Douze solos, a violon ou traversiere

Abstract

The two collections of music under review are products of the mid-1730s, perhaps the busiest period in Georg Philipp Telemann's career. In Hamburg, where he was employed from 1721 until his death in 1767, Telemann's duties included serving as Kantor at the Johanneum, directing the music at the city's five principal churches, composing two cantatas for each Sunday, composing a Passion each year, and providing the music (mostly cantatas, oratorios, and serenatas) for numerous induction ceremonies, consecrations of churches, and civic celebrations. As if these responsibilities were not enough to keep him occupied, Telemann assumed the directorship of the opera at the Gansemarkt in 1722, conducted a collegium musicum in public concerts, and embarked on an ambitious program of publishing his vocal and instrumental music, engraving the plates himself. During the period 1733 to 1735 Telemann published not only the Douze solos and violin fantasies but also the third installment of his keyboard fantasies, the Musique de table (1733), the Six quatuors ou trios (1733), the Singe-, Spiel-, und Generalbass-Ubungen (1733-34), the Lustiger Mischmasch (1734 or 1735; Scottish pieces for keyboard and other instruments; lost), the Fugirende und verandernde Chorale (1735), and three collections of trio sonatas: the Scherzi melodichi (1734), the Six concerts et six suites (1734), and the Sonares corellisantes (1735). Four other collections of vocal and instrumental music appeared in either 1735 or 1736. Telemann's Douze solos, a violon ou traversiere (Hamburg, 1734; containing TWV 41: F 3, e 4, A 5, C 4, g 7, D 8, d 3, G 8, h 5, E 6, a 5, and fis 1) are his stylistically most advanced solo sonatas, encompassing the full range of styles and movement types developed in his earlier publications of instrumental music. The galant characteristic of German music of the period, and pioneered by Telemann during his Frankfurt years (1712-21), dominates the collection. Thus, individual sonatas may juxtapose movements in the French, Italian, and Polish styles, or imaginatively combine two or more national styles within a single movement. As in most of his instrumental publications, Telemann delights here in alluding to different genres: the concerto, the da capo aria, the lament aria, and the motto aria. (The instrumental recitative, a movement type found in several other collections of solo sonatas, is not included in the Douze solos.) On the whole, this music is extremely attractive and sophisticated, calculated to appeal equally to amateur and professional musicians. Jeanne Swack's edition of the Douze solos is the first to be based on Telemann's own engraved edition. A previous modern edition, edited by Herbert Kolbel for Heinrichshofen Verlag in 1972, was based on an unreliable manuscript copy of Telemann's publication. In her preface Swack provides a lucid overview of Telemann's considerable output of solo sonatas and discusses the style of the works in question, focusing primarily on the composer's various applications of the mixed taste and on the most distinctive of his mixed-genre movements. In her comments on performance practice, she addresses a few subjects that are likely to be of most immediate concern to performers: which instruments are suitable for playing the solo line (violin, transverse flute, and, to a lesser degree, oboe), the meaning of a figured-bass symbol referred to by C. P. E. Bach as the Telemannischer Bogen, and the need for supplying ornaments in the for slow movements. For the Douze solos we are fortunate to have Telemann's own Hamburg edition, which effectively transmits the Fassung letzter Hand for these works (as with the vast majority of Telemann's instrumental oeuvre, autograph manuscripts do not survive). Although some of Telemann's earlier efforts at engraving music contain a fair number of errors, the Douze solos is remarkably accurate, as Swack's critical notes indicate. …