Baroque Violin Favourites

Description

Baroque Violin Favourites George Frideric Handel was born in Germany, spent a fewyears in Italy, and returned north, eventually to take up residence in London,where he came to hold a dominant position in English musical life, from hisearlier days as a composer of Italian opera to later years as the creator of Englishoratorio. His posthumous influence, after his death in London in 1759, wasincalculable. Much of Handel's instrumental music was written during theearlier part of his life, subsequently published, with or without thecomposer's consent, particularly during the 17305. Of the violin sonatas thebest known remains the Sonata in D major, included in the Handel Gesellschaftcomplete edition as Op.l, No.13. The first movement, marked Affettuosostarts with a figure based on the ascending notes of the chord of D major, tellinglyextended by one note, a figure that later recurs. The following Allegro, isfugal in character, with the opening violin theme answered by the keyboard inthe middle and then in the lower register, later to return after interveningepisodes. The B minor Larghetto is an effective aria, leading the way toan energetic final Allegro. Born in Bologna in 1663, Tomaso Vitali was the son ofGiovanni Battista Vitali, a string-player, singer and composer. A violinist,and presumably a pupil of his father, he moved with his father to Modena in1674 and remained there, serving subsequently as leader of the court orchestrauntil 1742. The famous Chaconne in G minor attributed to him and popularlyknown as Vitali's Chaconne was brought to wide attention throughFerdinand David, the violinist for whom Mendelssohn wrote his ViolinConcerto in E minor. David published the work, with his own veryconsiderable elaborations and these have largely formed the basis of latereditions. An early manuscript in Dresden attributes the piece to 'Vitalino' andthis has been taken, rightly or wrongly, as a reference to the younger Vitali,while some have suggested that the violin part may have been worked out by somefamous Dresden virtuoso, such as Vivaldi's pupil Pisendel, on the patternprovided by Vitali's initial work. Based on a baroque variation form, the Chaconneuses a repeated chordal pattern over a descending bass-line, allowing theviolin a chance of increasingly elaborate display, as the work proceeds. Much of Johann Sebastian Bach's instrumental music waswritten during the happy period he spent as court Kapellmeister in Cothen. The Suitein D major, third of four such works, has been dated to 1729 or 1730, at atime when Bach was in Leipzig, employed by the city council with responsibilityfor the music of the principal city churches. He also took on the direction ofthe university Collegium Musicum, for which it may be supposed the Suitewas written. The so-called Air on the G string was originally no suchthing, but simply a movement in the Suite scored for strings alone. Itstransformation came about through a pupil of Ferdinand David, the violini