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November 2005 Program Notes
Music of Luigi Boccherini
by Mary Burke
Luigi Boccherini, if not quite the Rodney Dangerfield of 18th-century music, has definitely suffered from a certain lack of respect over the years. For a long time, practically none of his music was played apart from that ubiquitous minuet from the E major string quintet and a cello concerto that Friedrich Grützmacher had presumptuously "arranged" (I use the word in the Frankensteinian sense). He had the misfortune to be working at the same time as Mozart, Haydn, and the young Beethoven, whose monumental achievements have thrown so many other composers into a deep and abiding shade (he was famously described as "Haydn's wife" by the violinist Giovanni Puppo). Musicologists often dismiss him as a lightweight because his compositional technique lacked the same degree of polish.
While he may have committed some harmonic and structural faux pas, Boccherini produced a great deal of very enjoyable and even innovative music. Along with Haydn, he pioneered the string quartet form, as well as breaking new ground in the quintet and sextet. He chose not to follow the prevailing fashions of the day (Viennese and Italian), turning instead to the forms and flavors of his adopted home of Spain, where he spent the latter half of his life; he wrote villancicos and a zarzuela, incorporated guitar techniques into his string quintets, and depicted scenes from Madrid's daily life in many pieces. His style was neither fish nor fowl, leaning toward rococo one moment, Sturm und Drang the next. The individuality of his writing prompted François Joseph Fétis, a musicologist of the time, to remark that "one would be tempted to believe that he has never known any other music but his own." Other scholars more realistically observe that he seemed to retain impressions from absolutely everything he ever heard, and would use any and all style elements that might help him create a desired effect.
As he himself admitted, Boccherini was more concerned with effects and affects than with the stylistic formalities, writing in 1799, "I am convinced that music was made to speak to the hearts of men, and that is what I strive wholeheartedly to achieve." His scores abound with indications of emotion and manner: sweet, gentle, melancholy, coquettish, imperious, and more.
Boccherini wrote relatively little keyboard music, including some very attractive accompanied sonatas with violin, quintets, and two concerti. Given that he did not play harpsichord himself, even this small amount is quite impressive! Tonight's performance of the E-flat major concerto may be the first in this country by a period orchestra.
Among Boccherini's symphonies, perhaps the best known are the Op. 12 set, composed around 1771. The most famous of these is the fourth, which has acquired the nickname "La casa del diavolo" because of its final movement. Boccherini himself inscribed it with the legend "The chaconne depicting Hell, which was written in imitation of that by Mr. Gluck in The Stone Guest" (i.e. Don Juan). Gluck would later use the same music again in his Orphée et Eurydice. Boccherini also recycles some of his own music in this piece, using material from a keyboard sonata in the first movement, and beginning both of the outer movements with the same slow introduction.
La Clementina is a two-act zarzuela that Boccherini wrote in 1786 for performance in the residence of the Benavente-Osuna family, who boasted their own theater and orchestra; the eminent poet Ramón de la Cruz, who also worked in their household, provided the libretto. The zarzuela form, descended from Spanish popular musical theater, resembles operetta in that it includes spoken dialog; its subject matter ranges over drama, romance, comedy, satire, and folktales. Though limited to two acts, the plot of La Clementina involves not one, not two, but three young ladies being courted by men of varying suitability, as well as a foundling child and a long-lost brother.
Boccherini later essayed a typical Italian opera, of which only one scene survives. The historical subject matter would have been very well known to audiences in the Iberian Peninsula: Inés de Castro was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Constanza, wife of Dom Pedro I of Portugal. She and the king fell in love, were secretly married after the queen's death, and had several children; they represented a threat to Constanza's son, the legitimate heir to the throne. Dom Pedro's father had Inés killed, leading to a civil war between father and son. The opera scene shows Inüs in considerable agony of soul, contemplating her death and the loss of her husband and children.
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