Concerto for Keyboard in A Major, BWV 1055
Johann Sebastian Bach
- Allegro
- Larghetto
- Allegro ma non tanto
In 1729, Bach added to his numerous responsibilities at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig by launching what proved to be a decade-long term as the supervisor of the collegium musicum (Musical Fraternity). The ranks of this volunteer ensemble were made up of talented university students and amateur performers, augmented on occasion with professional musicians. His good and greatly esteemed friend, Georg Philipp Telemann, had founded it in 1702.
When Bach took it over, it was giving public, evening concerts during the winter months at a coffee house owned by Gottfried Zimmerman, and on summer afternoons in a garden. It blossomed under Bach’s expert direction, a development that gave him enormous satisfaction, during a period when his primary duty—the creation of sacred vocal music—was causing him a great deal of grief.
Bach created 13 concertos for one or more keyboards, plus strings and continuo. In his day the solo parts were performed on the harpsichord or the organ. They have long since been adopted by pianists, as well. It’s most likely that he created them to be performed at the collegium musicum concerts—and they were certainly heard at those events. The soloists were often his talented sons, his finest pupils—and himself. They are the earliest of all surviving keyboard concertos. Bach was the first composer to bring the harpsichord forward into the solo spotlight from its long-standing role of accompanist or continuo player.
He appears to have conceived only one of them, the Concerto for Two Keyboards, BWV 1061, specifically for that instrumental combination. It’s likely that he based all but one of the others on previously existing concertos that showcased a variety of instruments. The odd piece out in the latter group is the Concerto for Four Keyboards, BWV 1065. He transcribed it, as a gesture of homage, from the Concerto for Four Violins, RV 580 by a contemporary whom he greatly admired: Antonio Vivaldi.
Since the manuscript of the concerto that appears on this program has been lost, it is impossible to determine when Bach composed it. It appears that he created the original version to feature the oboe d’amore, a practically obsolete member of the oboe family, whose range of pitches lies lower than the modern oboe’s. The concerto has been well-known in his own transcription for harpsichord, which he probably prepared during the 1730s for the Collegium musicum concerts in Leipzig. The manuscript of the harpsichord version has survived, complete with details of the transcription process. From it the original oboe d’amore version has been reconstructed and published. This piece is subdued and pastoral in nature. This is particularly true in the slow second movement, which displays the melancholy lyricism of the lilting, rustic dance, the siciliano.
Suite from the semi-opera 'The Fairy Queen' (Z 629)
Henry Purcell
- Prelude
- Rondeau
- Giga
- Hornpipe
- Dance for the Fairies
Purcell composed the semi-opera The Fairy-Queen in 1692.
Purcell is widely considered England’s greatest composer before Elgar. His compositions in many fields—especially church music, incidental scores for the theatre, and operas—gave the period of the English Restoration much of its finest musical art.
As a boy, he had been a member of the prestigious Chapel Royal Choir. After leaving that group, he probably studied with a number of celebrated composers, including John Blow and Christopher Gibbons. His rise to the highest ranks of the profession proceeded swiftly. At 18, he was appointed composer for the violins at court; he became organist at Westminster Abbey in London two years later; and added the position of organist to the Chapel Royal three years after that.
Between 1680 and the death of King Charles II in 1685, Purcell composed virtually nothing but music for the royal court, including more than 70 choral anthems. The king’s exile in 1688 greatly diminished Purcell’s contributions to that field.
From 1690 onwards, he shifted his primary focus to the theatre. He composed music to accompany more than 40 plays, as well as numerous operas and semi-operas. A semi-opera consisted of a spoken play, throughout which interludes of singing and dancing (masques) were interspersed.
The Fairy Queen is one such piece. The scenario was inspired by Shakespeare’s celebrated romantic comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was then some 100 years old. The identity of the librettist is unknown. The most likely author was Thomas Betterton, the actor-manager of the troupe that staged the premiere, The United Company of the Theatre Royal.
Produced on a hefty budget of £3 thousand, The Fairy-Queen failed initially to return its investment. One year after the first production, Purcell created a revised version with additional music. It finally achieved the great success that had previously eluded this marvelous score, which is held by many scholars to be his finest work for the theatre.
Connections between Shakespeare’s play and Purcell’s semi-opera are loose. The Fairy-Queen used none of Shakespeare’s dialogue, and the subjects to which Purcell dedicated the masques, with their many brief, charming dances, are only related to the storyline in metaphorical terms. Each dance is a gem. Whether it be spirited or gracious in character, it admirably fulfills its function by portraying characters, setting a mood, or ingeniously covering a change of scene.
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585) was one of Tudor England’s most celebrated musicians. In 1567, he contributed eight themes to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hymn book, the Metrical Psalter. When Vaughan Williams helped to edit a new version of the English Hymnal in 1906, he used the opportunity to restore to circulation the third of those melodies. Tallis used it as the tune for the text that begins, “When rising from the bed of death.” His lovely, sorrowful theme, set in the antique Phrygian church mode, rather than the more common major or minor, moved Vaughan Williams to create a piece based upon it, one that would expand and intensify its inherent qualities. He composed the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in 1910.
Reflecting his studies with master orchestrator Maurice Ravel two years earlier, he richly and ingeniously scored the fantasia for three string groups: solo quartet and two orchestras of different sizes. He used them in strikingly antiphonal ways throughout the fantasia. The music explores a wide range of emotion and texture, from whispered intimacies to bold, compelling grandeur.
Vaughan Williams conducted the highly successful première himself, in the vast, imposing space of the thousand-year-old Gloucester Cathedral, on 6 September 1910. His wife Ursula wrote, “With the Norman grandeurs of Gloucester Cathedral in mind and the strange quality of the resonance of stone, the ‘echo’ idea of three different groups of instruments was well judged. It seemed that his early love for architecture and his historical knowledge were so deeply assimilated that they were translated and absorbed into the line of the music.”
That fantasia’s premiere, and the debut of A Sea Symphony (his first symphony) one month later, laid the foundation of his international reputation. He revised and shortened the fantasia twice before it was published in 1920.
On the evening of his death, his close friend Sir John Barbirolli, a superlative interpreter of his music, conducted a performance of the fantasia in Vaughan Williams’s honour, at a Henry Wood Promenade concert in the Royal Albert Hall, London. A lovelier, more heartfelt tribute would be difficult to imagine.
Rounds
Jessie Montgomery
Rounds for solo piano and string orchestra is inspired by the imagery and themes from T.S. Eliot’s epic poem Four Quartets.
In addition to this inspiration, while working on the piece, I became fascinated by fractals (infinite patterns found in nature that are self-similar across different scales) and also delved into the work of contemporary biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber who writes about the interdependency of all beings. Weber explores how every living organism has a rhythm that interacts and impacts with all of the living things around it and results in a multitude of outcomes.
Like Eliot in Four Quartets, beginning to understand this interconnectedness requires that we slow down, listen, and observe both the effect and the opposite effect caused by every single action and moment. I’ve found this is an exercise that lends itself very naturally towards musical gestural possibilities that I explore in the work—action and reaction, dark and light, stagnant and swift.
Structurally, with these concepts in mind, I set the form of the work as a rondo, within a rondo, within a rondo. The five major sections are a rondo; section ‘A’ is also a rondo in itself; and the cadenza—which is partially improvised by the soloist—breaks the pattern, yet, contains within it, the overall form of the work.
To help share some of this with the performers, I’ve included the following poetic performance note at the start of the score:
Inspired by the constancy,
the rhythms, and duality of life,
in order of relevance to form:
Rondine—AKA Swifts
(like a sparrow) flying
in circles patterns
Playing with opposites—dark/light;
stagnant/swift
Fractals—infinite design
I am grateful to my friend Awadagin Pratt for his collaborative spirit and ingenuity in helping to usher my first work for solo piano into the world.
