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Sonates virtuoses du XVIIe siècle

Tarquinio Merula
Johann Pachelbel
Marco Uccellini
Tobias Hume
Johann Rosenmüller
Jacob van Eyck
Girolamo Frescobaldi
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer

Les Boréades
Francis Colpron
Hélène Plouffe
Susie Napper
Marie Bouchard

• Finaliste au Gala de l’ADISQ 1995

“In motion is man most like unto himself.”
Le Bernin

The end of the 16th century witnessed one of the greatest ideological and aesthetic transformations in the history of Western civilization, the shift from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Baroque art whose birthplace was Italy, is first and foremost an art of movement of illusion and enchantment. It seeks to arouse the emotions, to entice, and uses to these ends all that brings pleasure to the senses. This new ideal was linked to a concept of man that derived from Antiquity, the idea that the arts and eloquence could «move, improve, alter and appease the sentiments.” It is no coincidence that during the same period Colombo and Harvey were propounding the notion that the blood is not stagnant, but circulates constantly to all parts of the body, pumped by the heart.

“The origin of the word ‘baroque’: has been much discussed. We now know for certain that it lies in the Portuguese word barrocco whith designates an irregular pearl.”
Victor L Tapié, Baroque et classicisme, 1980.

Theorists describe Baroque art as being characterized by exuberance, irregularity, artifice and contrast, based on an «open form» to use the words of Heinrich Wolffdin, of great freedom, and on a moving, plural structure where, in contrast to the static forms cultivated in the Renaissance, each plastic element directs the spectator's gaze to neighbouring elements. Aiming first at the expression of the various passions, the works of Baroque art and architecture afford the eye no rest: everywhere, our gaze rebounds enthralled before the ecstatic saints or the movement captured in the stonework of facades.

Music plunged into this heady tide, giving the lie to those who persist in claiming that it lags behind the other arts. By 1600—with the jettisoning of the polyphonic structures of earlier centuries, the development of accompanied monody and the asserdon of the role of harmony—the foundaffons of opera, the Baroque form par exceflence, had been laid. Characters were individualized and the melodic line liberated from the profusion of voices. Giving free rein to emotion, this was an exact counterpart of the mobility and tensions that are fundamental to the paindng and sculpture of the period.

Alongside opera and parallelling the flowering of vocal melody, instrumental music assuredly lies among the finest achievements of the Baroque. During the Renaissance. instruments performed transcriptions of multi-part vocal works and played the dance airs required at balls and festivities of all kinds, but towards the end of the 16th century appeared works that were the forerunners of both chamber music and the symphony. Vocal virtuosity was quickly adapted to the violin, recorder, organ and harpsichord, the same concern with expressiveness and sensuality helping to develop the peculiar characteristics of each.

The proliferation of instrumental forms and the lack of precision with which these were defined testify to the great creative freedom that composers enjoyed, while characteristics of the plastic arts made their way into the canzonas, ricercars. sonatas and suites produced throughout the 17th century. Sudden changes in rhythm and successive tempi evoke the contrasts of curves and counfercurves; the dynamic opposition of piano and forte corresponds to abrupt changes of light; and the ornaments, frequently improvised, with which musicians adorned the melody call to mind the decorative elements of architecture. Even trompe-l'œil has its counterpart in a sort of “trompe-I'oreille,” musical sleight of hand, of which the techniques of bariolage (cross-string bowing figures) peculiar to the violin are the best example.

But the shift from the Renaissance to the Baroque, radical though it was, in no way constituted a break with the past. The 17th century built upon the achievements of the 1600s, and structural solidity remains beneath the appearance of disorderly exuberance. Baroque composers did not throw out the benefits of early polyphony; in the slow process of building new compositional structures, they incorporated into the style concertant contrapuntal elements, which always enchant the ear. The trio sonata, and its multi-part equivalents, used techniques of imitation and soon the Baroque gave birth to the fugue, the jewel of polyphonic art.

Unquesdonably the greatest Italian musician of the first half of the 17th century was Girolamo Frescobaldi who was organist at Saint Peter's in Rome. The bulk of his work consists of ricercars, toccatas and variabons written for the organ and harpsichord, but he also lefl some collections of canzonas in several parts for various combinations of instruments. Tarquinio Merula was another organist, first at the court of King Sigismond III in Warsaw, and subsequently at Cremona, Bergamo and Venice. His chamber works were precursors of the trio sonata. Marco Uccellini played the violin for the Este family in Modena and staged performances at the court of Parma. In his violin sonatas he developed new techniques of bowing and made occasional use of scordatura.

Although each European country retained national characteristics, the wind of change quickly swept them all, and music was transformed under the influence of Italy. Tobias Hume produced several collections of pieces for viols, unique among the works of the period. Hume was primarily a soldier, serving as a mercenary in Sweden amd Russia, and his composidons, which he performed humself, were the fruit of his leisure, as he notes in the preface of The First Part of Ayres, also called Captain Hume's Musical Humours: “My Profession being as my Education hath been, Armes, the onely effeminate Part of me hath been Musicke.” Jacob van Eyck, a recorder virtuoso, was a bellringer at Utrecht cathedral before becoming the city's inspector of bells. His pieces for one and two recorders display great ingenuity in the art of variation.

But the influence of the Italian school was greatest on German and Austrian musicians. Johann Heinrich Schmelzer borrowed Italian violin technique and became one of the greatest virtuosi of his time: Kapellmeister at the Imperial Court in Vienna, he helped to create an Austrian style on the basis of Italian models. Johann Rosenmuller first studied and worked as an organist in Leipzig. After being forced out by a scandal, he spent more than twenty years in Venice before moving to Wolfenbuttel. His work is a marriage of the introverted gravity of the Germans with Italian sensuality. Lastly, in the music of Johann Pachelbel, organist at Regensburg, Vienna, Eisenach, Stuttgart and Nuremberg, and other cities, French influences are felt, and his suites and trio sonatas exhibit the more codified structures that were to come into use during the 18th century.

— Francois Filiatrault
translation: Stephen Jones