Empire Brass

July 23 2006
8:00 p.m.

Dominion-Chalmers United Church
355 Cooper Street

A return visit by one of the world’s very finest brass quintets, renowned for its brilliant virtuosity and the unparalleled diversity of its repertoire.

Visit their web site at www.empirebrass.com

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Programme Notes

Fantasia

TOMASO GIOVANNI ALBINONI
Born June 14, 1671, in Venice
Died January 17, 1751, in Venice

Tomaso Albinoni was born to a wealthy paper merchant in Venice. He learned violin and singing as a boy, and first gained recognition as a composer in 1694 with the opera Zenobia and a set of twelve trio sonatas. He signed the scores “Musico di violino dilettante veneto” (Venetian amateur violinist), indicating that he was a man of independent means who delighted in music. Upon the death of his father in 1709, the family business was left to him and his two brothers. The heirs soon discovered enough debts to virtually wipe them out financially. Albinoni opened a singing school from which he subsequently derived much of his income, and continued to compose prolifically. It has, however, been suggested that he briefly served the Duke of Mantua as a chamber musician, but the only evidence is Albinoni’s own description of himself on the title page of his Sinfonie e concerti a cinque as “servo” of the duke, the work’s dedicatee. This was probably more of an honor to the duke rather than an actual appellation.

Kesh Jig

TRADITIONAL IRISH

The jig, characterized by leaping exuberance and fast triple meter, is an English-Irish folk dance that was taken over (as the gigue) as the model for instrumental compositions by French and Italian musicians when it migrated to the continent in the seventeenth century. Bach and other German composers traditionally concluded their instrumental suites with a gigue.

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Gigue

Anthony Holborne
Born ca. 1545 in England
Died November 29 – December 1, 1602 in England

Little is known of the Elizabethan composer Anthony Holborne before his marriage in 1584 to Elizabeth Marten in Westminster. He described himself as “gentleman and servant to her most excellent Majesty,” and acquired noble patrons in Lord Thomas Burgh, Sir Richard Champernowne (to whom he dedicated the two published volumes of his works is 1597 and 1599), and Sir Robert Cecil, in whose service he died while carrying letters to the United Provinces in November 1602. Most of all Holborne’s 150 compositions, reflecting the styles and importance of dancing in Elizabethan England, are dances for instrumental consort or cittern (a wire-strung relative of the mandolin).

Works for Brass Quintet and Organ

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born March 21, 1685 in Eisenach
Died July 28, 1750 in Leipzig

It is well known that Bach had no problem with borrowing from other composers and transcribing their works for the instrumentation that fit his needs at the time. Had today’s brass instruments existed in Bach’s time, there is little doubt that he would have written for them. Therefore, it is completely acceptable that the works presented here are transcribed for brass quintet and organ.

Whether the composer ever envisioned a complete performance of Die Kunst der Fugue is not clear, particularly in the lack of specific instrumentation. It was the endeavor of the then eighteen-year old Berlin student Wolfgang Graeser to substantiate the plan of The Art of the Fugue and to offer a first alternative for instrumentation. In this form, with strings, woodwinds, trumpets, horns, harpsichords and organ the work received its first performance in Leipzig, 175 years after its composition. Today, most musicians agree that a more modest instrumentation, such as strings or brass or just organ, may be more in keeping with performance practices during Bach's time.

The composer called every passage Contrapunctus and the attentive listener will feel how, gradually, the fundamental idea is changed and enriched. This sense of construction, growing richer as it progresses, is constant as the work evolves.

The Fugue in G major, BWV 577 is often referred to as “The Gigue” because of its lively dance rhythms in twelve-eight. This is Bach at his jolliest. The Fantasia in C major, BWV 570 is one of Bach’s “free” works that, along with his toccatas and preludes, served as a way to show off the technique of the organist.

Anna Magdelena Bach was Johann Sebastian’s second wife and the mother of his last 13 children. Not only did she care for all of these children, but she was also a singer and copyist of his music. Bach presented his wife with a gilt-edged book in 1725 where she proceeded to copy her favorite pieces written by her husband. Some of the pieces contained in the book previously thought to be by Bach have now been determined to be by other composers. Bach wrote many of the pieces contained in the book for Anna Magdelena as teaching pieces.

In Bach’s time the rondo was a common part of French clavecin suites. It consists of a repeated refrain alternating with different couplets. Eventually this form evolved into the Classical period rondo that became a common last movement in sonatas and concerti.

Bach wrote more that 200 sacred and secular cantatas that survive today. Undoubtedly, there may be as many that are lost as there are that survive. Most of these works were written for Sundays or Feast days. His brilliant Cantata No. 80 was written in 1724 for the celebration of the Reformation Festival, and is based Martin Luther’s famous chorale Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A mighty fortress is our God”).

Introduction and Allegro, from Sonata for Violin and Continuo Op.6, No. 5

TOMASO GIOVANNI ALBINONI
Born June 14, 1671, in Venice
Died January 17, 1751, in Venice

The present Introduction and Allegro are derived from Albinoni’s Sonata for Violin and Continuo Op.6, No. 5, published in Amsterdam around 1711 with the title Trattenimenti Armonici (Harmonic Entertainments).

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Basse Dance Bergeret

Tylman Susato
Born ca. 1500 – 1510 in Soest, near Dortmund
Died ca. 1570 or later in Sweden?

Tylman Susato was a town trumpeter, composer, and music dealer in Antwerp, and established the first music publishing firm in the Low Countries in 1541. Though he gave up his work as a municipal musician before 1550, he remained active as a composer and publisher until his death in the early 1560s, issuing two dozen collections of chansons, three books of Masses, nineteen volumes of motets and eleven Musyck boexken (anthologies of Flemish songs, dances, and vernacular Psalm settings); a number of the works in these collections are his own.

Concerto in G major

GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN
Born March 14, 1681 in Magdeburg
Died June 25, 1767 in Hamburg

Unlike Bach, whose music had to wait for revivals in the nineteenth century to become popular and well known, Telemann was highly regarded as an artist in his own lifetime and today he serves as an important link for us between the Baroque style and the Classical style. Usually exhibiting a definite French influence, Telemann's music is notable for its beautiful melodies and clarity of texture. In his concertos, for instance, and in contrast to Bach's often heavy and opaque polyphony, Telemann paid strong regard to the tone, clarity and pure prominence of the solo instrument for which he was writing at any given time.

Fantasia

JOHANN PACHELBEL
Baptized September 1, 1653 in Nuremberg
Buried March 9, 1706 in Nuremberg

Known primarily as an organist, Johann Pachelbel was also a prolific composer for the instrument. His career as an organist took him from Vienna to Eisenach, Erfurt, Stuttgart and Gothe before returning home to Nuremberg in 1695 as organist at St. Sebald’s. His most important contribution to music history is that he developed the cantus firmus chorale, in which the chorale melody is in long notes one phrase at a time preceded by fore-imitation in the accompanying voices. This was to become the standard form for future composers.

Pachelbel also wrote a number of more free form compositions such as toccatas, fugues and the two fantasias. These short works are replete with ornamentation that make a brilliant impression on the listener.

© Columbia Artists Management Inc.
- Elizabeth E. Torres

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Sonate da Camera

GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL
Born February 23, 1685 in Halle
Died April 14, 1759 in London

George Frederic Handel was like Bach in many ways. Not only were the two masters contemporaries, but also their feelings and thoughts seemed to run in the same channels, though they never met face to face. From the beginning their paths went opposite ways. Handel, nearly all his long life, was feted and honored all over Europe, but Bach lived and died in obscurity. Nevertheless, in spite of Handel's more secular outlook on life, both were deeply and truly religious.

Handel’s chamber music tends to meld the stateliness of the sonata da chiesa, or church sonatas with the dance forms of more secular music. As a rule, he relied upon the thoroughbass practice of the time, notating only the treble and bass parts, while leaving it up to the harpsichordist to fill in the rest of the continuo part. This does not mean that these works were unfinished or undefined, rather the bass part is always firm and gives a strong indication of where the other voices should fall. Along with the trio sonatas of Bach, Handel’s sonatas stand as the pinnacle of Baroque chamber music.

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Festive Music:
Rondeau, from Abdelazer, or the Moor’s Revenge
March, from The Married Beau, or The Curious Impertinent

HENRY PURCELL
Born September 10, 1659 in Westminster, London
Died July 31, 1695 in Westminster, London

Henry Purcell was perhaps the greatest native-born composer in the history of English music, until the advent of Sir Edward Elgar to the scene in the second half of the nineteenth century. Purcell was organist at the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, where he is buried. Like Mozart and Mendelssohn, Purcell was a child prodigy, his first-known composition being published at the age of eight; like the two aforementioned composers, he had a productive career that was condensed into a lifetime of only thirty-six years. Purcell wrote music for the church, for the theater and for every kind of private performance; between 1690 and 1695 alone, he wrote incidental music for more than 40 plays.

It was the Rondeau from the incidental music for Abdelazer that Benjamin Britten chose for his famous Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The March is part of the incidental music to The Married Beau, a comedy by John Crowne that was written in 1694.

Prélude, from Te Deum in D major

MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER
Born 1643 in or near Paris
Died February 24, 1704 in Paris

Like many composers of his time, this gifted composer, overshadowed by his contemporary Lully, fell into virtual obscurity until the 20th century. He was never appointed to the court of Louis XIV, however he held may important positions in Paris. Very little is known about his life before 1698 when he was appointed maître de musique at the Sainte-Chapelle du Palais. He had no direct descendents; his manuscripts were left to a nephew who ignored them until sold in 1727 to the royal library.

Even in his obscurity, Charpentier’s music speaks for itself. The Te Deum is traditionally a celebratory piece, and Charpentier used the key of D major, which the French refer to as joyeux et très guerrier (joyful and very warrior-like). The prelude to this Te Deum is particularly well known. It is in the form of a marche en rondeau, and has often been used by European Broadcasting companies as theme music.

© 2002 Columbia Artists Management Inc.
-Edited by Elizabeth Ely Torres

© 2002 Columbia Artists Management Inc.
-Dr. Richard A. Rodda

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