinary about this manuscript is the fact that the concerto is not the only piece… Just like the Fasch cantata fragment that I blogged about a week or so ago (which I found lurking within materials for a Telemann – or Melchior Hoffman – cantata), it seems not to have drawn anyone’s attention that the Vienna manuscript also includes music for four sonatas for recorder and continuo – three of which are quite clearly labelled “Telemann”. I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that the archive does not specialise in music, so it is entirely possible that the original title-page “Telemann: | Concert-Musik: | flauto, cembalo, violino 1., violino 2., violoncello, Viola | 28 Blatt.” was taken literally. The parts are bound in the order given. Apart from the recorder part (which is longer than the others), each is copied on a landscape piece of paper which has been folded to make four pages, the first movement on one side and the second and third movements on the reverse – this avoids turning a page in the middle of the first movement, but means that when the parts are bound into a single volume, the “last” page comes first in the sequence (it’s the sort of thing you might physically have to do to understand what I mean!), which would be confusing to a non-specialist.

In any case, it seems the sonatas are entirely new discoveries. None of the pieces has been mentioned in the Telemann literature. There is no reason to doubt the attribution of the copyist – the labelling of the Uppsala material has been shown (by comparison with other sources) to have been accurate, and the music is certainly not unworthy of Telemann.

Although I am still desperately working my way through my Handel workload, I hope to have the concerto and the sonatas available by the end of next week so that everyone can enjoy the new discoveries.

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Handel, Handel, Handel!

2009 marks a number of important anniversaries in the “early music” world – the birth of Henry Purcell in 1659, the death of Handel in 1759, the death of Joseph Haydn and the birth of Felix Mendelssohn in 1809.

Since Purcell died in 1695, there was already a major celebration of his life and music not too long ago, so much of the performing material that might be required this year was most likely prepared in or around 1995.

The same – amazingly – cannot be said of Handel. Although there are learned musicological editions of all his major works readily available in the world’s libraries, you might be surprised to discover that it’s not that easy to stage one of his less well-known operas or oratorios without paying an arm and a leg (or two!) in hire fees.

I am currently working on new performing sets of Belshazzar and Saul, having already done Acis & Galatea (for the recent Covent Garden production), Admeto (for the Göttingen Handel Festival – and soon to be seen at the Edinburgh Festival), Israel in Egypt for Stephen Layton (with various performances lined up, including the Three Choirs Festival).

While I agree that anniversaries are a useful “hook” for marketing managers, I find it disappointing that no-one seems to want to look beyond the music of the great man (or woman) in question. There can be no denying that any of these four composers are major figures in the history of western music (and therefore more worthy, perhaps, of such commemoration than Carl Heinrich Graun or Sebastian Bodinus, both of whom also died in 1759); but the fact is quite simply that they did not live in a vacuum.

We know that not all of Handel’s operas were runaway successes – and we know that he had serious (dare I say more progressive?) rivals in London. Will we hear any of their works this year, so that we can understand the context of Handel’s efforts?

We know Handel was a musical magpie – will we hear any of the works from which he lifted themes, ideas or (oh no!) entire movements?

Was he born with all that talent, or was it taught him, or nourished in him by influential figures in Germany and Italy? Will we here any Roman music from the first decade of the 18th century that will give us clues? Or any Zachow church cantatas to show us what the young Handel had to cope with? I doubt it.

As it happens, Prima la musica! will be publishing three church cantatas by Zachow – but not until 2010; apparently the editor, Maik Richter, hadn’t got his anniversary head on when he was planning his schedule. And, to be honest, what chance would he stand of convincing performers actually to give a concert of Zachow?

“You know – Handel’s teacher…”

“Wow- he must have been REALLY good!”

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Mind your language

It may surprise some readers that I’m not a religious man.

Sure, as a child, I went to Sunday school and had a good Church of Scotland upbringing. But as a teenager, I decided that (pompous as it sounds) if some people need religion in their lives, that’s fine – but it isn’t for me.

How ironic, then, that I spend huge amounts of my time these days editing and publishing church music from around Europe – from Lutheran chorales to full Catholic Requiem settings, from solo motets to oratorios in English, German and Latin. In fact, the majority of Prima la musica! editions of vocal music is for performance in church.

I was really quite useless at German as a schoolboy. It was offered as a timetable filler in my last year at school, so I gave it a go. I did OK, I suppose (well enough to be accepted to study it with French at university), but I abandoned it at the earliest opportunity.

So it is doubly ironic that one of the pleasures of my job is working with German religious texts. I think part of the attraction must be the very idea that these people were paid to write verse – can you imagine?!

There is also the challenge of deciphering the old German script – especially when you don’t recognize half the words! LOL. Some of the texts are, of course, just too urbane to be pleasant, but occasionally one encounters verse that is a delight, even if you don’t fully understand the meaning – there is music in the poetry, if you like.

Taube voller Lieblichkeit
Geist des Friedens, Gott der Liebe,
dessen Trost noch übrig bliebe,
da Gott aller Welt gedräut;
da der Eifer seiner Macht
sie im Zorne ganz zufällen,
hat die Menge seiner Wellen
ganz erschrecklich aufgebracht.

I only get the gist of that, but it sounds wonderful. I can’t wait to see what my colleague David Bellinger makes of it – he has this wonderful knack of capturing the very essence of a text and translating it with the same feeling into English. He’s a star!

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