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"In the year
1704 I was appointed
conductor at Sorau by His
Excellency Count Erdmann von
Promnitz. The magnificent
character of this court,
newly built-up on a princely
scale, encouraged me to
fiery ventures, particularly
in instrumental works, among
which I mention the
overtures with their
additional pieces in the
first place because the
Count had returned from
France shortly before and
was thus very fond of them.
I obtained works by Lulli,
Campra and other good
masters and devoted myself
almost completely to their
mode of writing, so that in
two years I had written
altogether some 200
overtures."
The fashionable partiality
of his patron, of which
Telemann relates in his
autobiography in Mattheson's
"Ehrenpforte", is sure to
have been the motive -
though hardly the only
reason - for the then
twenty-three-year-old
conductor's preoccupation
with the French Overture in
particular, and the
tremendous enthusiasm with
which he worked at it. The
suite, especially the
orchestral suite with its
powerfully proportioned
overture (which then gave
its name to the whole work)
and its loose sequance of
contrasting dances, must
have been most acceptable to
his musical talents. His
inclination to simple
writing with the emphasis on
melody and without great
contrapuntal skill found its
parallel in the suite's
associations with the dance
and courtly entertainment;
his individual vitality and
pleasure in rhythm found a
parallel in the unvarying,
clearly defined dance types;
his predilection for
playful, imaginative musical
genre painting found its
parallel in the dance
characters handed down from
former generations and in
the tradition of the French
orchestral and chamber
suite.
The Overture in G major "des
Nations anciens et modernes"
is, although it lacks the
typical wood-wind
concertino, a genuinely
"French" suite. It is one of
the finest examples of
Telemann's witty art of
musical characterization;
since it is only the
Germans, the Danes and the
Swedes are introduced in it
as "Nations", it is sure to
have been composed during
Telemann's Hamburg period
(1721-1767). The Overture
proper is followed by an
elegant Minuet with Trio
(Minuet II); after this the
nations are portrayed: their
ancient style by
old-fashioned dance
movements (“German” march,
“Swedish” sarabande,
“Danish” gavotte), their
newer style by dance-like
characteristic pieces in
quick 2/4 and 4/4 time such
as appeared on an
ever-increasing scale in the
traditional suite in the
eighteenth century. The
burlesque finale is formed
not by a “national” but by a
general human genre picture
from the literary and
musical stock of comical
characterizations of the
seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries: “Les vieilles
femmes”, who are drastically
ridiculed in grotesque and
lachrymose chromaticisms.
The Suite in A minor for
Recorder and Strings is also
a work in the “French
manner”. Here the solo flute
is used in order to make the
Allegro of the large-scale
Overture into a
quasi-“Italian” concerto
movement with three virtuoso
episodes, though the tutti
sections are in fugato
character according to the
best French tradition, and
at the end the Adagio
introduction returns in an
abridged form as usual. Then
follow, in regular
alternation, dance movements
in which the solo instrument
is heard only in the trios
and quasi-concerto movements
in which soli and tutti
alternative with one another
at much closer intervals.
The last movement, a
Polonaise in “exotically”
coloured A minor with freely
introduced leading notes,
shows that Telemann, in
Sorau, ad intensively
absorbed “Polish and
Hannakian music in its true
barbaric beauty”, to quote
his autobiography of 1740.
That this “exotic” music
does not only appear in
suite movements of ‘genre’
character, and that it meant
more to Telemann than merely
the musical exoticism
popular since the sixteenth
century, that it was indeed
a source of inspiration
which revealed a hidden
innate inclination towards
unrestrained music making is
clearly shown by the
Concerto in E minor for
Recorder, Flute and Strings.
In its distinctive
orchestration it reflects
the stage of transition in
which the transverse flute
is beginning to supplant the
“flauto dolce”. In its form
it is still related to the
Italian Concerto da chiesa;
in its tone, on the other
hand, it is hardly connected
with the dying baroque age
any longer. The slow
movements revel in the
sweetness of parallel thirds
from the flutes; the first
Allegro, with its impetuous
fugato theme and orchestral
tremolo episodes, seems
remarkably close to the
“Sturm und Drang” of a later
generation. The Finale,
however, is surely unique
even among Telemann’s
compositions. It is a
furious, “barbaric” dance
with droning bagpipe basses,
melodies that are hurled out
wildly and shrill, exciting
flute notes, such as the
wandering Polish and
“Hannakian“ (Bohemian)
musicians may well have
played in the taverns of
Sorau. Long before the
“National Schools“ of the
nineteenth century, before
Kodaly and Bartók, a
reservoir of power seems to
have been tapped here that
was to form the music of the
nineteenth and twentieth
centuries to an incalculable
degree.
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