“I hope that the work will one day bring me fame” -thus GEORG PHILlPP TELEMANN, Director of Music in Hamburg since 1721, about his TAFELMUSIK in a letter to Johann Graf, Konzertmeister of Prince Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt's court orchestra. At the same time, he confidently assures Graf that he will not regret the eight Reichstaler already paid “at any time“, and asks him to be so kind “as to encourage other music-lovers to join the advance subscription“. Telemann had a wide variety of personal connections with all kinds of people, many of them influential, and he made use of these to draw attention to his composition before it appeared. On 9th December 1732 he placed an advertisement in a Hamburg newspaper: “In the year 1733, music-lovers can look forward to a grand instrumental work entitled Tafel-Music from Telemann’s pen. It will consist of 9 large pieces with seven instruments, and of as many smaller ones with 1, 2, 3 or 4 instruments. The subscription is payable quarterly, and the work will be issued in three parts, on Ascension Day, at Michaelmas and at Christmas. The names of the subscribers will be printed on the cover."
Telemann's advertising campaign was a great success. The subscription list printed at the beginning of the work takes up no less than four pages, and names 206 subscribers from home and abroad. Persons of high social standing appear alongside bourgeois music-lovers; there are musicians and composers - the latter including such famous figures as “Mr. Hendel, Docteur en musique, Londres", the flautist Michel Blavet from Paris and the well-known instrumentalists Johann Georg Pisendel and Johann Joachim Quantz from Dresden - who ordered a total of six copies. There are churchmen, court officials and members of the judiciary, the ambassadors of the ruling houses of Europe and members of famous court orchestras from Norway, France, Spain. England and Denmark: in short, professional and amateur musicians alike eagerly awaited the new work throughout Europe. By 1733, the 52-year-old Telemann was a celebrity of international standing. As a composer, director of church music and opera conductor, music-teacher and editor of the works of other composers, he was by far the most versatile and productive musical figure of his day. He produced exemplary compositions (albeit weaker ones too) in every genre and form in use at the time, and his works were often cited as didactic examples in books on theory, e. g. in the “Attempt at Instructions on how to play the Flute traversière" (J.J. Quantz, 1752).
In the Tafelmusik Telemann realised two ideas in which he was particularly interested. Firstly, he expressly designed the music for a wide public, “for the use of the ordinary man" as he wrote in 1727, and therefore favoured clear forms and simple structures, and melodies that “require neither the high notes of a wren nor the deep voice ofthe bittern, but keep to a happy medium“. But on the other hand, Telemann did more than anyone else to pave the way for the “mixed taste” that Quantz later defined in his “Attempt at Instructions" as follows: “If one applies competent judgment to selecting the best of musical taste from a variety of national cultures, the result is a mixed taste which, without exceeding the bounds of modesty, can very fairly be called the German taste. This not only because it has flourished for many years at different places in Germany, but also since it does not displease in other countries, not even in France or Italy,"
Telemann had already propagated this idea of “mixed taste” long before 1752. As early as his schooltime in Hildesheim (1697-1701), “the two neighbouring orchestras at the courts of Hanover and Braunschweig (gave him) the opportunity to become familiar with and be able to distinguish the French style of composition at the former and the theatrical style at the latter - and at both places, above all the Italian style. "While inthe service of Count Erdmann von Promnitz in Sorau (1705-1707), he cultivated the French style for the most part, since "the Count had just recently returned from France, and was thus fond of the same". In addition, Telemann also got to know “the Polish and Hanakian music in all its barbaric beauty" here. Just how important these different styles were to the composer emerges in the three autobiographies he wrote (1718, 1729, 1740). He describes in detail when and where he came into contact with which taste, and in 1729 he tells his readers, not without a certain pride, that “what I have achieved in the different musical styles is well~known. First there was the Polish style, then followed the French, the church, the chamber and the operatic styles, and what is referred to as the Italian..."
Among Telemann's instrumental works, the Tafelmusik is without doubt the most extensive publication in the “mixed taste". At the same time, it is also - in this, too, very much inspired by the encyclopedic tendencies of the Englightenment - a compendium of chamber music: all the chamber music forms in use at the time are presented, realised with a variety of instruments. This is made clear by the original title; “MUSIQUE de TABLE / partagée / en / Vols Productions, / dont chacune contient / 1 Ouverture avec la Suite, à 7 instruments, / 1 Quatuor, / 1 Concert à 7, / 1 Trio, / 1 Solo, / 1 Conclusion à 7, / et dont les instrumens se diversifient par tout; / Cornposée par Georg Philipp Telemann, Maître de Chapelle de L. A. S. le / Duc de Saxe-Eisenach et le Marg- / grave de Bayreuth; / Directeur de la Musique / à Hambourg. "
Not all the pieces contained in the Tafelmusik were composed in 1733: it can be assumed that some of the music was specially composed, whereas for other pieces Telemann had recourse to existing works. The D minor quartet from the second part or “Production", for instance, is also found as a copy in a volume that collects works that Telemann wrote between 1712 and 1721in Frankfurt am Main. It was part of the duties of a court Kapellmeister at the time to provide the orchestra with “adequate works of music both for normal banqueting purposes (“Tafel-Music") and for birthdays and other festive occasions” -thus the wording of Telemann’s Eisenach contract of employment dating from 1717. Telemann’s many compositions for the banquets of the Hamburg patricians show that the proud and free Hanseatic city required its Director of Music to perform these same services. It is characteristic of the self-awareness of the citizens of Hamburg that they expected what was long since the custom in court circles. The scoring of the “large pieces" of the Tafelmusik for eight players suggests that the music was composed in Hamburg, for here Telemann had exactly eight musicians placed at his disposal by the city council (Ratsmusiker) for the performance of such works.
The Tafelmusik is “utility” or “consumption music" in the best sense - music that places high demands on both musicians and listeners alike, a cycle that betrays great artistry and ingenuity both in its composition and in layout. It certainly has nothing more in common with the simple “meat-and-gravy symphonies” that Telemann, in his own words, had written for the municipal band in Sorau. The modern listener should not make the mistake of understanding “Tafelmusik" as mere background music, as no more than musical accompaniment to the clattering oft he knives and forks. Sophisticated banqueting music like the pieces in Telemann’s collection was played between the different courses or after the meal, and the diners listened with as much attention as in an actual concert.
All three parts (“Productions”) of the Tafelmusik are laid out according to the same formal principle: an overture in the French style is followed by several dance movements or character pieces, which are wound up in each case by a “Conclusion". These concluding pieces unite the various individual pieces into a self-contained whole, for they correspond both in key and in scoring to the overture suites that open each “Production". Between the introduction and the conclusion of each of the three parts comes a quartet, a concerto, a trio and a solo sonata. While the “large pieces", which are harmonically fully executed in all parts, have the function of framing pillars, and the likewise “large” concerto emphasizes the middle of the work, the "smaller" pieces, in which the melody-leading is allocated to the treble part, form an effective contrast. The choice of key likewise follows a consistent plan: the suite and the conclusion are both in the basic key, while the pieces that lie in between switch to other, related keys. (When the overture suite is played on its own, the conclusion can be seen as the last movement thereof.)
Telemann's contemporaries were full of praise for his expressive combinations of sounds, for his original scoring and his inventiveness in tone-painting. Telemann himself was proficient on several instruments (“apart from the piano, the violin and recorder, oboe, flute, shawm, viola da gamba through to the double-bass and the Quint-Posaune" - a small trombone pitched a fifth lower than normal). He scored his works according to the maxim: “Give each instrument what is fitting. / Then the player will enjoy playing, / and you’ll have pleasure listening." The Tafelmusik offers convincing proof of this principle, and of Telemann’s own delight in variety and change: each of the three overture-suites is scored differently, and within one “Production” the varying instrumentation underlines the different structures of the individual movements.
Even the suite form itself is presented by Telemann with audible delight in the variability of expression and in a playful,virtuoso treatment of the character of the movements-almost a little digression on the history ofthis popular form so rich in tradition. Iln the suit that opens the first Production he takes the classical dance suite established by Jean-Baptiste Lully as his point of reference. The ponderous three-part French overture, differentiated in tempo, is followed by six stylised dance movements with programmatic insertions. In the four airs of the suite in the second Production, only the rhythmic patterns and the corresponding time signatures remind the listener of the dance character, otherwise greater weight is given to points of reference within the music. The sphere of interest finally widens to take in things outside the music itself in the overture of the third Production, the movements of which have programmatic headings, and describe people’s moods, or particular situations or characters.
Throughout his career, Telemann did himself special credit with his quartets. They are masterpieces of contrapuntal art on the one hand, and ofthe new homophonic style on the other. The four-part writing forms the basis and the point of departure for a wide variety of harmonic and melodic subtleties, while the “good harmonic song" is guaranteed by the cantabile part-writing. Notwithstanding, Telemann’s trios also enjoyed great popularity. The composer writes about them in his last autobiography: "People have flattered me that I showed my pest energies in these works.” In the solo sonatas of the Tafelmusik, as in the quartets and trios, Telemann uses both the older four-movement and the relatively new three-movement form, he combines instruments to create striking sounds, and unites concertante and contrapuntal writing. Each of the three Productions offers a model concert programme, containing all the variety expected in Telemann's time.
Telemann certainly consolidated his reputation as “one of the three musical masters who do our fatherland credit today”, as Johann Christoph Gottsched wrote in 1728, with his “Musique de Table". The Tafelmusik represents a unique compendium fo the chamber music genres, forms and different types of expression that were characteristic of the first half of the 18th century.