PACIFIC BAROQUE ORCHESTRA
Programme Book Notes
© Dr Charles Barber
Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805)
Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid, G324 (1780, Berlin autograph)
(Night Music of the Streets of Madrid)
String Quintet in C Major, Op 30, No 6
Introduzione, Ave Maria della Parrochie
Minuetto de chiechi
Largo assai, senza rigor di Battuta
Passacalle, Los Manolos
Ritirata
In our time, Luigi Boccherini owes much of his reputation to a fine tune, and a perfect comedy. The tune? the minuet from his Quintet in E, Op 11, No. 5. The comedy? The Ladykillers. In it, Professor "The Brain" Marcus, played beyond perfection by Alec Guinness, leads a pentagon of fake string players. When Guinness's band convenes to plot a bank robbery, they play a recording of the Boccherini, over and over again, so to deceive their landlady. The film dissolves into wild, dark farce over a three-step. (Precisionists will know that the minuet is also used in the films Magnificent Ambersons, Mighty Ducks III, and a dozen others.)
Such has become Boccherini's reputation: one Minuet, over and over again.
Our concert offers a corrective to all that. It opens at a brilliant address on the streets of Madrid.
For nine years Boccherini lived and worked at Las Arenas, a palace outside the Spanish capital. Rather like Haydn at Esterhazy, he was expected to write music of originality and power. Like Haydn he did so, although the instrumental forces at his disposal were few. And, like Haydn, he was criticised for being "adventuresome." According to the Rev. Wm. Jones, writing in his Treatise on the Art of Music (1784), "As for Haydn and Boccherini, who merit a first place among the moderns for invention, they are sometimes so desultory and unaccountable in their way of treating a subject, that they must be reckoned among the wild warblers of the wood ... " Indeed.
Boccherini's Musica Notturna is a reverie, an escapade, a nostalgic remembrance. It is one of only two such essays in descriptive music he ever attempted. The work is scored for two violins, one viola, and two cellos.
It opens with a pizzicato imitation of Ave Maria bells in the low strings, and is answered by the first violin giving a one-pitch imitation of a military drum. This is followed by "The Minuet of the Beggars," a rough and bumptious parody in which the cellos are instructed to place their instruments across their knees and make guitar sounds with their fingernails. The rough noises which follow are all part of the joke.
Much more reverential is "The Rosary," played expressively and "without rigorous pulse." It opens with a duet for first violin and first cello, and creates an otherworld of grace and prayer. In its reprise, the cello is instructed to imitate a bassoon. A quick unison Allegro summons us to another aspect of folk life: a Spanish passa calle.
Literally "passing on the street," it evokes the local tradition of night revelers singing to, and playing instruments at, one another as they pass in the night. Finally, a retreat is sounded, and the dark fades to silence. It proves a vivid way to end a remarkable work. In a short note on the manuscript, Boccherini wrote: "This little quintet describes the music which can be heard on the streets of Madrid at night ... All this is written without strict adherence to the rules of composition, but attempts to portray reality as faithfully as possible." Anyone who has ever been to those streets knows how close he came.
Jocelyn Morlock (b.1969)
Golden, for Soprano and Strings (2002)
In Memory of Nikolai Korndorf
Phoebe MacRae, soprano
This work was commissioned and premiered by the Pacific Baroque Orchestra three seasons ago. Here are the original program notes of Jocelyn Morlock, a student of Prof Korndorf:
This piece was written for Marc Destrubé and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in memory of Nikolai Korndorf, who died suddenly in May of 2001. He had intended to write for the PBO, but had just started his piece at the time of his death.
Golden is scored for a chamber ensemble consisting of soprano and baroque strings: seven violins, two violas, violoncello, and violone. The subject of the piece is transformation. At the beginning the sounds are short and percussive. Several of the instrumentalists play simple percussion instruments, and there is vocalizing (whispering) by some of the players. Later, there are more melodious and traditional string and vocal sounds.
The text of the piece is based on the following story: Iron pyrite is a metallic crystal that glitters in the sun. There is a pool fed by a stream in Manitoba that carries the mineral in its sediment. Swimmers who immerse themselves in the waters of the pool emerge sparkling as if with flecks of sun on their skin. If you swim in this water, you will emerge golden.
Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c1701-1775)
Symphony No 2, in C Minor (c1742)
Allegro
Affettuoso
Allegro
It is widely held that Haydn, more than any composer, "invented" the symphony in its most recognizable form. Parallel to his immense contribution to the idea and the structure of the four-movement string quartet, the symphony in his hands took on its most famous characteristics. But who came before him?
Two of the composers heard tonight did. Boccherini in his day was described, not insultingly, as "The wife of Haydn," by which was meant an appreciative awareness of his gift for melody and serenity in the galant style. But he was not alone.
G.B. Sammartini, born almost a half-century before Boccherini, and 30 years before Haydn, also contributed much to the evolving idea of the sinfonia. Together with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the Mannheim School, young Sammartini is today recognized as one of the important progenitors of the modern symphonic style, and in Leonard Ratner’s words is honored for his "imaginative treatment of texture, rhythmic play, and development of melodic material."
Classical symmetries lie everywhere. The first and third movements are in triple time, vigorous and allegro. In them the first and second violins play identical lines, and everywhere guide musical development. In the first movement, this is led by recurring dotted figures, broken by triplets. In the third movement their control takes the form of rising and rushing 32nd notes. It ends anomalously: instead of sounding out the core identity of C Minor (c, e-flat, g) one last time, every instrument ends on a unison C. The tonal door remains open.
It is in the second movement that Sammartini earns his reputation. Here, the violins are now split, and play with the theme like musical kittens. Here, a gentle and affectionate melody rises to the related key of E-flat Major. And here, although the first violin still predominates (only Beethoven would put an end to that monomania), we discover what an original mind can do when bringing to life one of the immortal genres in all music.
Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805)
Stabat Mater, G532 (1781)
Phoebe MacRae, soprano
1. Stabat Mater dolorosa - Grave assai
2. Cujus animam gementem - Allegro
3. Quae moerebat et dolebat - Allegretto con motto
4. Quis est homo - Adagio assai - Recitativo
5. Pro peccatis suae gentis - Allegretto
6. Eja mater, fons amoris - Larghetto non tanto
7. Tui nati vulnerati - Allegro vivo
8. Virgo virginum praeclara - Andantino
9. Fac ut portem Christi mortem - Larghetto
10. Fac me plagis vulnerati - Allegro commodo
11. Quando corpus morietur - Andante lento
Boccherini's masterpiece - Stabat Mater Dolorosa (sorrowfully his mother stood) - rose in its first version in 1781 while the composer worked in Spain, and was written for soprano and strings. Its text is a poem in the Roman Catholic liturgy, part of a Sequence for the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. Typically based on plainchant, this poem has been set by many composers. (One PhD candidate dutifully counted 603 of them.) Boccherini revised his own in 1800.
The Stabat Mater has become iconic, an elevated insight into the mysteries of the Passion. Here lies the suffering of Mary, mother of Jesus, at the time of His crucifixion. Here too lies the horror of every mother upon every child’s pain, and thus the immortality of its meaning. Consider how Boccherini has animated this text.
Across its eleven movements there is a curious conformity between the solo voice and the first violin. Phrase answers phrase, line anticipates line, and the ardently human qualities of the string instrument make perfect partner to the human voice above. Similarly paired are the second violin and viola, often providing the internal rhythmic engine which keeps the work turning over. As expected, the contrabass grants harmonic footing throughout, and in this has departed little from the baroque models of an earlier day. It is in the violoncello that we discover the uniqueness of Boccherini’s setting.
It will be instantly audible that the composer favoured his personal instrument, the cello, to an unusual degree. It has a richer role than ordinary, and one that explores to the full its special sound. Consider particularly the 6th movement, "Eja Mater." It opens in duet with the first violin. After 21 measures of intimate dialogue, the cello then takes up with the soprano, retreats for awhile, and finally returns to its opening duet with the first violin. Although the cello and bass lines are often and predictably doubled in the Stabat Mater, it is at such moments that the composer reveals a genius for unusual voicing and a heart-breaking display of text.
But his best work is with the voice. Boccherini's skill lies in a natural, unforced simplicity of expression, wholly consistent with a mother's internalizing grief. He adds to this a variety of unexpected turns. These serve to refresh meaning and to incite surprise. In the first movement, for example, he sets the second iteration of the text, starting at measure 21, in a repeated rhythm: a dotted quarter and three eighth notes. This occurs four times. Just as we think we understand his method, Boccherini syncopates its echo. Thus he renews energy and expands meaning. Such small and vivid gestures give life to the whole of this justly famous lament.
Stabat Mater Dolorosa
13th century CE, text attributed to Jacopone da Todi
Stabat mater dolorosa
iuxta Crucem lacrimosa,
dum pendebat Filius.
At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.
Cuius animam gementem,
contristatam et dolentem
pertransivit gladius.
Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
all His bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has passed.
O quam tristis et afflicta
fuit illa benedicta,
mater Unigeniti!
O how sad and sore distressed
was that Mother, highly blest,
of the sole-begotten One.
Quae maerebat et dolebat,
pia Mater, dum videbat
nati poenas inclyti.
Christ above in torment hangs,
she beneath beholds the pangs
of her dying glorious Son.
Quis est homo qui non fleret,
matrem Christi si videret
in tanto supplicio?
Is there one who would not weep,
whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ's dear Mother to behold?
Quis non posset contristari
Christi Matrem contemplari
dolentem cum Filio?
Can the human heart refrain
from partaking in her pain,
in that Mother's pain untold?
Pro peccatis suae gentis
vidit Iesum in tormentis,
et flagellis subditum.
Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled,
she beheld her tender Child
All with scourges rent:
Vidit suum dulcem Natum
moriendo desolatum,
dum emisit spiritum.
For the sins of His own nation,
saw Him hang in desolation,
Till His spirit forth He sent.
Eia, Mater, fons amoris
me sentire vim doloris
fac, ut tecum lugeam.
O thou Mother! fount of love!
Touch my spirit from above,
make my heart with thine accord:
Fac, ut ardeat cor meum
in amando Christum Deum
ut sibi complaceam.
Make me feel as thou hast felt;
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ my Lord.
Sancta Mater, istud agas,
crucifixi fige plagas
cordi meo valide.
Holy Mother! pierce me through,
in my heart each wound renew
of my Saviour crucified:
Tui Nati vulnerati,
tam dignati pro me pati,
poenas mecum divide.
Let me share with thee His pain,
who for all my sins was slain,
who for me in torments died.
Fac me tecum pie flere,
crucifixo condolere,
donec ego vixero.
Let me mingle tears with thee,
mourning Him who mourned for me,
all the days that I may live:
Iuxta Crucem tecum stare,
et me tibi sociare
in planctu desidero.
By the Cross with thee to stay,
there with thee to weep and pray,
is all I ask of thee to give.
Virgo virginum praeclara,
mihi iam non sis amara,
fac me tecum plangere.
Virgin of all virgins blest!,
Listen to my fond request:
let me share thy grief divine;
Fac, ut portem Christi mortem,
passionis fac consortem,
et plagas recolere.
Let me, to my latest breath,
in my body bear the death
of that dying Son of thine.
Fac me plagis vulnerari,
fac me Cruce inebriari,
et cruore Filii.
Wounded with His every wound,
steep my soul till it hath swooned,
in His very Blood away;
Flammis ne urar succensus,
per te, Virgo, sim defensus
in die iudicii.
Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
lest in flames I burn and die,
in His awful Judgment Day.
Christe, cum sit hinc exire,
da per Matrem me venire
ad palmam victoriae.
Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
by Thy Mother my defense,
by Thy Cross my victory;
Quando corpus morietur,
fac, ut animae donetur
paradisi gloria. Amen.
When my body dies,
let my soul be granted
the glory of Paradise. Amen.