sunday, may 32009
performed byStudents from Music 626/227: Rhetoric and Early Instrumental Performance
Robert Mealy, Director
music ofVivaldiHandelBach
Robert Blocker, Dean
baroqueConcerti Grossi of the
Concerti Grossi of the BAROQUERobert Mealy, Director
Sinfonia from L’OlimpiadeAllegroAndanteAllegro
Concerto Grosso in B-flat major, Op. 3, No. 2VivaceLargoAllegro(Minuet)(Allegro)
Sinfonia to Cantata 42, “Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats”
Suite in G major, HWV 350 from Water MusicMinuetRigaudons I & IIMenuets I & IIGigue I & II
Suite in F major, HWV 348 from Water MusicOuverture (Largo-Allegro)Adagio e staccatoAllegro – Andante – AllegroMinuet I & IIAirBourréeHornpipe[Andante]Minuet
Antonio Vivaldi1678–1741
George Frideric Handel1685–1759
Johann Sebastian Bach1685–1750
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
As a courtesy to the performers and audience members, turn off cell phones and pagers. Please do not
leave the theater during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is not permitted.
may 3, 2009 · sunday · 4 pmMorse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
violinsRobert Mealy, directorAlexander Woods*Michelle AbrahamQi CaoBenjamin CharmotRuby Ying-Ju Chen Nicholas DiEugenioYu-Ting HuangKatherine Hyun Sunhee JeonJane KimNaria KimDaniel Lee**Joshua PeckinsAditi RamakrishnanDavid SouthornSae-Rom Yoo
violasMin Jeong ChaHyun-Jung LeeMathilde Geismar Roussel
* Yale Baroque Ensemble member** Special guest
cellosEzra Seltzer *Hannah CollinsSofia SolomonJoann Whang
double bassPatrick O'ConnellWen Yang
fluteYoobin Son
oboeMerideth Hite Jennifer Shark
bassoonEllen Connors
natural hornTianxia WuLeelanee Sterrett**
harpsichordAvi Stein*
Concerti Grossi of the BAROQUEPerformers
Students of Music 626 / 227: Rhetoric and Early Instrumental Performance
Our concert this afternoon is a product of a semester-long investigation into the Italian baroque style that swept Europe in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Where the first semester of Music 626 / 227 explored the elegant and highly stylized dance forms of the French baroque, and their influence on the mu- sic of composers like Telemann and Bach, this semester was devoted to the sonata and concerto forms popularized by Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi, a vibrant musical language that took Europe by storm.
We open with the overture to Vivaldi's 1734 opera L'Olimpiade. While Vivaldi is best known today for his brilliant concertos, he invested a great deal of his career in writing for the flour- ishing opera scene of Venice. The explosive opening of this sinfonia is a tribute to his
Concerti Grossi of the BAROQUEProgram Notes
compositional energy; its three-movement form looks forward to the sinfonia's later incarnation as an independent concert piece, and is the first glimmer of what will later turn into the massive symphonic forms of the Classic period.
Handel's Opus 3 concerti grossi were collected together by his publisher, John Walsh, in 1735. They incorporate a wide variety of Handel's ear- lier music, and were gathered together without Handel's supervision - and published without his permission! The second concerto in Walsh's set has a particularly varied scoring, featuring everything from two violins energetically tra- ding sixteenth-note runs in the first movement to a sublime oboe solo in the second, accom- panied by a lyrical duet from two solo cellos.
Bach's surviving orchestral output is relatively
George Frideric Handel »
small: a few orchestral suites and a number of concertos are all that have come down to us. The Bach scholar Christoph Wolff estimates that as many as 350 works from Bach's Cöthen years alone have vanished. And some orchestral works remain hidden still to this day, disguised as sinfonias in his cantatas. One wonderful concerto grosso serves as the introduction to BWV 42, a cantata that concerns itself with the meeting on the road to Emmaus, where Jesus manifested himself to some of his disciples after his death. The twilight mood of this story may be reflected in the gentle scoring of the sinfonia, which is a kind of seventh Brandenburg Concerto: the two oboes and bassoon take the role of the concertino soloists here.
Our program ends with two-thirds of Handel's "Celebrated Water Musick," as a contemporary publication describes it. The Prussian ambassador in London gave a detailed account of the 1717 royal "party on the water" where this music was first heard: "About eight in the evening the King repaired to his barge... Next to the King's barge was that of the musicians, about 50 in number, who played on all kinds of instruments, to wit trumpets, horns, hautboys, bassoons, German flutes, French flutes, violins, and basses... His Majesty approved of the music so greatly that he caused it to be repeated three times in all."
The movements of the Water Music are gener- ally grouped by key, in three different suites: the two we hear today are the gentle G major suite for flute and strings, which includes a number of elegant dance movements, and the splendid F major suite featuring two horns, played today on two natural horns from Prof. William Purvis' studio. This was in fact one of the first appearances of horns in an English orchestra – and in our performance it is possibly their first appearance as part of an orchestra on the stage of Sprague.
Today's concert is the culmination of a semes- ter of work for the students of Music 626 / 227. This course is designed to be a hands-on intro- duction to historical performance practice, using the Yale Collegium's fine set of baroque bows for the string players. Working through the music you hear today, we discussed questions of eighteenth-century technique, explored various approaches to style and ornamentation, and tried to find how best to bring this music to vivid life again, taking as our approach eighteenth-century ideas of music as rhetorical oration – that is, as impassioned, moving speech. We hope you enjoy the results as much as we have enjoyed the process. It has been a great pleasure to explore this wonderful repertoire with such remarkable players.
– Robert Mealy
Concerti Grossi of the BAROQUEProgram Notes
upcoming Visit music.yale.edu for full listings
May 22yale symphony orchestracommencement concert
6:00 pm, Battell ChapelToshiyuki Shimada, music director. Free.
May 23yale glee club commencement concert
8:00 pm, Sprague HallJeffrey Douma, conductor. Works by Guerrero, Grieg, Pärt, Rachmaninoff, and Rorem, as well as traditional Yale songs. Tickets required. Call 203.432.4136
May 24yale school of music commencement concert
4:00 pm, Sprague HallFeaturing outstanding performers from the class of 2009.
May 24yale band twilight concert
7:00 pm, Old CampusThe Yale Concert Band performs a twilight commencement concert. Thomas C. Duffy, director.
yale school of musicRobert Blocker, Dean
203 432 4158 Box Office
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