Bach's violin sonatas

These were pioneering works in their day, so we learned. Adrian Butterfield from London---with Luc Beauséjour from Montreal playing the obbligato harpsichord part---introduced and played all six of them, during two concerts at Dominion Chalmers. I was at both concerts.

Bach himself knew how to play both instruments and was one of the most talented keyboard players of all time, said Mr. Butterfield. In these works, the harpsichord and violin have equal prominence; this was new. In effect, they are trios, with the violinist playing the first part and the two hands of the pianist taking the other two parts. Some of the slow movements are more like duets, the left hand of the piano merely providing a continuo bass accompaniment.

Handel also wrote sonatas of this kind, but of a different character. Handel gives us human drama, whereas Bach "takes us out of this world."

In the B minor Sonata, the violin enters very softly on a sustained note. Its 3rd movement gives the violin part the brilliance of the trumpet obbligato in The Trumpet Shall Sound from Handel's Messiah (my opinion).

The first movement of the A major Sonata is an "ethereal" piece of music. The 3rd movement is a canon, except that the harpsichordist cannot sustain his long notes, so they become trills, instead of dying away quickly. The fourth movement of this one is fast.

Sonata number 3 in E major has very different parts for the two instruments. I thought its first movement reminiscent of Bach's accompaniments to the slow, religious arias for solo voice. The violinist called the 2nd movement "lively and uplifting" and the C-sharp minor slow movement "expressive". I could have listened to it for longer, but was jerked out of that state of mind by the last movement with its very fast tempo, in 2s and 3s.

*****

Once again bringing his Baroque bow with him for the second recital, Mr. Butterfield pointed out that the sound of the first movement from the C minor Sonata, with its alternating slow and fast movements, is very similar to the violin obbligato line for the aria Erbarme Dich in the St. Matthew Passion. In the second of the slow movements, the violin itself seems to take the alto part with its chorale like accompaniment to the triplets played on the harpsichord. I noticed that the string player avoided vibrato for the most part, which is like a piano player avoiding the sustaining pedal for Bach, in keeping with  the period sound.

The F minor Sonata also starts with a slow movement, the violin part "singing" in a remarkably low register after the keyboard introduction. In the second movement, the voices of the two instruments imitate one another. Then follows music where the violin plays chords (double stopping), the harpsichord line moving around them. The final movement for this sonata is a passe-pied minuet with the violinist playing off the beat. "Surprisingly humorous," he called it, "for F-minor". I listened out for the humour but didn't quite catch it.

Mr. Butterfield mentioned that a member of the audience had lent him her instrument for this performance and that Luc had learned the harpsichord part at short notice, which was "quite a feat" --- I'd say so!

Bach's 6th and final violin sonata, in G major, was unexpectedly in five movements. The middle one is a harpsichord solo, reminding me of his 2-part Inventions. The violinist felt that the fourth movement was "incredibly" ahead of its time, reminiscent of moments from Beethoven's late quartets. This was a lovely, minor section of the work. The merry Gigue with which this sonata ended broke the sombre spell.

And finally ... J.S. Bach

Music and Beyond's performance of the B-minor Mass on July 16th was the climax of the festival, and we had didn't need to pay to get in! It was a Festival-Plus concert, which means that I ought to have paid extra, and Chris was ready to buy his own ticket. But the organisers had given me (and other disappointed patrons) two complimentary tickets for the Bach, to compensate for the cancellation of Wednesday's lecture.

I knew this concert would be tremendous, because we had also been at the St. Matthew Passion performance on Good Friday, a few months ago, which had thrilled me then and for a long time afterwards. The soloist who had taken the part of Jesus in the oratorio was now singing the bass arias in the mass, so we knew the standard of singing would be high, as indeed it was, very, and we were to have the same able conductor at the podium, Kevin Mallon. We had many of the same instumentalists too (the Thirteen Strings plus their friends from the NACO -- its lead flute, oboe, trumpet, horn) including Julian Armour again, taking responsibility for the continuo part on his cello. The choir singing the great choruses of the mass, highly competent and well rehearsed, as we could see, since we sat near them, was from the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal. We particularly admired the stamina of the first sopranos!

It is impossible to describe Bach's music in words. "The culmination of the Baroque!" my school notes used to say, but that is only a text book phrase. Perhaps a painting would do better justice to it, using all the colours. I have sung the B-minor Mass ... when I was 19, as one of the 2nd sopranos in London's Imperial College Choir, an experience that gave me a very good idea of what "in Heaven" means. Even though that performance wasn't half as good as what we heard in Ottawa, I remember how the last half hour of it was like flying through a night sky full of stars, making all my self-centred little worries null and void. Probably my mother once felt the same, because she has told me that she'd like a recording of the Sanctus from Bach's B-minor Mass played at her funeral.

Mum came up with another simile too; she once said that singing the Sanctus was like being on a big ship sailing the high seas.

I have found this blogpost about Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his more detailed response to the Bach mass, worth reading if you're interested.

Bach's greatness wasn't as obvious to his contemporaries at it is to us, and it wasn't until Mendelssohn's day, over a hundred years later, that he acquired his stature as a great composer. The 1720s clergymen at Leipzig had thought his St. Matthew Passion far too long and over-dramatic so hadn't given it a good reception. In a fit of pique, perhaps --- although this is undocumented speculation --- Bach decided to offer his large scale choral music to the court at Dresden instead, after that, setting Catholic Latin texts, what's more.

In Ottawa, the following day (July 17th) I went to visit the Syrian family I've befriended, who have a new baby, and coming home through the city in the afternoon I realised that I'd have time to attend one further concert, a performance of Bach's The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge) on period instruments (or replicas?), viols of different sizes and timbres, all held vertically, by a consort of four instrumentalists known as Les Voix Humaines. Not looking them up beforehand, I must confess I'd supposed that a group calling itself Les Voix Humaines would be singers, and so did others of the rather large audience, and so we were taken by surprise.

Again, it was very warm and humid that day, so it was essential to sit still in the non airconditioned church to hear this rather same-ish, soft music, lightly played, and the lack of resonance in these instruments so lulling that many of us had a hard time keeping awake. Sad to say, the nave wasn't half so full after the intermission because many of the audience had made their escape. I was sitting with Jingnan and Lee from my Chinese class during this concert, and we were among the few who remained. Jingnan told me that the word for 'soporific' in Chinese is cuīmián (催眠). During the break I walked up to the podium to take a closer look at the viols that had been left there. They constituted a visual work of art, too, each one decorated with a plume of coloured ribbons, as were their music stands.

The music sounds serious, intellectual, to us but the chief viol player (Susie Napper), who introduced everything, claimed that Bach himself saw the composition of the Art of Fugue pieces more as an after-dinner pastime and she informed us that Bach had a sense of fun, as well as a great liking for wine. She apologised for "the lack of seriousness in this performance", although actually I failed to identify any humorous moments in what followed. The fugues and canons were composed, maybe as a challenge from one of his family or friends, during the last ten years of Bach's life, in 2, 3 and 4 parts: Contrapunctus I, Contrapunctus II, Contrapunctus III, etc., all the way to Contrapunctus XVIII.

In complete contrast, the encore the instrumentalists gave us was an arrangement of Gershwin's Summertime for viols with the song part played on the recorder by Mélisande Corriveau.

Solo 'cello

We're lucky enough to get regular invitations to chamber music concerts at a private house; last night's performance was by a young man from Ottawa University, Raphael Weinroth-Browne. In effect this was the rehearsal for a recital that will take place at the university later this month. He played solo suites by Bach and Britten and a Sonata by Ligeti, all of them from memory.

For the Bach D Minor 'Cello Suite No. 5 he used an instrument tuned down to the authentic, Baroque pitch, and without any vibrato. The trouble with that technique to my ear is that the music seems less expressive than it would if played in a more Romantic style, but I am probably just prejudiced. The flow of the music is nonetheless superb.

After a pause for recovery after that endurance test, the 'cellist then launched himself into the Britten, played on a slightly larger and more resonant 'cello, this time with no inhibitions about the vibrato. What brilliant music it is! The Fuga sounds as if two instruments are playing, and I think he was triple-stopping in the sostenuto sections. (Here is an interesting blog-article about that and the Britten Suites in general, from a performer's point of view.) The Marcia movement finished with a sort of echo of the Last Post as if heard from far away on a bugle, in this context played as harmonics on the strings. The following Bordone section had him playing a drone on the open D-string while simultaneously plucking out melodies on the two adjacent strings. That must have taken some practising.

The performer (who incidentally is one of Paul Merleyn's pupils) spoke to us after the Britten piece saying that all three of the composer's 'cello suites had been written for Rostropovich to play. The Russian was a friend of Britten and called him Benjik. Because Rostropovich has been such an inspiration to 20th century composers, Mr Weinroth-Browne referred to him as "the saviour of 'cello music"––I assume he meant: of solo 'cello music. There had been a great gap in that genre between Bach's and Britten's day.

The concert concluded with the performance of György Ligeti's Sonata for Solo 'Cello, which like the Britten was in eight sections, but they all ran together without a break. Ligeti was a Hungarian-Jewish composer from Transylvania who died in Austria in 2006. The sonata is early Ligeti music, influenced by Kodaly and Bartok, which all the same was "too extreme" for the taste of the Soviet régime so 'cellists were banned from playing it in the USSR. This piece too demanded a good deal of virtuoso, presto playing.

We came away impressed.

Never forgotten

As I write, I'm listening to a spirited performance of Jesu, meine Freude, a motet by J.S. Bach. I sang this once, aged eighteen. Once sung, never forgotten. I still feel the same about it.

I can't speak for anyone else, but whenever life becomes challenging I know it is always the same things that keep me sane: the moon, the sun and the stars and the landscapes they shine on, the knowledge that I have friends I can trust, and (above all) poetry and music. Not any old poetry and music, only the best.

The words from the motet that never fail to raise gooseflesh on me are as follows:

Trotz dem alten Drachen, trotz des Todes Rachen, trotz der Furcht dazu!
Tobe, Welt, und springe, ich steh' hier und singe,
Ich steh hier und singe in gar sichrer Ruh.

(Click here for a recording.)

Meaning:
In spite of the old dragon, in spite of death's revenge, in spite of our fear of it ... let the world rampage and quake as it may, here I'll stand and sing, here I stand and sing, secure in perfect peace (written in 1650).

I make no apologies if I have blogged about this before.