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The Italian
instrumental music of the
outgoing baroque age, the
age of Tiepolo and
Canaletto, the period of
political impotence and
flourishing cultural life in
the Twelve Courts of Italy,
perhaps laid the most
important foundation stone
of music's classical age in
the friendly competition
between Europe's musical
nations. Just as Tiepolo's
language of colours and
forms and Canaletto's
sensitive art of landscape
and architecture were
eagerly taken up, copied
and, at the same time,
creatively transformed all
over Europe - more actively
in Germany and England, less
so in self-assured France -
so did the new musical tone
that was pushing its way
northward from Italy find a
manifold echo in the large
and small German courts as
also in the urbane
courtly-bourgeois society of
London and Amsterdam. More
important here than
innovations of form was a
new, humanitarian basic
attitude which, through the
universality of its ideas
and principles, won a
world-wide response to the
new style. It found its
expression in the new
prominence given to melody,
here understood and used in
a song-like sense, a simple
tune divided into periods.
This in turn reacted on the
entire texture, repelling
counterpoint in favour of
the pure cantilena, and
likewise influencing the
large-scale musical forms in
the direction of extreme
clarity, simple symmetry and
form-giving thematic
contrasts.
The works on this record
represent examples of this
process as found in the
development of the solo
concerto in Italy. The
“Concerto a 4 con violino di
rinforzo” by Bonporti is
still very much under the
spell of Corelli, from whom
the “nobile dilettante”
Bonporti had learned his
musical craftsmanship. This
work adheres to Vivaldi's
three-movement concerto
form, and in its themes and
harmony, particularly in the
slow movement, we find
features that already point
into the future. In its
markedly polyphonic texture,
however, it is still clearly
a product of the school of
Corelli.
Giuseppe Sammartini, the
lesser-known brother of the
famous Giovanni Battista,
belongs to a younger
generation. He worked as an
oboist in Milan, and then
from 1727 onward in London,
where he finally became
Director of Chamber Music to
the Prince of Wales. A
number of his solo concertos
have been
preserved, mainly for
recorder or violin,
otherwise we know little of
his work. His Concerto for
Recorder is a playful,
elegant piece of social
music
with a main theme in the
first movement that is
already almost “classically”
formulated. The slow
movement, a broadly
conceived Siciliano in
elegiac
colours, surprisingly
penetrates more profound
spheres of expression.
The Concertino in F minor
comes from a very different,
already quite
“modern” world. Like its
five sister-works it is
generally ascribed to
Pergolesi, although all six
are probably the work of
another master who
nevertheless has the gifts
of a genius (perhaps Carlo
Ricciotti, who published the
Concertini in 1740, perhaps
a composer of the circle
around Geminiani or
Telemann). Whereas the
four-movement form still
follows Corelli's church
sonata, the work's
expression is gentle and
fervent, frequently
alternating
between sweet melancholy and
sensitive, delicate gaiety
and abounding in
subtle nuances. It is highly
individual, and built up on
an upper-voice cantilena
with a harmonic foundation
and on a gentle chromaticism
that imparts
even to the traditional
counter-point exercise of
the “da capella” Presto a
new accent that is remote
from all tradition.
The youngest of the masters
represented here, Pietro
Nardini, was a masterpupil
of Tartini and
concert-master in Stuttgart
under Sammartini, thus
already belonging to the
classical era, at the end of
the road we are following.
His European fame was based
above all on the sensitive
sweetness of
his adagio movements. “The
tenderness of his expression
defies description,” praised
Schubart, and Leopold Mozart
found that “In melodious
taste
nothing more beautiful can
be heard...” A “tender,”
infinitely sweet and
fervent Adagio also forms
the most significant
movement of the work here
under consideration, from
Op. 1 (printed before 1770).
It is set between a
“singing” Allegro in sonata
form and a dance-like final
rondo which, instead
of the traditional courtly,
stylized Minuet, presents
strains of far more rustic
dances, vital and popular. A
window is here thrown open,
through which the
fresh air of a new, simpler
and more human world
penetrates the courtly
atmosphere. Itisnow buta
short distance before mature
classicism is reached.
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