Program Notes Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Concerto grosso in E-flat major, Op. 7, No. 6
Contrapunctus 1 and 4 from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080
Pietro Locatelli was born in Bergamo, studied in Rome, worked at the Court in Mantua and eventually settled outside Italy, in Amsterdam. He was a violinist whose lifetime saw the flowering of instrumental virtuosity, on stringed instruments in particular. He was also a shrewd businessman who benefited from printing’s rapid rise in Holland. Nobody quite knows whether Locatelli studied with the great pioneer of the baroque Concerto Grosso, Arcangelo Corelli. It’s more likely he received instruction from Corelli’s pupil Giuseppe Valentini. Either way, Corelli’s pioneering of the Grosso rubbed off on Locatelli, from whose pen three Grosso sets survive. The Concerto Grosso capitalized on a new trend for virtuosity, but in a broader setting. The premise was to have instruments or instrumental groups emerge as soloists from within a variegated orchestral texture—a texture with which they would continue to converse and participate in. One of Locatelli’s best-known Grossos comes with a narrative attached. Published as part of the composer’s Op 7 set in 1741, Il pianto d’Arianna uses the fragment of a lost Monteverdi opera of the same name telling of Theseus’s abandonment of Ariadne. A solo violin, probably written by Locatelli for himself to play, sobs on Ariadne’s behalf in the undulating Andante, with cello, additional violin and the string ensemble for accompaniment. The lamenting continues across the five movements of what could be described as a miniature opera for strings. The fasterpaced Allegro movement is filled with the rage that comes with loss. The final Largo, strewn with silences, eventually twists into the hopeful smile of a major key. 22
Johann Sebastian Bach’s intellectual development of harmony laid the foundations for centuries of subsequent music, from Mozart to ABBA. In particular, Bach mastered counterpoint—the braiding of different but complementary musical voices. The highest manifestation of counterpoint is fugue: the introduction and subsequent discussion of a single theme or ‘subject,’ at staggered intervals and different pitches, by otherwise independent voices. Those voices might be individual instruments or the autonomous fingers of a keyboard player. Bach didn’t specify which instrument (or instruments) should relay his culminating contrapuntal manifesto, The Art of Fugue. In this collection, started at as early as 1742 but collated later into a fully comprehensive set, the composer sought to create a unified but diverse encyclopaedia of fugal techniques. He did so mostly using the same melody or ‘subject,’ based on a simple D minor triad (a definitive three-note chord). As always, Bach’s rigorous logic leads to music both exuberant and profound. Bach labelled each of the set’s fugues ‘Contrapunctus,’ followed by a number. Contrapunctus 1 is a clear-headed presentation of the subject itself—the twelve notes heard right at the start beginning and ending on a D. Bach’s whole exercise in The Art of Fugue can be defined as his proving what he could do with this single, cleverly-chosen tune. Here, the subject is followed by an equally lucid fugal elaboration, with dramatic pauses to end. Contrapunctus 4 is where the collection starts to get really interesting. This fugue was evidently added later, towards the
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