Telemann, Don Quixotte Burlesque Suite

 
The composer Georg Philipp Telemann, the most significant representative of the North German school during the first half of the 18th century, was capable of writing a four-part motet with the same ease an ordinary person writes a letter. At least, this is what his young friend Handel — four years younger than Telemann — told him, whom he met in Leipzig when, under family pressure, Telemann began law studies that he would soon abandon.

A self-taught musician
Born in 1681 in Magdeburg, a city in western Germany, on the banks of the Elbe, Georg Philipp came from a family with a strong Protestant tradition, several of whose members had been pastors. His first training was humanistic and very broad: when he was just a boy, he wrote verses in Latin, German and French. His musical training, on the other hand, has a weak base in the period in which he had to attend the cathedral school where he attended the teachings of a composer of ecclesiastical music and also a keyboard course which, interestingly enough, lasted exactly fourteen days.

The fact remains, however, that at the age of ten Georg Philipp played the flute, violin and other instruments with mastery. On the basis of the direct study of the scores of the great composers of the time, the young Telemann soon began to compose his own pieces. 

Georg P. Telemann
(1681 - 1767)

An extensive catalog
Throughout his life, the catalog of this self-taught composer was going to acquire gigantic dimensions, far surpassing, for example, the work of Vivaldi. He cultivated all kinds of genres: operas, religious cantatas and psalms, passions, oratorios, profane cantatas, and much more, to which a large number of pieces of vocal and instrumental music is added.

A great naturalness distinguishes Telemann's music, which allows it to easily reach a wide audience. The composer argued that the musician who wanted to reach a large audience should write better than one who addresses a select minority. A good example of this maxim is represented by the suite inspired by Don Quixote.

Don Quixotte Burlesque Suite
During his last years, Telemann was strongly attracted by the spirit of Cervantes's work, to the point that it served as inspiration for an opera and, from it, a Suite for string orchestra and basso continuo, known as Don Quixotte Burlesque.

Light in character, almost humorous, the Suite includes seven movements or sections:

00:00  Ouverture
03:55  Le reveille de Quixotte (The awakening of Don Quixote)
06:58  Son attaque des moulens a vent (The attack on the windmills)
08:44  Les soupirs amoureux apres la Princesse Dulcinèe (Sighs of love for Dulcinea)
12:38  Sanche Panche berné (Sancho Panza disappointed)
14:22  Le galop de Rosinante alternat, avec sequent (The gallop of Rocinante)
16:59  La couché de Quixotte (Don Quixote's dream)

The rendition, performed with period instruments, is by the New York Baroque Incorporated chamber group.

Rossini, The Barber of Seville - Overture

 
When, in 1816, the Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello learned that an opera entitled Almaviva, ossia L'inutile precauzione, was about to be premiered at the Argentina theater in Rome, he had no hesitation in gathering his cohort of adherents and attending en masse at the work premiere with the sole and express purpose of causing excesses and turning the premiere into a failure from which its author, Gioacchino Rossini, could never recover.

The truth is that Paisiello was right in behaving that way. Almost forty years ago, he had premiered an opera also based, like Rossini's, on a libretto that emerged from Beaumarchais's comedy, Le Barbier de Séville ou la Précaution inutile. The work had been widely accepted in its time. So, Paisiello regarded as a personal affront that the young Rossini, an author of "Muslim works", dared to compose a new version of the opera that had made him famous, even when he offered it with another title.

Gioachino Rossini (1792 - 1868)

An ill-fated premiere
And indeed, the first performance, on February 20, 1816, did nothing but make things easier to provoke the brawl. The premiere was full of errors and mistakes that provoked mockery and blunders from the audience, unwittingly joining to the unruly spirits of Paisiello supporters. It is even said that at a certain moment, even a cat took the stage.

However, Paisiello and his entourage were likely the main responsible for the failure, since the second performance, a few days later, was a high success, and has continued so until today, to the point that The Barber of Seville exhibits nowadays the accolade of being the most performed opera in the world.

A "borrowed" overture
The work was composed in three weeks, forcing Rossini to make use not only of arias from other operas. The overture presented here borrowed, with some orchestration changes, the overture from a previous opera, Aureliano en Palmira, which had not been well received in its time. Rossini, entirely rightly, considered that the overture was of such quality that it could not be tied to a minor work. It had to be re-released.

The rendition is by the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra conducted by the Italian maestro Maurizio Benini.

Mozart, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik"

 
Although it seems unusual to put it this way, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was for much of his life a musician who would compose "on demand." Unlike the musicians of the later Romantic era, the works that came from his pen were almost always motivated by specific commissions, either because they were intended for a specific performer or orchestra, or because they were intended to please some aristocrat or bourgeois who, by the way, wanted the work at home as soon as possible.

Mozart was obliged to write quickly, despite which he fulfilled orders in very short periods, although the pay was never enough. "A lot for what I do, very little for what I could do," he replied in writing on one occasion, upon receipt of his "fees", although this time he referred to his salary as a part-time "chamber musician" of Emperor Joseph II.

Despite all that has been said, perhaps the most popular piece by Mozart has no known recipient and it is not known why he wrote it. But we do know exactly the end date of its composition — August 10, 1787 — because that is how it appears in the catalog he began to build in February 1784, the year in which he was also working on Don Giovanni, whose entry into the catalog follows that of the Serenade No 13.

In his catalog (which he planned to end around 1800, hopefully "updated" by that time) Mozart would annotate five pieces by facing pages. On the right page he would write down the initial two or three measures of the composition, and on the left, the date, the title and the instrumentation. In the image, the Serenade entry is the last one, at the bottom of the page. What Mozart writes here does not seem like a title at all but rather a few words as a summary or reminder. He writes: "Eine kleine Nachtmusik ... [the movements] ... 2 violini, viola e basis."

The catalog entry let us know that the work has five movements, but one of them would have been lost or Mozart did not get to compose it as the piece that is heard today only has four. In addition, let us point out that the composition was never performed during the composer's lifetime.

Serenade No 13 for strings in G major - Movements:
00       Allegro
05:46  Romance
11:20  Minuet and trio
13:30  Rondo

The rendition is by the Gewandhaus Quartet, a Leipzig-based group founded in 1808, joined on this occasion by a double bass as a guest artist.

Enrique Granados, Spanish Dance No 5

 

Despite being the son of an army officer, Enrique Granados y Campiña showed signs of an enviable musical talent at an early age. Born in Lleida in 1867, when he was seven the family had to move to Barcelona, ​​where the stubborn father would get a colleague in arms, another officer, to give little Enrique his first piano and music theory lessons. Such was the learning aptitude the boy showed, that soon after his parents decided to provide him with formal musical education. It was the beginning of a road without potholes only interrupted by the hardships he had to face as a result of the economic difficulties that, after his father died, led the young Granados to become the provider of a large family.

A café pianist
Qualified by one of his teachers as the most brilliant student he had ever had, young Enrique, who at the age of ten had given his first public concerts and who in 1883 had won the Academy competition for novice pianists, had to abandon his studies to serve as a pianist in the cafés of Barcelona, ​​playing up to four or five hours a day. But simultaneously he was fortunate to be hired by a wealthy businessman as his children's teacher at a very decent salary. With that money plus the support of the businessman and other additional pesetas obtained at the cost of performing operatic rehashes in cafés, in September 1887 he went to Paris since in Spain it was not guaranteed that he would be able to complete his musical studies.

Enrique Granados (1867 - 1916)

Paris and the Twelve Dances
But shortly after arriving, he fell ill with typhoid, and when he was to apply to the Conservatory he was above the age limit for admission. For this reason, he had to take private lessons with a prominent teacher who at that time had among his disciples a short, neatly dressed student named Maurice Ravel.

Apparently, is from that time that a good part of his Twelve Spanish Dances dates, although the author once declared that most of them had been composed in 1883 when he was only sixteen. But in Paris, he did not get publishers. Back in Barcelona in 1889, he got to publish them with a prestigious house.

Spanish Dance N ° 5
The set of the Twelve Dances marks the first international recognition of Granados, receiving praises from established composers as Saint-Saëns, Massenet and Grieg. The series of twelve pieces for piano thus became one of the greatest contributions to the Spanish pianistic repertoire of the 19th century.

In a rendition by the French pianist Guillaume Coppola, the best known of all the dances is presented here, the Spanish Dance No 5, called Playera or, more properly, Andalusian, due to its undisguised flamenco feeling, underlined by the left-hand support aimed to evoke the strumming of a guitar.

Vivaldi, Concerto for guitar and strings

 
Vivaldi in St. Mark's Square

In order to lead the life that we all would want, in the 18th century you also had to do some juggling. Born in Venice as the first-born of a Venetian merchant marriage, Antonio Vivaldi came into the world at a time when the Venetian commercial monopoly of the sale of spices, merchandise and slaves, had begun to crumble. It was the result of the emergence of alternative routes to the "Silk Road" established in the High Middle Ages that connected China and Europe, with Venice as its only commercial intermediary.

In these circumstances, the Venetian merchant families were compelled to encourage in their children the inclination for the practice of a musical instrument, or the development of any artistic talent, in order to attract the European aristocracies to the city and thus establish new commercial alliances. In a relatively few years, Venice ceased to be a fiefdom of merchants who by tradition despised art in all its forms as an unprofitable activity, to become a Renaissance and cosmopolitan cultural capital, the first tourist city in history.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi
(1678 - 1841)

Antonio's father, faced with the family's growing debts, chose to teach his son the little he had learned when, years ago, he had also worked as a musician due to similar shortages. By the way, Saint Mark's Square had become a new public square where artists showed their talents.

There, in that fledgling stage, the little musician Antonio Vivaldi made his initial training in the domain of the violin, taking home, incidentally, some coins as a result of his efforts.
Before long, his father would join him. Reasonably reliable testimonies of the time indicate that the father-son duo delighted the then "tourists", with little Antonio standing out for his ability to create beautiful melodies capable of evoking the most diverse states of mind.

Concerto for guitar and strings, in D major
Although it has been rightly said that the heyday of the concerto in the Baroque period was due in large part to the great 17th century advances in the art of violin making, maestro Vivaldi did not always entrust to a violin his works for soloist and orchestra. This is the case of this concerto, where the solo instrument is the guitar, although it was originally written for lute.

These first manifestations of what would later be the resorted and celebrated "concerto for soloist and orchestra" of the following centuries are very short duration works. The entire work lasts barely ten minutes. However, they have three movements, which inaugurate the traditional scheme: fast - slow - fast. The second movement, largo, is the most popular and recognizable (3:44).

The rendition is by maestro John Williams, accompanied by the Seville Symphony Orchestra.