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The Italian style

One aspect of the Italian style was the approach to the setting of words.

Since the turn of the 17th century, Italian composers had become obsessed with giving vivid expression to words, as in the madrigals of Gesualdo and in the first operas, particularly of Monteverdi. This brought a new boldness in the use of striking harmonies and chromaticisms.

Charpentier did not meet Monteverdi, (Monteverdi died the year Charpentier was born!); but he met, and was strongly influenced by one of his disciples, Carissimi. When he returned to Paris, Charpentier took with him the scores of works by Carissimi, much music in his ‘prodigious musical memory’, and the Italian style in his bones.

 

Mademoiselle de Guise

Mademoiselle de Guise was born in Paris, (1615) Princess Marie de Lorraine. She lived in the Hôtel de Guise, and when her father the Duc de Guise died, she became Duchesse de Guise; but she had been known as Mademoiselle de Guise since she was a child.

The Guise family history is one of much wielding of power, brutality and sticky ends. Claiming descent from Charlemagne, the family aspired to the French throne and sought to eradicate the Bourbons. A forebear was mother of Mary Queen of Scots, another was Archbishop of Reims, another started a civil war (the War of the Three Henrys).

Mademoiselle de Guise was the last of the direct line, however, and married morganatically. This meant her several children were not heir to the title. But she had her own somewhat lavish select private court. She otherwise used her immense wealth to found a teachers’ training college, and both in Paris and her provincial lands she founded hospitals for the poor and schools for girls.

After her death in 1688 there was much wrangling over the inheritance, and the palace was sold in 1700 and became the Hôtel de Soubisse – which now houses the National Archive.

 

The Haydns’ employers

There was a significant difference, though:

Joseph, working for the Esterhazy Court, produced vast quantities of secular music in the form of symphonies, string quartets, sonatas (including over 200 for the Baryton – the Prince’s favourite instrument). He was less frequently called upon to write sacred music.

Michael, on the other hand, in the employ exclusively of Archbishops, wrote a substantial amount of church music. His output of secular music became more limited by the time he reached his mid-30s. In his day, there were those who rated his church music more highly than that of his now more illustrious brother.

 

Bach in Luebeck

Bach famously walked the 250 miles from Arnstadt. He had been given 4 weeks leave from his post at the Arnstadt court; he stayed in Lübeck for 4 months. The year was 1705, the year of the death of Emperor Leopold I and the accession of Joseph I. Bach was probably present at the Extraordinary Abendmusike Buxtehude put on to mark these events.

 

Abendmusike

Tunder started these as week-day organ recitals, but they became more generalised concerts in the church.

They may first have been afternoon concerts for businessmen who were waiting for the stock-exchange to open. Although Buxtehude moved them to Sundays at 4 pm, they still continued to be financed mainly by the business community. Indeed a donor would receive a printed libretto and be given a good seat. Admission to the church was, in true Hanseatic tradition, free to all citizens of whatever position in society; but it was not unknown for disorderly conduct to break out during the performances.

 

Buxtehude’s marriage

This seems to have been a condition of his employment. Though this appears odd now, it was common practice for a successor to marry the daughter of his predecessor, in all walks of life. It was common, for instance, for a promising (and lucky?) apprentice to marry his master’s daughter.

A generation later Handel visited with his friend Matthesson (in 1703). Buxtehude was 66 and perhaps wishing to retire, so Mattheson was considered as his possible successor. But when they offered him the job it transpired Buxtehude’s daughter was part of the package. Mattheson suddenly lost interest.

 

Marienkirche, Lübeck

 

Marienkirche, Lübeck

This is a splendid Backsteingotik (brick gothic) church, immensely high with light flooding in though its tall windows. It started off as a Roman Catholic church, and was decorated with lovely frescoes.

In the early 16thcentury it became Lutheran and the frescoes, being anathema, were painted over. This must have been done many times over the centuries. Then came the allied bombings in 1942. The blast from these caused the paint to fall off, happily revealing the frescoes which are now being restored

The burghers of the North German cities, seeing the wonderful gothic cathedrals in France and Flanders wanted to build something similar. Unfortunately there is no suitable stone in the far north of Germany; but there is plenty of clay, so the churches are built of brick.

Backstein Gotik

Unlike the small early English bricks, those of North Germany are quite chunky, larger than modern bricks. However, for very tall structures – and these churches are very tall – they are less stable than large blocks of stone. One is now aware of the fragility of these buildings which need iron braces to hold them together.

 

Brahms’ German Requiem

First impulse

It is thought by some that Brahms was first prompted to compose a requiem by the death of his friend Robert Schumann in 1856. There is little likelihood that he could have undertaken this at the time since he had been supporting Schumann’s wife Clara during her husband’s last two years of illness and, when Schumann died, Brahms was in the middle of a crisis in the creativity department. The idea of an unfulfilled desire to write a requiem seems quite plausible, though.

Choice of text

Since his early years Brahms had been an avid reader and deeply interested in literature. So he was in the habit of choosing works of literary weight to set to music, rather than more obvious lyric poetry (which would have been easier to set).

Corpus Christi

The poem Lauda Sion was composed in the 13th century by Canoness Juliana of Liège.

She had visions which drew her attention to the fact that there was as yet no text celebrating the Eucharist: the body and blood of Christ. Her friend and colleague, Canon John of Lausanne, brought her visions to the attention of Pope Urban IV who gave his approbation. So she composed the poem Lauda Sion with his blessing and it formed the basis of the new Feast of Corpus Christi.

 

Parody

In 1723 Bach was appointed Kantor at St. Thomas’s Church, Leipzig. For the next six years he brought his small stock of church cantatas up to about 300, (which was five more or less complete sets of cantatas for the Church Year). This provided for all his needs for his work at St. Thomas’s for the rest of his time there.

When called upon to produce new music, he was in the habit of taking movements from earlier works and adapting them, reworking them where necessary. Some movements underwent several re-workings. The term parody signifies music which has been recycled in this manner.

Some of Bach’s greatest music has a substantial parody element. An example is the Mass in B minor. At the accession of the new Elector, Bach presented him with the Kyrie & Gloria of the Mass, (Kyrie and Gloria being the parts of the Lutheran Mass set to music). Then in 1748-49 he added the Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei, completing what we now know as the B minor Mass. His reason for doing this is not clear*, but there was no new music: it is in effect an anthology of some of the finest bits of his earlier cantatas, the words being replaced by those of the ordinary of the mass. Some of his adaptations are quite radical (such as the wonderfully moving end of the Crucifixus, adapted from the cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen).

* It is thought by some that it was in support of a job application for Dresden.