Two Violins And One Guitar, Vol. 2

Description

2 Violins and 1 Guitar, Vol. 2 The Trio Sonata, an instrumental composition generallydemanding the services of four players reading from three part-books, assumed enormousimportance in Baroque music, developing from its earlier beginnings at the start of theseventeenth century to a later flowering in the work of Handel, Vivaldi and Bach, afterthe achievements of Arcangelo Corelli in the form. Instrumentation of the trio sonata,possibly for commercial reasons, allowed some freedom of choice. Nevertheless the mostfrequently found arrangement became that for two violins and cello, with a harpsichord orother chordal instrument to fill out the harmony. Although some composers tended tocompromise in matters of form, trio sonatas were more often than not either in the form ofthe Sonata da chiesa, or Church Sonata, with a sequence of four movements, slow, fast,slow, fast, the quicker movements fugal in character, or in the form of the Sonata dacamera, or Chamber Sonata, rather resembling a suite of dance movements. The form was inmany respects that of a concerto grosso in miniature, and trio sonatas could often beexpanded into fuller concerto grosso form by the addition of extra instruments in contrastwith passages left for the smaller concertino group. The form was adapted to the newRococo requirements of the later eighteenth century, before being superseded by theclassical duo sonata and very occasionally by sonatas that used two melody instruments anda chordal accompaniment, of which the present collection offers examples.Georg Philipp Telemann was born in Magdeburg in 1681 andstudied at the University of Leipzig, where he founded a Collegium musicum later to bedirected by his younger contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach. From 1721 Telemann was Kantorof the Johanneum in Hamburg and director of music in the five principal churches of thecity, a position he retained until his death in 1767. He was a prolific composer, showingtechnical mastery and a peculiar facility that was equally pleasing to professional andamateur musicians. His Trio Sonata in E minor, which allows alternative instrumentation,is characteristic of his writing, with its happy blend of melodic invention and attractivecontrapuntal felicity.The Italian composer Giovanni Maria Capelli, born in Parma in1648, belongs to the generation of Corelli, the greatest of all trio sonata composers. Formany years he was in the service of Parma Cathedral as singer, priest and finally maestrodi cappella. His F major Trio Sonata is a fine example of the form in the hands of a minorItalian master of the period. The Trio in D majorby Carulli belongs to another world. Ferdinando Carulli, born in Naples in 1770, began hiscareer as a cellist but changed to the six-string guitar. In 1808 he settled in Paris,where he won a considerable reputation as a guitarist and as a teacher of the instrument.He died in Paris in 1841. The D major Trio naturally offers the guitarist an opportunityfor display in a texture that a