The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra
Jeannette Sorrell, Artistic Director
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Love in Venice
Erica Schuller, soprano
Program
1. Party at the Palazzo
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): Ciaccona in C, RV 114
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): Zefiro torna, from the Scherzi Musicali
Erica Schuller
Vivaldi: Concerto in A Minor for 2 Violins, RV 522
Olivier Brault, Susanna Perry Gilmore
II. L'Amore è difficile
Nicola Porpora/arr. J. Sorrell (1686-1768): Alto Giove, from Polifemo
Emi Tanabe, with Olivier Brault
Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677): Che si può fare? (What can you do?), Op. 8
Erica Schuller
Monteverdi: Ohimè, ch'io cado (Alas, I tumble down), 1624
Erica Schuller
III. Summer Madness
Vivaldi: Summer from Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons), Op. 8
Susanna Perry Gilmore
Vivaldi/ arr. Sorrell: La Folia (“Madness”)
Olivier Brault, Emi Tanabe
View texts and translations here.
Apollo’s Fire CD recordings are for sale at the Screenhouse in Odland Plaza after the concert.
Apollo’s Fire and Jeannette Sorrell appear by arrangement with:
Opus 3 Artists
David V. Foster, President & CEO
348 West 57th Street, Suite 282
New York, NY 10016
www.opus3artists.com
Fire and Love, Italian Style
by Jeannette Sorrell
In Venice there is an old saying… “L’Italiano è la lingua della musica, degli angeli, e dell’ Amore.” (Italian is the language of music, of the angels, and of Love.)
Italians are passionate about art and love. In a piazza in Tuscany on a hot summer night, it is not unusual to see two young men get into a fist fight over a girl. The Italian language is particularly emotional, being full of strong inflections and accents. Did the language develop in this way because of the emotional temperament of its people? Or vice versa? Whichever is the case, it’s clear that composers from Monteverdi to Vivaldi and beyond have always been aware of their language’s particular ability to convey feelings of love – not to mention the jealousy and despair that often goes along with amorous adventures.
The beautiful palazzi that line the grand canal of Venice were the scenes of lively music parties for hundreds of years. In the 17th century, Claudio Monteverdi was the Music Director at the great basilica of San Marco, but he also provided the aristocrats of Venice with plenty of love songs and party music. About 100 years later, Antonio Vivaldi walked those same streets, and provided the Venetians with passionate operas as well as lively instrumental concertos for the city’s famous orchestra of young ladies.
One of the themes that runs through our program is the use of popular renaissance dance tunes that became ground basses, or simple repeating bass lines and chord patterns. During the period around 1590-1630, these ground bass tunes were the pop music of Italy and Spain. But they also inspired great composers such as Monteverdi, Strozzi, Corelli, and later Vivaldi to write virtuoso instrumental and vocal variations over the repeating bass lines. Popular ground basses included the Ciaccona, the Passacaglia, the Romanesca (a dance from Rome), the Bergamasca (a dance from Bergamo), and the Folia (meaning “Madness”). You will hear some of these tonight.
Our program opens with two examples of the lively Ciaccona ground bass, with its dance-like and syncopated rhythms. Monteverdi’s Zefiro torna (“Spring breezes return”) makes delightful use of the Ciaccona as a setting for a poem by the prominent Italian poet Rinuccini. The lyrics celebrate the return of spring and the joys and sorrows of love that tend to come with it. Vivaldi’s Ciaccona in C gives violinists a playful chance to play lively variations over the bass.
Monteverdi’s younger colleague, Barbara Strozzi, also provided the Venetian aristocrats with music for their salons. She was a fascinating figure – one of the many illegitimate daughters of Venetian nobility. Her father is thought to have been Giulio Strozzi, an aristocratic poet and librettist who helped Barbara in her career as a singer and composer. As a woman in the 17th century, Barbara had very few rights, no support from the Church, and no consistent patronage from the nobility. Nevertheless, she became one of the most published composers of her time, with eight volumes of her own music in print. Strozzi’s many solo songs often evoke the anguish of a lover mistreated. The haunting song, Che si può fare (What can one do?) is based on the passacaglia ground bass – a repeating pattern of four descending notes, often used to express angst and despair.
Venice was filled with illegitimate children. This led to many orphanages, including one that became very famous: the Ospedale della Pietà. This large home for the illegitimate daughters of the nobility provided an elite artistic and musical education for many bright and talented girls. When the Church leaders decided in 1704 that a certain priest named Antonio Vivaldi was not actually suited for the priesthood, they sent him to become the music teacher at the Ospedale.
For the next 30 years, Vivaldi served as music-master to the elite top-level orchestra of the orphanage – the showcase ensemble. In this role, he composed about 500 concertos for his young female protégés. Since Vivaldi’s concertos were written primarily to be played by teenage girls, he infused them with youthful energy and a kind of rhythmic drive that, in my opinion, often resembles rock n’ roll. Vivaldi had a meteoric career, achieving Beatles-level popularity. It is not surprising that his concertos are by far the most popular pieces in the classical repertoire.
Vivaldi was the great developer of ritornello form – the form that became the model for concerto-writing by all European composers of the century, including J.S. Bach. The Italian word “ritornello” means something that returns. The same word is used to mean the refrain in pop music – and indeed, Vivaldi’s ritornellos convey the bold and driving sense of rhythm and melody that is more commonly associated with pop music. After all, he was writing for teenagers.
One of Vivaldi’s colleagues at the Pietà was Nicola (Antonio) Porpora, a singing teacher and opera composer. His aria “Alto Giove,” from the opera Polifemo, is so beautiful that I felt compelled to arrange it as an instrumental piece. Polyphemus, the giant son of Poseidon, loved the sea-nymph Galatea, and wooed her with no success. A sense of love and longing rings through Porpora’s beautiful harmonies. In my arrangement, the vocal line is given to a solo violinist, who is eventually answered by a companion violinist in a possibly flirtatious encounter.
In 1725 Vivaldi published a collection of twelve concertos titled Il cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione - The Contest Between Harmony and Invention. With this curious title, he unleashed a revolutionary question: should music simply be about harmony, or could it serve to illustrate inventive ideas, events, moods, natural scenes, etc? Vivaldi set out to prove that it could do both. The first four concertos of the collection, titled Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons), are virtuoso demonstrations of music in the service of storytelling – in this case, the story of Nature and her various moods.
The “Summer” concerto is a brilliant evocation of those hot summer days in Italy, when young men get into fights over a beautiful girl…. We hear the sighing in the heat, the lazy buzzing of flies and wasps, and a stunning depiction of a thunderstorm. Anyone who has been in Italy during a summer storm will appreciate how the torrent of cascading violin scales evokes the onslaught of rain when the clouds burst.
The great Follia or folia tune and dance served as inspiration for Vivaldi as well as several other baroque composers (Corelli, Marias, Geminiani, and C.P.E. Bach). Scholars believe that the dance originated in Portugal, where young girls would engage in the “folly” or “madness” of a wild dance around the fire. The folia is a triple-meter ground bass, beginning in a haughty sarabande-like rhythm, and traditionally growing faster and faster toward the end. The tune is full of the dramatic tension of courtship and seduction. Vivaldi’s version was originally a triosonata; I arranged it as a concerto grosso so that all of us could join in the fray.
We hope this evening of Italian romance sends you home inspired.
© Jeannette Sorrell
Cleveland 2021
The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra
Jeannette Sorrell, Artistic Director
VIOLIN
Olivier Brault, concertmaster
Susanna Perry Gilmore, asst. concertmaster
Emi Tanabe, principal
Aniela Eddy
Chloé Fedor
Andrew Fouts
Holly Piccoli
VIOLA
Nicole Divall
Yael Semanaud Cohen
CELLO
René Schiffer, princ.
Rebecca Landell Reed
CONTRABASS
Sue Yelanjian
LUTE
William Simms
Brian Kay
HARPSICHORD
Jeannette Sorrell