Attilio Ariosti: The Stockholm Sonatas, Sonatas for Viola d’ Amore

Description

The name viola d’amore immediately evokes a thing of beauty. In the ears of both Italians and non-Italians alike, it sounds sweetly and suggests something elegant and tender. The suffix“d’amore” is found also in the case of other instruments, most notably the oboe d’amore. Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, frequently employed both oboe d’amore and viola d’amore in pieces from his sacred works where mystical love was to be signified. In comparison with the instruments they derive from, in fact, both the oboe d’amore and the viola d’amore have sweeter timbres and a softer tone.
The name “d’amore” may therefore be due to this mellow sound quality. Or not? In the case of the viola d’amore, doubts have been cast as to the origin of the name. Another hypothesis that has been formulated is that its name could refer to the small head of a putto, carved at the top of the peg box. A further hypothesis, that has however been discarded by contemporary musicology, is that the name may be a corruption of “viola de’ mori”. Though unreliable, this hypothesis is not entirely without reason. In fact, the principle on which the viola d’amore is built is clearly of non-European descent, and is found mainly in instruments built in India and in other Eastern countries.
This principle is that of the resonating strings. The physical phenomenon known as “sympathy” determines that, when a physical body with the capacity of vibrating is in contact with another vibrating body, whose frequency corresponds to that of the first one, then the first one will vibrate in turn.
If, therefore, one strikes a C string on a piano while pressing the right pedal (and thus allowing the piano’s strings to freely vibrate), all the other C-strings will start to vibrate. Moreover, also other strings (such as the Gs, corresponding to the third harmonic of the root C) will enter in resonance. On the piano, this is used in order to increase the volume and especially the beauty of the timbre. In fact, the more harmonics are produced in a sound, the more pleasant it is.
The same principle (and well before the invention of pianos and of their pedals) is employed in the viola d’amore. Typically, it has seven strings which are played in a fashion analogous to the violin.
Different from violins, violas, cellos and double-basses, however, the viola d’amore possesses a second set of strings, called “resonating strings”. These cannot be reached by the player’s fingers in the same fashion as the “normal” strings. However, these resonating strings will begin to vibrate when harmonics corresponding to their root or their overtones will be produced. Consequently, they will dramatically enrich the tone of the sound.
In spite of the beauty of its sound, which conquered many of the greatest baroque composers (including Bach and Vivaldi), the viola d’amore was rather short-lived. Probably this was due, at least partly, to the complexity of its tuning and to the difficulty in reaching and changing the resonating strings. Or possibly it was just a caprice of the fashion, as frequently happens. (It should be said, however, that some twentieth-century composers, and also a handful in the nineteenth century, were so fascinated by this instrument that they wrote modern works for it).
What is certain is that it will enamor, quite literally, its listeners, as this Da Vinci Classics album demonstrates.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2021

Attilio Ariosti, a colorful character of the Baroque world of music, was born in Bologna on November 5, 1666, the son of an illegitimate branch of the aristocratic Ariosti family, and died in London before September 3, 1729. Nothing is known about his youth; his musical education probably took place at San Petronio in Bologna where he had been an altar boy since 1672. In 1688 Ariosti entered the religious order of the Servites as Frate Ottavio, received the minor orders and worked as organist in Maria dei Servi in Bologna. Even though he was never ordained a priest, he was called Padre, which is also stated in the libretto of an oratorio for the Duke of Mantua: Padre Attilio Ottavio Ariosti, virtuoso della [duca di Mantova].

As he was soon famous for his compositions, especially operas, the Duke of Mantua took him into his service in 1696 and in 1697, when the Princess Electress of Brandenburg Sophie Charlotte requested a good musician, sent him to Berlin where, as maître de musique, he became one of her favorite musicians and a personal friend. His presence as a Catholic friar at the Protestant court in Berlin caused a great stir among his confreres and he was ordered back to Bologna in 1703 – which did not suit his employer at all…

As a favorite of Sophie Charlotte, he managed to delay his return with the help of distinguished intellectuals of his time, such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (who wrote, for example, that Ariosti was almost dying out of fear of his monastery …) and diplomatic correspondence. A “short” stay at the Viennese court of Joseph I, who held him in high esteem and appointed him imperial envoy for all Italian courts and principalities, dragged on. It was not until 1708 that he eventually returned to Bologna. Being a friar, Ariosti caused a sensation with his worldly, pompous appearance, and Empress Maria Theresa therefore banished him from court after the death of Joseph I in 1711 and is said to have requested his expulsion from the order. He apparently entered the service of the Duke of Anjou, later King Louis XV, as an envoy and stayed in Paris for a short time, as can be read in a letter to his brother in 1716, where he wrote that he would soon be going to London. There he quickly became famous, especially with his operas, and together with Francesco Bononcini and George Frideric Handel he rose to the “triumvirate” of the London music world. He also gained a foothold in aristocratic circles and in 1724 dedicated the printing of six cantatas and the six Lezioni for viola d’amore to King George I, the brother of Sophie Charlotte. More than 40 dukes and aristocrats subscribed, and his work became also a financial success. Ariosti was active as a teacher and instrumentalist on the organ, harpsichord, cello, and viola d’amore, which he first played as a new instrument in Handel’s Amadigi in 1716.

A surviving portrait of Ariosti (by an unknown painter) shows him with a viola d’amore with six main and six resonating strings. As he continued to be diplomatically active, he did not compose much more. After the failure of his last opera (1727) in the shadow of the overpowering Handel, Ariosti, known as a bon vivant and spendthrift, was impoverished and died penniless in 1729.

The manuscript known as the Stockholm Sonatas, a collection of 57 separate movements composed by Ariosti, also dates from the London years and is preserved only in a copy by the Swedish musician and violinist Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758) as Recueil de pièces pour la Viole d’Amour, now in the library of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm under the shelf mark RO:66. Roman was the most important Swedish musician of his time and was also called The Swedish Handel. During his study stay (ca. 1715-1721) in London, he was in contact with the most famous musicians and was possibly also a pupil of Ariosti.

He may have become first known some pieces for the viola d’amore during his stay in London and copied them. The division into 15 sonatas is not original and is done by combining individual movements in the same key.

They were first published in 1972 by Günther Weiss, who also found the manuscript. Further editions by Dorothea and Michael Jappe followed, as well as an online publication by Swedish musicologist Johan Tufvesson.

A characteristic of the viola d’amore, with its six or seven main and resonating strings, is its tuning to the main notes of the key of a work whose melodic and harmonic structure would be unplayable with an improper tuning chord. In the 17th and 18th centuries, music was usually notated in scordatura notation as a kind of tablature that allows the player to play with the finger position on the four high strings, like on the violin. Ariosti used scordatura in the Lezioni and for the cantata with viola d’amore Pur al fin gentil viola, but we do not know how he notated the 57 pieces because in Roman’s copy they are written in real pitch. So it is up to the player to find the adequate tuning for each sonata. On this recording, the tuning of the strings to a D major or D minor chord, which was quite common at the time, was assumed and only a few strings were changed for each sonata according to the different keys. In the individual movements, operatic composer Ariosti reveals himself both as a melodist and as possessing numerous witty ideas. He also lets the works emerge as amiable, delicate music. Not all of the pieces have movement names in the original; the missing ones have been filled in as appropriate and placed in square brackets. The sonatas are notated in a contemporary manner as solo and bass parts, with the bass sparsely figured. The harpsichordist adds the harmonies herself. The musicians in this recording vary the timbres by alternating the accompaniment of the viola d’amore by the harpsichord alone, in combination with viola da gamba or cello, or with duets between the solo voice and a bowed bass, thus emphasizing the movements‘ affect.

Marianne Rônez © 2021
Translation: Susan Ambler Schmit
and Chiara Bertoglio