La Réjouissance galante
Initially classified by traditional historiography as a transitional period between Baroque and Classicism, the galant style is now considered – thanks in large part to the contributions of musicologists Daniel Heartz and Robert Gjerdingen⏤ – as one of the most influential musical movements cultivated in Europe between 1720 and 1780. The repertoire collected in this recording by La Réjouissance, composed in Hamburg, London or Milan, confirms not only the international scale of this movement, but also the richness of its production, yet to be explored.
Deceptively conservative and yet innovative beyond the formal, this is a new music for a new age, that of the Enlightenment. Naturalness, sensitivity and good taste are expressions that frequent conversations and treatises to describe a renewed artistic horizon that the gallant composers outlined by distancing themselves from the complexities of erudite counterpoint to give way to a more accessible instrumental language, characterised by light textures, harmonic clarity, singable melodies and short phrases, so regular that they seem symmetrical. To enliven these parameters, the musician incorporates a web of dance rhythms easily identifiable to a knowledgeable and curious listener who is often also a skilled performer. The new enlightened social order favoured a musical thought that was directly addressed to a cultured, urban and cosmopolitan public that was no longer satisfied with passive listening, but approached the musical event from an active position that had its centre of operations in the salons of the international aristocracy.
Thus, the chapel master, the court musician or the chamber harpsichordist no longer write exclusively to show off their virtuosity or their expressive faculty, but also compose scores that can be negotiated for a receiver who enjoys the pleasure of practising an instrument, alone or in the company of others.
The titles of the printed scores are conclusive in this respect. One example: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published a volume of his Sonatas and Rondos for connoisseurs and amateurs (Clavier-Sonaten nebst einigen Rondos fürs forte-piano für Kenner und Liebhaber) in Leipzig in 1780. This edition was the first in a series of six publications for Kenner and Liebhaber. Such a title undoubtedly helped to promote the work and to reach the largest possible number of buyers, a matter of real importance in view of the fact that these were subscription editions, published by the author himself.
In this sociological context, the trio sonata established itself as the perfect form for the aspirations of composers and performers. Established in the 17th century, this baroque construction would also exercise its sovereignty in the chamber music of the gallant, reconverted into an eighteenth-century form that was both ingenious and technically accessible; its conversational, sociable and light-hearted character was equally satisfying to professional and amateur musicians alike.
professional musicians and amateurs alike.
Here it is important to remember that, although the name suggests three performers, the trio sonata actually refers to three lines of voices: two melodic instruments and a basso continuo played by a polyphonic instrument, usually a keyboard (the left hand reads the written bass while the right hand develops the chords according to a given cipher or to the dictation of one’s own imagination) which is often reinforced by a monophonic instrument of low tessitura such as the cello, viola da gamba or bassoon. As on a stage, two instruments
-two actors – engage in a dialogue, and their musical interaction evokes the emotional intensity of a drama without words. The continuo also participates in the scene, sometimes with a simple commentary, sometimes deeply involved in the narration of the story.
It is precisely the trio sonata composed in the 18th century that is the cornerstone of this recording, La Réjouissance galante, a representative collection of pieces illustrating the many dialects that this musical form conjured up in its long life. In this sense, the score that opens this anthology, the Sonata in G minor TWV 42: g7 by Georg Philipp Telemann, perfectly exemplifies what has been said so far.
Like almost all of the composer’s instrumental music catalogued to date, the score has come down to us in an unautographed manuscript copy, which makes it impossible to date it precisely; we can only guess that it was composed before 1740. Written for traverso, viola da gamba and continuo, the composer adheres to the conventions of the Italian style, which is not surprising, for as is well known, Telemann is a master of what Johann Joachim Quantz described as a mixed taste.
Quantz described as mixed taste, the use of Italian, French or Polish airs to, as we said in the introduction, enliven the scores. A procedure that the musicologist Steven Zohn aptly describes as the imaginative expansion of established national styles in the Baroque.
In this particular sonata, Telemann employs the structure of the sonata da chiesa: four movements defined by alternating tempi (slow-fast-slow-slow-fast) according to the model internationalised by Arcangelo Corelli. Telemann, however, incorporates the new modes of the galant style, with constant tonal affirmations of a cadential type, seductive melodies, and the three instruments in dialogue at the same level in the precious siciliana or in the adagio, bathed in a restrained melancholy thanks to the timbre of the viola da gamba. To finish, a technically brilliant allegro to showcase the skill of the performers.
Telemann, after a long and prolific professional life, died on 25 June 1767, which necessitated the search for a successor to the prestigious position he held in Hamburg, that of maestro di cappella. On 3 November 1767, the city administrators decided in favour of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Sebastian’s second son and Telemann’s godson. Earlier, in 1738, C.P. Emanuel Bach had been employed by King Frederick the Great as harpsichordist at his courts in Berlin and Potsdam.
It is well known that Frederick II of Prussia was a skilled flautist. The Sonata in E minor, H.551 Wq 124, included in this recording, was probably written to curry favour with him, hence it does not pose particularly difficult technical challenges, a feature which does not detract from its formal elegance and that distinction Johann Mattheson speaks of in defining music of the gallant.
Unlike Telemann’s sonata, C. P. E. Bach structured his work in three movements – slow – fast – (more) fast – a sequence that also predominates in the sonatas written in Dresden and Berlin, always under the clear influence of the compositions for flute and continuo by the aforementioned Johann Joachim Quantz.
Also of German origin was Fortunato Chelleri (originally his surname was Keller), a composer little frequented today, but highly appreciated in the 18th century, so much so that Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, in his Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne (1780) mentions him as an excellent composer and an extraordinary harpsichord player.
We know that Chelleri became internationally known as an opera composer in Venice, although his professional life took him to Barcelona, London, Florence and Stockholm. In 1730, while serving as chapel master of the Landgrave Karl of Hesse-Kassel, he published a collection of six harpsichord sonatas (preserved in the Library of the University of Lund) with the beautiful title Sonatas de gallanterie (Sonatas of gallantry). The Sonata in G major included on this disc also belongs to this period. Written for flute, viola da gamba and continuo, it is defined by formal and melodic references to the Italian style, as we saw in Telemann’s music. The best is to be found in the slow movement, which certifies a more than interesting melodic invention, and Chelleri, without being an innovator, elaborates the materials that would give rise to the galant style in a personal, very theatrical and expressive synthesis. Recovering and enhancing the value of his work is another of the contributions that guarantee the musicological interest of this record.
And, still on the subject of discoveries, the chronicle of the discovery of the Sonata in B flat major for flute or violin, viola da gamba and basso continuo by Carl Friedrich Abel, selected by La Réjouissance, is worthy of a monograph, as we shall now see.
In the spring of 2015, the musicologist and curator of the National Library of France, François-Pierre Goy, catalogued a collection of 18th-century musical manuscripts and printed scores in the historical documents section of the Ledenburg Collection, now deposited in the Lower Saxony State Archive (Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv) in the city of Osnabrück.
The main body of documents consists of works composed for viola da gamba, and its most notable guest is a copy – the only one documented to date – of the first printing of the twelve fantasias for viola da gamba solo that Telemann published in 1735 in Hamburg, music that experts considered lost for decades until Goy identified this original in the Ledenburg Collection.
As if this were not enough, the inventory also contains three trio sonatas for viola da gamba by Carl Friedrich Abel, also in manuscript and unpublished. Perhaps the most beautiful is the one included in this recording, catalogued as WKO 110d, A5:5A, of which only one part, the viola da gamba part, is preserved in the above-mentioned collection.
Although published as attributed to Johann Stamitz, the complete score has been unequivocally identified as the fourth of Abel’s six sonatas preserved in manuscript in the music archive of the University of Uppsala.
Experts believe that the composer wrote it in England, where he had been living since 1759 and where a few years later – specifically in London in 1762 – he met Johann Christian Bach, one of the apostles of the gallant style in Heirz’s words.
Friendship and a similar professional vision encouraged them to form the famous Bach-Abel concerts, the first public subscription concerts in England. Between 1765 and 1782, at performances scheduled on Wednesdays, Bach and Abel presented all kinds of instrumental music, their own or that of other contemporaries, defending the galant style when the immense shadow of Handel still dominated music-making in England.
It was during this period, in London in 1764, that the printer J. Welcker published the Sonata in A major catalogued as W. B47b, as part of a collection, Six sonates pour le clavecin accompagnées d’un violon ou flute traversiére et d’un violoncello, dedicated to Princess Augusta Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.
Domenico Alberti’s influence on this score by Johann Christian Bach is evident and reminds us of his years of study and craft in Milan. Arranged in two movements, which are in turn arranged in binary form, the traverso and cello accompany the harpsichord, which here does not play a basso continuo but a leading role in which broken chords and cascading triplets test the harpsichordist’s fingering. Stylistically, the balanced structure and the perfection of the harmonic relationships launch this sonata into early Classicism.
And finally, we return to Hamburg, specifically to Altona, where Pierre Prowo was organist. As with the work of Fortunato Chelleri, Pierre Prowo’s music is practically unpublished, and as if this were not enough, the stylistic similarity and the skill of his writing for woodwind instruments meant that the few works that have been located were attributed for a long time to his contemporary and neighbour Telemann. In fact, the sonata performed here by La Réjouissance coincides with Telemann’s in that it is written in G minor and structured in four movements. The flute part is very demanding, as is the viola singing, and both modulate a discourse full of nuances, reinforcing each other.
Inés Mogollón © 2023