Italian baroque music concert - c1600 to c1760 - two centuries of Italian music

The article about the Monteverdi 1610 Vespers has been very popular with our readers! So, I am sure it is welcome news that the Portland Baroque Orchestra will be presenting a program of Italian music from the 17th and 18th centuries from the 23rd to the 25th of November.

On Saturday, the 24th there will be a concert aimed at a youth audience. PBO concertmaster Carla Moore and principal cellist Tanya Tomkins, each a director of her own Bay Area ensemble, make their PBO directing debuts and also perform as soloists in a program featuring works by composers Vivaldi, Locatelli, and Castello, to name a few. Audiences will get a special chance to hear the rich sonorities of both the baroque bassoon and its 17th-century predecessor, the dulcian – both performed by Oregon native Nate Helgeson. Mr. Helgeson is a recent graduate of the Juilliard Historical Performance Institute where PBO’s Artistic Director, Monica Huggett is Artistic Advisor, and instructor.

(Photo of Nate Helgeson playing and 18^th century bassoon, courtesy of Portland Baroque Orchestra)

For more information about the concert, here is the link:

http://www.pbo.org/concerts.php?concert=64

Tanya Tomkins has compiled a lot of very interesting information about the many different Italian works on the program.

Here are some highlights from Tanya’s program notes:

By now all players and enthusiasts of Baroque music are familiar with Vivaldi and Corelli, the popular Italian composers whose music we strongly associate with brilliant violin playing. However, at this concert you will hear a different perspective on 17th and 18th century Italian music. Many of the pieces on this program will prominently feature the bassoon and its close ancestor, the dulcian––instruments we normally associate with the supporting role of the bass line.

(Photo of dulcians from Wikimedia commons contributed by HansMons)

Up until the 17th century, music was written for non-specific groups of instruments. Instrumentalists could, without singers, play choral music, for instance, and dance music could be played by any group of instruments available. Starting with Monteverdi, around 1600, composers started writing for specific instruments, and in this program, especially on the second half, you will hear, alongside the more familiar concerti grossi of later composers, music that was written expressly to show off the incredible versatility and beautiful sound of the bassoon and dulcian.

The first half of the program will feature the music of Corelli’s students, Vivaldi (1678-1741) and Locatelli (1695-1764). The title given to Locatelli’s Concerto no. 6 in op. 7, Il Pianto d’Arianna (Ariadne’s lament), has been seen by some as a tribute to the world of opera, even though there are no precise clues as to which works Locatelli might have had in mind. Nevertheless, it is clear that Locatelli was interested in using instruments to express emotions that, until a few decades earlier, had only been conveyed in singing. In Il Pianto d’Arianna, the use of a violin ‘recitative’ and the expressive harmonies used in the tutti create an effective piece rich in emotional power and content.

(Photo of Pietro Locatelli from Wikimedia commons. Copyright no longer applies)

Vivaldi, probably the most famous of Corelli’s students, was a great composer of concertos that showed off the virtuosity of specific instruments. These gratifying pieces give the player a chance to interpret the music with maximum freedom of expression, as can be heard in the 39 concertos by Vivaldi written for the bassoon.

Gregori was the first known composer to use the term concerto grosso, a form that Corelli would later perfect and pass on to his student, Locatelli. These short, delightful concerti are pieces that exploit the sonorities of an entire section of string soloists (or concertino) playing together and accompanied by another group of strings (the ripieno) , a different sort of virtuosity than a solo concerto that shows off the physical and emotional feats of a single voice in conversation with the larger group

The second half of the program includes the music of one of the first composers to write specifically for the early bassoon or dulcian, Bartolome de Selma y Salaverde (c. 1595 – after 1638). Himself a virtuoso bassoonist, Salaverde’s music shows off the low and sweet tones of the dulcian. The origin of the name, dulcian refers to its sweet (dolce) sound. Salaverde, originally Spanish and a friar, was employed at the archducal court at Innsbruck. Later he moved to Italy to work and compose in Venice, writing the Correntes on the program in a style similar to that of Giovanni Gabrieli and other Venetian School composers of the late 16th and early 17th Centuries.

Another composer in the second half of the program, Dario Castello (c. 1590- c. 1658) also worked and published in Venice. There is very little known about this composer, except that he was probably a bassoonist himself.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Francesco_Geminiani.jpg

(Photo of Francesco Geminiani from Wikimedia commons. Copyright no longer applies)

It would be remiss in any program of Italian music not to include a version of the popular La Folía theme (also known as Follia in Italy.) This lively theme inspired the composition of sets of wild variations by Corelli, Vivaldi and many others before and after. On this program, you will have the opportunity to hear a set of 17th-century Folias by Andrea Falconieri (c. 1585-1656), and finally variations by Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762). The evening’s grand finale is Geminiani’s famous crowd-pleasing concerto grosso La Follia—a tribute to his teacher Corelli’s virtuoso variations for solo violin.

Ci sentiamo presto,

Lina

Tags: Corelli Locatelli monteverdi Vivaldi Geminiani baroque music Portland Baroque Orchestra bassoon dulcian Arts music