… to play a concerto. Then, one side became smaller than the other: ft ttffffffftffffffft i* ttWttftfWWMM TftttftffftftTffff
… to play the concerto grosso.
The Italian Corelli was big on these 'concern grossi', as were lesser-known names like Geminiani and Torelli, as well as Handel himself. From here, it's not a huge leap to the 'solo concerto': t ttttttttttttttttttttttttttt ttttttttttttttttttttttttttt ttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
…just one player versus all the rest, and by far the most popular version. The one we're most familiar with now, to be honest. Vivaldi did virtually all he could with this format - one or 400, depending whether you agree with Stravinsky or not.
With the concerto, came - rather obvious, really, but it has to be said - The Soloist. And, presumably, with the soloist came, what… luwie fits and outrageous dressing room demands. Good. Just what we need. 'I want a bowl of M amp;Ms with all the blue ones taken out… oh, and a music stand.'
Technology-wise, the organ is the big thing, but other new instruments are coming online all the time - not just the piano I mentioned earlier, but the piccolo (the funny sort of dwarf castrato flute, as it were), the clarinet too, and, oddly enough, the tuning fork.-"
TOCCATA AND FEUD
? ? what's bubbling in 1729? Who is damned? Who is faintly praised? The South Sea Bubble is well and truly burst, Catherine the Great has succeeded Peter the Great - nice to see she took his name - and Moll Flanders is still one of the public's favourite books, some seven years after its release. You can possibly see why. Handel, himself, has relinquished his right to be first to the deckchairs by becoming a British citizen. Bach, of course, still hasn't left Germany, although he has now moved pretty far afield for him: down the road fl The tuning fork, incidentally, was invented by a brass player. If anyone was going to feel the need for an implement to keep you in tune, it's not surprising that it was a brass player. to Leipzig.
Johann Sebastian is in a bit of a feud situation with the Church authorities, not helped, no doubt, by the fact that he was the last choice for the Leipzig job. He was less preferred than the exceedingly dull Telemann, and even less preferred to the exceedingly unknown Graupner. Who he? Ed. (In fact, who Ed?) Bach found himself in trouble with his employers on more than one occasion, and I think, to look at it fairly, there was right and wrong on both sides. Bach's jobs were ridiculously labour-intensive, with music to write and arrange for so many different places and events. But, equally, he could, by all accounts, be a bit tough to get on with. On one occasion, he applied for a new job and got it, neglecting to tell his new employer only one vital fact - he already had a job, and they didn't want to let him go. He ended up being placed under house arrest to prevent him skipping to his next gig.
The good thing, though, is that all Bach's wrangling with the powers-that-be does not appear to have affected his writing. A stream of great works just seem to pour forth from him like sweat from a mere mortal. One of them is the marvellous St Matthew Passion, in which Bach used not only the St Matthew version of the Passion but also the odd extra verse written by a man writing under the name of Picander, who was in fact a postman from Leipzig. As you can imagine, a man as committed to the Church as Bach would have put all his resources into a dramatic setting of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. The 'oratorio Passion' was a particularly German affair, having grown out of the liturgical Lutheran Passion music, pioneered by early musical setders such as Schiitz/
Bach, though, tailored the Passion to his own needs. He increased the amount of non-biblical texts, putting increasing demands on poets such as Picander - Postman Pic, to his friends - to provide him with original but no less fitting words. In the St Matthew Passion, or, to give it the name Bach gave it, the Passio Domini nostriJ.C. secundum Evangelistam Mattaeum, the great man had increased the new fl German composer, born in Saxony, who worked mainly out of Dresden. He loved his Passions as well as his opera. His 'The Seven Words of Christ' - not to he confused with a Haydn piece of a similar name -sets words from all four gospels beautifully. bits from twelve to twenty-seven biblical verses. It was to be the last of his great Passions, and was performed at St Thomas's Church, I,cipzig, on Good Friday, 1729. That was its first performance. Sadly, it had to wait another hundred years for its second performance, conducted by one Felix Mendelssohn in Berlin, but that's another story. It's a big piece, if you ever come to take it in, but more or less every bit is gorgeous, particularly if you are a Bach junkie, and none more so than the glorious 'O sacred head, sore wounded'.
As for Georg Frideric, he'd had a minor opera out the year before - Tolomeo, which contains the yummy 'Silent Worship' - but he was more likely than not basking in the glow afforded to the four anthems he'd written just two years earlier for the coronation of George II. In fact, basking in the glow afforded one of them in particular, the first, which went by the now almost household name of Zadok the Priest (but don't forget Nathan the Prophet!^). In fact, they're so popular, they've been performed at more or less every coronation since. If only he could collect the royalties-^ on it.
WAR AND PEACE MORE WAR
s fi The opening line of Zadok the Priest continues 'Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet annointed Solomon King.31 always feel sorry for good, reliable Nathan the Prophet. He got equal billing in the original story but it is only Zadok who gets remembered. fifi No pun intended. ? that was 1729. More or less, give or take a couple of years. To get to the next major landmark, you have to traverse the opening of the Covent Garden Opera House, the birth of Haydn, and the founding of the Academie of Ancient Music. That's just in music. Elsewhere you also had the building of 10 Downing Street; the rise of the game Ninepins; the advice of Dr John Arbuthnot to watch what you ate; the founding of the Seventh Day Baptists by Conrad Beissel; the coronation of Christian VI of Denmark; the succession of Tsar Ivan V's daughter, Anne - who apparently gets expenses and a company cart; the beginning of the four-course system of husbandry by Viscount 'Turnip' Townsend - no, don't ask me, either; the death of three of the great English literati - Daniel Defoe, Elijah Fenton and John Gay; the birth of Stanislaus II, the last independent King of Poland; and the first ever subscription library started by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. My word, glad that's over.
In addition to that, there's a war on. Well, to be fair, there usually is, somewhere or other. I mean, I don't want to belittle these things in die slightest, but I do often think it was a case of 'Look, whose turn is it?' A bit like planning the office holiday rota: 'Erm, right, well, the Spanish Succession boys would rather take the last two weeks in August. Apparently that allows them July to violate the Partition Treaty. Fiona, pass me my coffee, can you, love? Now, that means the Thirty Tears will have to go in June, the Hundred Tears in the front half of July, and… now who are you?' 'The Seven Tears!'
'Damn, forgot about you. Erm… right, Seven Tears… Seven Tears… oh, look!??? guys can have the back half of July… when the schools break up. Everybody happy? Right, let's have a look at that stationery order…' Well… possibly. Possibly not. In actual fact, the war that's just started is die Polish Succession. Nice name. Good branding. Next year there'll be one with Turkey and Persia, but it'll only last twelve months or so. Huh! ONLY! The year after that, it's Russia and Turkey, then Prussia meet Austria in the quarter-finals in 1740, before Turkey and Persia come back to battle it out in the play-offs. Result: Turkey win on the away dead rule. I don't know. Millions of lives, millions of pounds and all for a handful of disputed borders and dodgy marriages. These days, government central office would simply rearrange the boundaries without anyone noticing. Which reminds me: BACH!