The complete idiot's guide to classical music (29 page)

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
In most cases, variations get more and more complicated as the work goes along, but the French composer Vincent d’Indy worked backward in his “Istar Variations.” The music describes a Babylonian goddess who passes through seven gates, depositing one of her garments at each stop. Thus the texture becomes lighter as the work progresses, and the actual theme on which the variations are built emerges only at the very end, as Istar stands nude at the seventh gate. Unfortunately, Walt Disney didn’t include that one in
Fantasia
.

Thought we were going to forget rondo, didn’t you? Never. The last movement of a composition is often cast as a rondo (from the French “rondeau” or round), an apt designation since the primary theme keeps coming around again and again. The form can be outlined as A-B-A-C-A, with the B and C sections (and those of as many subsequent letters as the composer chooses) providing materials other than those contained in the first tune, and usually cast in different keys for further variety. What gives the rondo its special delight is that each time the A section rolls around again and the now-familiar melody returns, the listener gets a feeling of comfortable recognition—sort of like coming back to your own neighborhood after a walk in the woods, or greeting an old friend after new introductions at a party.

How do you round off a rondo? Read on . . .

Coda is Italian for tail, and that’s exactly what it is in music: A kind of appendage that’s not a necessary part of the structure, but rounds it off, brings it to a more satisfying conclusion. Like this little section of the chapter. Or a Warner Brothers cartoon. After all, Elmer Fudd has chased Bugs Bunny all over the landscape, only to find that the pesky wabbit has outfoxed him again, so officially, that’s it. The story is over, the picture is finished, but what really puts the exclamation point on the comedy? Porky Pig’s “th . . . th . . . that’s all folks!”

And with Porky’s short tail bringing this long tale to its full finish, you may now stride off into the sunset in full confidence that you’re up to speed with concert lingo, and ready to meet the composers whose genius made you want to explore classical music in the first place. Happy listening (and reading)!

 

• A symphony is a large-scale work, generally in four movements.
  
 

• A concerto is a large-scale work for a solo instrument and orchestra, usually in three movements.
  
 

• Sonata form is the backbone of the symphony, sonata, and concerto.
  
 

• A minuet is a dance form that is used in the symphony and concerto.
  

Chapter 14
 
Go for Baroque

 

• The music of Bach
  
 

• Handel, Vivaldi, and Purcell
  
 

• Scarlatti and Telemann
  

The Baroque period in music, usually reckoned as 1600 (a date probably chosen because it’s easy to recall) to 1750 (the death of Bach) covers a very impressive historical era. It marked the Age of Reason in philosophy and science. It was the time of Rembrandt and El Greco in painting; Milton, Swift, and Moliere in literature. In England, the Tudors gave way to the Restoration, and across the Atlantic, the American colonies were growing and thriving.

Robert Schumann once said that “music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder,” going on to add that “We are all bunglers next to him.” Beethoven played several pieces from Bach’s
Well-Tempered Clavier
; Chopin knew all 48 preludes and fugues by heart. Mozart made string transcriptions of Bach pieces and wrote to his father that he had finally found music with something to teach him. Perhaps Berlioz summed it up best when he wrote to a friend that “Bach is Bach, just as God is God.”

Back on earth, though, Bach (1685–1750) was just like everybody else. He had to kiss up to his bosses to hold a job, got in constant trouble with the authorities, and when he wasn’t turning out cantatas (more than 400 of them), he was producing children—at least 20 of them (although 13 of them died in infancy). Four of his offspring became renowned composers themselves—William Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich, and Johann Christian—and the list of Bach progeny was extended once again in our own day, when the ingenious musical mind of Peter Schickele cooked up the hilariously fictional P.D.Q. Bach, the last and least of the famous Bach clan.

For five generations, the Bachs had been musicians, so it’s no wonder that Johann Sebastian followed suit.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
At one point, no less than 30 Bachs held posts as organists in Germany. The very name “Bach” became synonymous with “musician.”

Although his father taught him the violin as soon as the lad was big enough to hold one, Johann Sebastian also learned to sing and to play the organ, harpsichord, and every other keyboard instrument he could get his hands on. One of his first jobs was as a church organist and choirmaster in Arnstadt, but he was forever in trouble with the town fathers who kept complaining about everything from Bach’s playing “unseemly” variations on the organ while the congregation was singing its chorales, to allowing “a strange maiden” up in the organ loft with him. That was no lady, that was his cousin, Bach said, and to prove the point, he quit his job and married her.

He got his next post as organist in the town of Mulhausen by agreeing to avoid “all unseemly society and suspicious company,” but that got pretty dull, so he moved on to Weimar, where he stayed for nine years, writing his organ toccatas, chorales and fugues. When another musician was promoted over him, Bach raised such a fuss that he was tossed out on his ear. “You can’t fire me,” said Bach, “I quit,” whereupon he was hauled up on charges of “too obstinately forcing the issue of his dismissal” and tossed into the local jail for a month.

 
Music Words
Toccata
, from the Italian meaning to strike or touch, usually refers to a piece that takes advantage of the clarity inherent in keyboard instruments, while also serving as a showcase for the performer’s virtuosity. In the 16th century, the term was often used to indicate an improvisational prelude before the central section of a piece, but by the 17th century, it applied to any sort of short keyboard composition in rapid tempo and brilliant sound.

Chorale
, from the Latin “choralis,” or belonging to the chorus, refers to a type of hymn tune for congregational use in the Lutheran church, many of them written or adapted by Martin Luther himself for singing in Protestant services. Eventually these vocal works were used as the basis of instrumental compositions, reaching their highest form in the hands of Bach, who harmonized hundreds of these melodies, and composed many more.

Fortunately, Bach’s reputation was already well-established, so he was soon out of the hoosegow and into the position of Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen, where the salary was higher, the food better, and the court lacked only one rather important ingredient for the best organ virtuoso in Germany: a decent organ. Oh well, waste not, want not: The Prince did have some good harpsichords around the palace, and he also maintained a presentable orchestra, so Bach switched instrumental courses and started writing harpsichord pieces and all sorts of larger ensemble pieces, among them the
Orchestral Suites,
two violin concertos, and the famous
Brandenburg Concertos
.

On the other hand, the Calvinism of the court at Anhalt-Cothen rendered unnecessary all but the simplest hymn tunes, and eventually the greatest composer in the history of sacred music couldn’t stand it any more. Besides, when the Prince had married a lady who didn’t like music at all, Bach could see the handwriting on the castle wall. Since the music director at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig had just died, Bach applied for the post (auditioning for it, so the legend goes, by writing the
St. John Passion
). The elders really wanted Telemann for the job, but when he turned it down, they grudgingly gave the nod to the 38-year-old Bach, who soon moved to the city where he would remain, and the position he would hold, for the rest of his life.

Not that Bach had it easy there. In addition to turning out cantatas at the drop of a church holiday, he had to act as a kind of dormitory master for the 70 boys at the church school, teach them Latin, and train them for emergency musical service in his choirs and orchestras. The regular orchestra contained a motley crew of town bandsmen, with only a couple of fiddlers amongst the trumpets and oboes, so drastic measures were necessary. “Discretion deters me,” Bach told the town council, “from revealing anything near the truth as to their quality and musical knowledge.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Poor Bach had problems with good climate in Leipzig, since it kept people from getting sick, and a lot of his free-lance income came from playing funerals. “Last year,” he wrote to a friend, “a healthy wind blew and I lost fees that would ordinarily come in from funerals to an amount of more than 100 thaler” (about one-seventh of his annual income). Bach also had to deal with the high cost of living in Leipzig. So what else is new?

Nonetheless, Bach stuck it out, continuing to compose some of the most glorious music ever to come from quill to paper. In an ironic twist, the works of this towering musical genius all but disappeared from public view following his death in 1750. Other composers continued to admire and study Bach, but not until the young Felix Mendelssohn revived the
Passion According to St. Matthew
did music lovers at large begin to realize the storehouse of greatness that is Bach’s unique legacy to us all.

Almost everything Bach wrote is worthy of high attention, so where do we begin? Perhaps with the
Brandenburg Concertos
, those six magical works that were never performed during Bach’s lifetime, but which are now an indelible part of 20th century concert life. Each one has its own special instrumental timbre: no. 2, for instance, has solo parts for flute, violin, oboe, and high trumpets; no. 3 is for strings alone; no. 5 features the harpsichord, and so forth.

Then try the two Violin Concertos and the Concerto for Two Violins; take an international sampling of keyboard pieces with the
French and English Suites
and the
Italian Concerto
. Listen to the six great sonatas and partitas for violin alone (the D Minor Partita contains the famous “Chaconne,” one of the supreme achievements of the string repertoire).

 
Music Word
Counterpoint
, from the Latin “punctum contra punctum” (meaning point against point) is the simultaneous combination of two or more melodies in such a way as to make a satisfying musical unity.

On the vocal scene, take a few hours off and be inspired by the B Minor Mass; or for lighter listening, sip a bit of the
Coffee Cantata
. Bach was justly renowned for his mastery of
counterpoint
, but if you seek gorgeous melody, pure and simple, try “Sheep May Safely Graze” or “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” the latter providing a spiritual uplift into the bargain. As Mendelssohn put it so feelingly, “when anything of Bach’s has been once heard, it will be easy to discover that it is beautiful and to hear it again; the only difficulty is the beginning.”