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November 2002 Program Notes
Giants of the High Baroque: Bach and Leclair
by Mary Burke
Tonight's program, devoted to two giants of the Baroque era, begins with a work that has stood on the shoulders of a giant for generations. The piece commonly known as J.S. Bach's fifth orchestral suite, BWV 1070, is quite probably not his work at all, and is listed as "spurious" in the latest edition of Grove. The manuscript copy by C.F. Penzel, dated 1753, bears the name "Sigr. Bach", and the form of the piece vaguely resembles the four suites that definitely belong to Bach père. Stylistically, however, the fifth suite clearly came from some other, later pen; the handling of fugues and homophony, as well as the eccentric chromaticism, are hardly characteristic of Bach's rather conservative writing. The selection of movements also departs radically from the norm. Most of the typical court dances that make up a French suite have been dispensed with, leaving only the overture and minuet combined with unusual abstract movements. While some have attributed the work to an unknown composer of Bach's circle, many scholars today agree that the suite is actually the work of Bach's son Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-1784), who was decidedly the most adventurous composer among the siblings.
The fifth Brandenburg Concerto suffers from no such identity crisis, being one of a set of six concerti that Bach sent to the Margrave of Brandenburg in March of 1721 as a sort of job application, accompanied by a magnificently obsequious cover letter. At the time, Bach held the position of court composer at Cöthen, working for the talented and enthusiastic amateur Prince Leopold. (As an interesting aside, Bach had not come by this position easily; his previous employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, was so incensed by Bach's resignation that he had the composer jailed for several weeks. Ultimately he relented and allowed Bach to move on.) The Margrave apparently did not find the pieces all that impressive, for he never so much as acknowledged receipt, nor is there any evidence that the pieces were ever performed by his musicians.
The concerti probably originated during Bach's years at Weimar, judging from the ways in which the various pieces experiment with the Italian concerto form, which Bach was studying intensively at that time; however, their instrumentation appears to have been dictated more by the forces actually available to him at Cöthen. Each of the six uses a different instrumentation, and the fifth is generally known as "the harpsichord one" for its spotlighting of the keyboard. In fact, this piece is often considered to be the genesis of the harpsichord concerto, given the brilliant extended solo in the first movement. This concerto also marks the first time that Bach wrote for the transverse flute, an instrument that would come to figure prominently in his later works, such as the second orchestral suite. Apart from its interest in terms of orchestration and structure, this concerto is a tuneful delight throughout its ebullient allegros and rather wistful slow movement.
Jean-Marie Leclair is one of the most important musical figures you've never heard of. Scholars generally regard him as the founder of the French violin school, but the more spectacular multi-genre achievements of contemporaries like Couperin, Rameau, and Lully tend to overshadow his work. In both composition and performing technique, Leclair brought to violin music the sought-after ideal of les goûts-réunis: the fusion of the Italian and French styles, celebrated most notably in Couperin's chamber music collection of the same name, as well as his Apothéoses of Lully and Corelli. Leclair succeeded more than any other in combining the mannered French style with Italian flair and singing melodies; his first collection of sonatas, published in 1723, was immediately recognized as a unique and exciting contribution to the repertoire.
Having trained as a violinist, dancer, and lacemaker, the young Leclair seems to have spent a year or so freelancing as a ballet master in Turin before moving to Paris in 1723, where Joseph Bonnier became his patron. Leclair made a very successful debut in the Concert Spirituel in 1728, and traveled to London and Kassel, where he apparently performed with Locatelli in a sort of live demonstration of French vs. Italian style. Louis XV appointed him ordinaire de la musique du roi in 1733, and at court he played with all the greatest musicians of the day; however, he resigned after a few years because he was quite literally unwilling to play second fiddle to the celebrated Guignon. He then moved to Holland for several years, where he worked for the wealthy Du Liz family, and at the court of Orange for Princess Anne, who had studied harpsichord with Handel.
Leclair went into semi-retirement in 1744, but emerged from it shortly thereafter with his only opera, Scylla et Glaucus, in 1746. Perhaps he felt that he would have as much luck in the opera business as Rameau, who had also come to the genre rather late in life; unfortunately, Scylla et Glaucus failed to thrill audiences, despite its exciting subject matter (sea-god Glaucus loves water nymph Scylla; witch Circe loves Glaucus; Circe turns half of Scylla's body into a writhing mass of horrible dog-serpent monsters), and Leclair's future productions were limited to vocal and instrumental music for the Duc du Gramont's private theater.
Leclair's life is perhaps most interesting for its end, as he is one of very few composers to have been quite indisputably murdered. Separated from his second wife, the engraver Louise Roussel, Leclair had moved to a rough neighborhood of Paris in 1758, and was found stabbed to death in his own house in 1764. Since the murder weapon was an engraving tool, suspicion naturally fell on Louise, but the bulk of the evidence points to his nephew, another violinist.
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