At 11:39 AM +0100 12/21/08, Eric Fiedler wrote:
Kim,
I think what Telemann - and/or his copiest - is doing here in TVWV
1:644 is to alert the viola player to the fact that he is playing
the same line as the bass, albeit an octave higher. This happens a
lot in Telemann manuscripts, with even the violins often being
written in bass clef to show the same thing, a phenomenon which some
researchers call "bassett notation". In the case of the violins it's
more obvious what the purpose of the notation is, but I suspect that
the same thinking applies to such viola parts.
I haven't run into that notation, but I concur that the voicing was
fairly typical. Bach may not have used it much, but Handel and
Graupner certainly did, and it remained standard through the work of
Mozart, Haydn and their contemporaries. More often 3-part than
2-part writing, of course, with either violas and basses in octaves
and 2 real treble parts, or unison treble with violas filling in the
harmony. But even Handel used 2-part treble/bass when he felt it was
appropriate. We just played a Singalong Messiah, and in No. 9 ("O
Thou That Tellest") the violas drop out for the last 12 bars for no
real musical reason, and leave the ending ritornello to unison
violins and bass line.
On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 9:13 PM, David W. Fenton wrote (or perhpas not):
Telemann gets such a bad rap because it's not Bach.
Rather, Telemann got a bad rap because the first of his thousands of
compositions that were revived in the early 20th century were
hausemusik, and couldn't compete with Bach's more profound works.
And that prejudice is still unspoken but definitely observed among
musicologists, much like disparaging Tchaikovsky. The CDs for K
Marie Stolba'a Music History text included no Telemann at all until
the 3rd edition, and the single excerpt in that edition is certainly
not one I would have picked (and it still includes no Tchaikovsky!).
But that doesn't mean that the easier music was poorly written. I
can honestly say that I've never played or heard a piece by Telemann
that was not artistically satisfying, whether written for amateurs or
professionals. The duets, including the canonic duets, are very
satisfactory musically. There may be some, and this may be an
example, but his average was incredibly high and consistent.
Perhaps we also have to be careful about defining his "cantatas." My
understanding is that his normal practice in Hamburg was to have
larger-scale music in the two large churches, and then split up his
singers and instrumentalists into smaller combos who would go to the
smaller churches, so any given "cantata" might be more in the Italian
style and intended for much smaller forces for that reason. And he
was there and kept turning out new music for longer than Bach was
active in Leipzig. It's like the lack of viola parts in some of
Mozart's Salzburg music, not by his choice but because the Archbishop
didn't hire any violists!
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[email protected])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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