Barbara Kallaur, flute
Christopher Verrette, violin
Elizabeth Macdonald, viola da gamba
Thomas Gerber, harpsichord

Sonata à 3 in D major, No. 3                  Reinhard Keiser

Arioso Andante
Presto
Largo
Vivace

Sonata à 3 in D major, No. 1                  Reinhard Keiser

Lento Cantabile
Allegro
Lamentabile
Allegro

Sonata à 3 in G major, No. 2                  Reinhard Keiser

Andante con affetto
Vivace assai
Languente
Allegro

program subject to change

Program Notes

Perhaps Danish by birth, Dietrich Buxtehude is considered the preeminent composer of North German organ music prior to Bach. From 1668, he served faithfully for nearly 40 years as the organist of the Mariankirche in the city of Lübeck—not Hamburg, but close enough. He is the composer of a large quantity of music, a not insignificant portion of which is deemed today to be lost. What survives is an important body of organ music, sacred vocal music, a number of suites for solo harpsichord, and chamber sonatas. It was almost exclusively in this last category that Buxtehude was published during his lifetime. The Sonata in A minor heard this evening is somewhere in the transitional gray area between a 17 th-century-style sectional composition (contrasting sections flowing from one to the other) and a work of separate and discrete movements (the wave of the future).

Like Buxtehude a composer of the 17 th Century, Johann Schop is primarily important in history as the first exponent in Germany of music for the violin. By 1621 he had become the most respected viol player in Hamburg, where, despite attempts by the king of Denmark to seduce him with an opulent salary if only he would move to Copenhagen, he remained until his death in 1667. He came under the spell of the early 17 th-century violinists (Fontana, Marini, Castello), and among other works his Sonata in D minor is the result. Like the Italian models Schop studied and admired, the Sonata in D minor is sectional, with a very free violin part and foundational bass line.

Like Mozart and Mendelssohn after him, Johann Mattheson was a child prodigy, a wunderkind. Leaving school at 12 to sing professionally with the Hamburg Opera, he made his solo debut at age 15, singing female and, later, tenor roles. It was at the Hamburg Opera that the 22-year-old Mattheson met the 18-year-old Handel. One of music history’s famous tabloid stories concerns the 1704 duel between the two young men. Besides singing in operas, he also composed quite a few of them, as well as church music, chamber music, and solo keyboard music. The vast majority of his output was destroyed in the bombing of the Hamburg State Library during WWII. He is principally acknowledged today as a writer about music and composers, especially from those years in the early 18 th Century which saw the evolution from the Baroque to the Early Classical Eras. The Suite in E minor is drawn from his two-volume set (1714) of harpsichord suites in the French style.

Although not a native of Hamburg, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach moved there as part of a midlife career change. In his 50s, he left the court of King Frederick the Great at Potsdam, bidding farewell with what must have been mixed feelings to one of the most resplendent musical milieus of the 18 th Century, although one in which CPE had been frequently passed over and consistently underpaid. The new position in Hamburg (Telemann’s old job of director of music at the five main [Lutheran] churches) allowed CPE to explore more fully the Empfindsamer Stil--the “expressive/sensitive/sentimental style” of composition for which he would become the leading exponent. It is quite likely that the Trio Sonata in G was composed long before CPE moved to Hamburg in 1768: it expressly includes a part not just for a generic treble instrument but for flauto, and so may have been written for the flute-playing Frederick himself to play. Nevertheless, the quirky rhetorical shifts from tenderness to ebullience which are characteristic of Empfindsamer Stil can be found here, too.

Perhaps no composer is as closely associated with Hamburg as Georg Philipp Telemann, although, like Johann Sebastian Bach on his life’s route to Leipzig, Telemann held posts in many different German cities—even a Polish one!—before landing in Hamburg at age 41. In fact, one of Telemann’s early positions was in Leipzig, and later, in the 1720s, the city fathers of Leipzig would choose Telemann over Bach to lead music in the city’s five main churches. (Bach eventually got the job because Telemann and the other applicants decided not to take it.) Telemann is a strong contender for the Most- Prolific-Composer-in- Music-History award; his cantata output alone numbers well over 1000. Critical opinion of his music suffered during the many decades of Bach’s reputation’s ascent in the 19 th and 20 th Centuries, and it is true that Telemann’s music is, though well crafted, usually more immediately accessible than Bach’s. Can we go so far as to say that it is therefore shallow and insubstantial? Most definitely “No,” say those of us in Ensemble Voltaire!

Although Telemann, Mattheson, and Handel all composed for the Hamburg Opera, it is Reinhard Keiser who is seen as the first native composer of opera in German, and many of his works were presented at the Hamburg Opera (the Oper am Gansemarkt). By his own count at one point, Keiser wrote c. 107 operas, although quite a few have been described as “pasticcios and smaller works.” The 11-year-old Keiser entered the Leipzig Thomasschule the same year J.S. Bach was born; Bach would of course go on to become a teacher at the Thomasschule. Keiser’s career would have its ups and downs, although he collaborated with Mattheson on a number of successful musical ventures. Keiser’s passion-oratorios would influence later works in the genre, notably J.S. Bach’s Matthew and John Passions. He produced very little in the way of strictly instrumental music, but his chamber music offerings are delightful and amusing in their comic opera way.

The harpsichord in tonight’s concert—a Flemish single manual instrument—was built and decorated in 1999 by Hoosier-born Paul E. Kennedy, who, after a decades-long career as a harpsichord builder in New York City, retired to Danville, Indiana, to relax---well, actually, he’s building more harpsichords, to help him---well, relax.