Viola!

PROGRAM NOTES

The viola is the heart of the orchestra, and it deserves much more credit than it is often given. Etymologically, it represents the root of all bowed string instruments, both the viola da gamba family (the "leg violas"), and the viola da braccio family (the "arm violas"), known to us as the violin family. The Italian word violino means small viola, violone large viola, and the violoncello or cello would be the smaller large viola. For this program we have chosen pieces that give the viola a prominent role in various ways. Biber gives us a multitude of violas for the inner voices of his Battalia; Telemann has provided us with the first viola concerto ever written; the concerti grossi by Locatelli and Durante give soloistic roles to double concertino violas, and finally we have the glorious and virtuosic Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 by Bach, which forgoes the violins entirely.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Bibern was born in 1644 as Heinrich Biber; he added the middle names in tribute to two of the founders of the Jesuit order, Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier, and the "von Bibern" when in 1690 he was knighted for his artistry by Emperor Leopold I of Austria. At this time he was Kapellmeister at the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg, where he had 75 - 80 singers and instrumentalists to work with, and was writing large-scale sacred works such as the famous 53-voice Missa Salisburgensis. His rise to fame began as a violinist in Kroměříž (in Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic), and he is considered the greatest violin virtuoso of the 17th century, today perhaps best known for a collection of extraordinary violin sonatas known as the Rosary (or Mystery) sonatas, where the strings of the violin need to be tuned differently for each piece. The Battalia on our program shows his innovative spirit in a different way; the manuscript states that it imitiates "the slovenly troops of the musketeers, Mars, the battle, and lament of the wounded, with arias and dedicated to Bacchus." It involves unusual techniques described in the score, of "hitting the violin with the bow, it must be well practiced," placing a paper under the string of the bass instrument to imitate a snare drum, as well as using what is now known as a Bartók pizzicato (plucking the string so that it strikes the fingerboard), for the imitation of gun shots in the battle. Let it be known that Biber used it before Bartók.

Georg Philipp Telemann, probably the most prolific composer of the baroque era, was considered the leading German composer of his time. A multi-instrumentalist and inventive composer throughout his long life, always eager to explore and incorporate new elements into his music, Telemann consciously sought to blend various national styles. He also made a point of writing music for unusual instruments and unusual instrumental combinations, so it is not too surprising that he is the author of the earliest known viola concerto ever written, his Concert: a Viola da Braccia concertata (likely written some time between 1716 and 1721). Telemann's primary instrument was the violin, so he was intimately familiar with the technical demands of the viola as well, and the concerto has endured in popularity not by virtue of being the first of its kind, but thanks to its excellent musical quality.

Born in Bergamo in northern Italy, Pietro Antonio Locatelli left for Rome as a teenager to study with violin virtuosi associated with the venerable Arcangelo Corelli—the two would have overlapped in Rome for about a year before Corelli's passing. After spending about a dozen years in Rome, and another five appearing at different courts around Europe, he settled in Amsterdam, a major center for the music publishing business. There he oversaw the publication of his works, and only performed privately for a small circle of (wealthy) admirers. As a violin virtuoso, he pushed the limits of technique both in the left and right hand, setting the standards for 19th-century virtuosi, among others Niccolò Paganini, whose capricci appear to be inspired by those of Locatelli. The concerti grossi of Locatelli pay homage to Corelli (particularly the former's Op. 1, which was published during Locatelli's Roman years), albeit with the significant addition of one or two violas to the concertino group. The lighthearted Concerto Grosso on our program indeed gives the two concertino violas at least equal importance to the concertino violins.

The seventh of eleven children, Francesco Durante studied at the Neapolitan Conservatorio di S. Onofrio a Capuana, where his uncle was primo maestro. Durante later became one of the most venerated teachers of the famous Neapolitan school, serving as primo maestro at three of the city's four conservatories. Durante's 8 Quartetti concertanti for strings were copied and performed as far away as Paris, Dresden, and Brussels, and this collection includes the five-part concerto titled La Pazzia, which translates as Madness. Though it features two prominent viola parts, the madness in this inventive composition does seem to be raging first and foremost in the violins....

While employed by Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, Johann Sebastian Bach visited Berlin in 1719 in order to acquire a new harpsichord for the court. During this visit he performed for the Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, who invited him to send some music. This was the impetus for Bach to assemble the extraordinary collection of compositions now known as the six Brandenburg Concertos, possibly with the hope of employment in Berlin, but nothing further is known of his exchange with the Margrave. The six concertos were not necessarily all written during his time in Cöthen; Bach would have looked back at his entire œuvre at the time to select some of his most outstanding pieces for the collection. The sixth concerto, which is scored for only the lower-pitched members of both the viola da braccio and viola da gamba family, leaving out the violins altogether, provides us with the perfect way to conclude our concert dedicated to the viola!