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Steven Zohn

TELEMANN THE VIVALDIAN Vivaldi’s influence on Johann Sebastian Bach has long been a source of scholarly fascination. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, commentators have acknowledged Bach’s early contact with the Venetian composer’s music as a formative experience; Vivaldi “taught him to think musically”, as Johann Nikolaus Forkel famously put it in 1802.1 By contrast, there has been a notable lack of consensus regarding the Vivaldian credentials of Germany’s leading composer during the early eighteenth century, Georg Philipp Telemann. Early in the twentieth century, Walther Krüger placed Telemann squarely among the followers of Corelli, a distortion perpetuated as late as the 1960s by Siegfried Kross, who claimed that “Telemann followed the Vivaldian solo concerto only to a limited extent”.2 There were, however, some dissenting voices. Marc Pincherle noted that “such a follower of Corelli as Telemann nevertheless welcomed the innovations that Vivaldi brought into the structure as well as the substance of the concerto”. Arthur Hutchings considered that Telemann, “so far from fitting into a niche labelled ‘Corellian’, represents the whole history of the concerto and other forms of French and Italian concert music as reflected in German composers from Muffat until after Quantz”. And Pippa Drummond found that “the Corellian manner was but one of a number of styles which Telemann could adopt at will”.3 But it was Peter Ahnsehl, writing in the early 1980s, who first suggested that Telemann regarded Vivaldi as much more than one influence among many. Ahnsehl boldly asserted that “the majority of Telemann’s concertos are inconceivable without the adoption and assimilation of Vivaldi’s Steven Zohn, Boyer Coll. of Music and Dance, Temple Univ., Philadelphia PA 19122-6079, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 1 NIKOLAUS FORKEL, On Johann Sebastian Bach’s Life, Genius, and Works, translated in The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, eds Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, revised and enlarged by Christoph Wolff, New York, W.W. Norton, 1998, p. 442. For a consideration of what Forkel may have meant by this phrase, see CHRISTOPH WOLFF, Vivaldi’s Compositional Art and the Process of ‘Musical Thinking’, in Nuovi studi vivaldiani, eds Antonio Fanna and Giovanni Morelli (“Quaderni vivaldiani”, 4), 2 vols, Florence, Olschki, 1988, I, pp. 1-17; reprinted in Bach: Essays on His Life and Music, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 72-83. 2 WALTHER KRÜGER, Das concerto grosso in Deutschland, Reinbeck, Jürgens, 1932, p. 93; SIEGFRIED KROSS, Das Instrumentalkonzert bei Georg Philipp Telemann, Tutzing, Hans Schneider, 1969, p. 38. 3 MARC PINCHERLE, Vivaldi: Genius of the Baroque, trans. Christopher Hatch, New York, W.W. Norton, 1957, p. 246; ARTHUR HUTCHINGS, The Baroque Concerto, revised edn, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979, p. 237; PIPPA DRUMMOND, The German Concerto: Five Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 216.

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achievements”.4 This, too, was something of a distortion, for as Wolfgang Hirschmann subsequently demonstrated, Telemann’s earliest concertos, written between 1708 and 1713, reflect influences predating his encounter with Vivaldi’s music. Hirschmann concluded that “for Telemann, the concerto’s ‘generic essence’ was in many respects completely different than for Vivaldi”; that the multiplicity of styles and genres upon which the German composer drew – Italian, German, French, Polish, stile antico, polychoral, sinfonia, intrada, concerto grosso, da capo aria, sonata, rondeau, accompanied recitative – “was inconsistent” with Vivaldi’s conception of virtuosity and tutti-solo contrast. “This is why”, Hirschmann claimed, “Telemann consistently composed movements, oriented in principle toward Vivaldi’s model, that show greater motivic and harmonic differentiation, are more finely constructed with a richer tutti-solo relationship, and on the whole are more ‘integrated’ and stylized”.5 One might take issue with aspects of Hirschmann’s comparison, but it is true that Telemann’s eclectic approach continued to color his concertos even after his assimilation of Vivaldian formal syntax during the 1710s. A work such as the famous viola concerto, in which all movements exhibit Vivaldian ritornello form, may serve as a case in point. Here, there are four movements, not three; the viola’s extensive quotation of ritornello material in the fast movements is atypical of Vivaldi; and the finale is an unusual fusion of ritornello and binary forms. How much of a Vivaldian was Telemann, then? In attempting to answer this question, I will not be concerned here with determining which Vivaldi concertos he knew, and when he knew them.6 Nor will I attempt to tabulate the many 4 PETER AHNSEHL, Bemerkungen zur Vivaldi-Rezeption bei Georg Philipp Telemann, in Die Bedeutung Georg Philipp Telemanns für die Entwicklung der europäischen Musikkultur im 18. Jahrhundert, Bericht über die Internationale Wissenschaftliche Konferenz anläßlich der Georg-Philipp-Telemann-Ehrung der DDR, Magdeburg 12. bis 18. März 1981, eds Günter Fleischhauer, Wolf Hobohm, and Walther Siegmund-Schultze, 3 vols, Magdeburg, Zentrum für Telemann-Pflege und -Forschung, 1983, II, p. 113. 5 WOLFGANG HIRSCHMANN, Studien zum Konzertschaffen von Georg Philipp Telemann, 2 vols, Kassel, Bärenreiter, 1986, I, pp. 245-46. See also Hirschmann’s discussion (pp. 31-47) of the violin concertos TWV 51:e3, F2, G8, and a2, which he finds to be particularly Vivaldian. 6 It is worth bearing in mind, however, that Bach’s apparent source for Vivaldi’s Op. 3 concertos, Prince Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar, was closely associated with Telemann. Six of the prince’s concertos were posthumously published by Telemann as the Six concerts à violon concertant (Frankfurt, 1718), and Telemann dedicated his Six sonates à violon seul (Frankfurt, 1715) to Johann Ernst. In later years, Telemann seems to have performed Vivaldi’s concerto Op. 7 no. 2, which is included in a list of “concertos that may be performed” between the three acts of his 1725 comic intermezzi, Pimpinone oder Die ungleiche Heirat, TVWV 21:15. The manuscript copy of the intermezzi that includes this list is dated by Joachim Jaenecke to c. 1725, but Mary Adelaide Peckham suggests that the copyist may have prepared his score from the 1728 edition of Pimpinone for the intermezzi’s 1730 revival. See Georg Philipp Telemann: Autographe und Abschriften, ed. Joachim Jaenecke, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz: Kataloge der Musikabteilung, series 1, vol. 7, Munich, Henle, 1993, p. 280; and MARY A. PECKHAM, The Operas of Georg Philipp Telemann, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1972, pp. 123-124. For a transcription of the list, see Telemann, Pimpinone oder Die ungleiche Heirat: Ein lustiges Zwischenspiel, ed. Thomas W. Werner, Das Erbe deutscher Musik, vol. 6, Mainz, B. Schott’s Söhne, 1936, pp. 101-102.

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dozens of Vivaldi-inspired movements by Telemann. Rather, I wish to focus on a few cases that I believe help demonstrate the depth of Vivaldi’s influence on Telemann’s musical imagination. Rebecca Kan has coined the term “concerto adagio form” to refer to a condensed version of the ritornello structure associated with concerto allegros.7 One manifestation of this form is the slow movement in which a central solo episode is framed by brief ritornellos, a type common in Vivaldi’s Op. 3 and, perhaps not coincidentally, in the concertos of J. S. Bach. Bach’s movements favor symmetrical ritornello frames, arioso style in a long central episode, and accompanying ostinatos. As indicated in Table 1, the concerto adagio with ritornello frame is also a movement type cultivated by Telemann with some frequency.8 His examples appear in both concertos and sonatas, the latter suggesting a particular fascination with the type during the late 1720s and 1730s (note the publication dates in the “comments” column). To judge from works in the table left unpublished by Telemann, such movements began to appear in his music around 1715. A preference for two or three soloists in the central episode is evident from the small number of solo sonatas and concertos, though the Gruppenkonzerte TWV 53:D5 and 54:D2 feature only a violin soloist in their middle movements. Only one work, the double concerto for recorder and flute, TWV 52:e1, includes two ritornello-frame movements. But its opening Largo is not in the expected arioso style; instead, the soloists’ restless figuration and the strings’ slow-moving harmonic support lend the movement an unsettled, prelude-like feeling. This is also the only example known to me of a ritornello-frame movement occurring at the beginning of a concerto or sonata. More conventional is the concerto’s second Largo, excerpted in Example 1. Here the unusually brief ritornello frame is provided by just the strings, which delicately accompany the ensuing ‘vocal’ duet for recorder and flute with pizzicato chords. Also worth singling out is the central Adagio of the Concerto for violin, trumpet, and cello, TWV 53:D5, where an accompanied recitative passage for the violin soloist precedes a brief unison ritornello that introduces the aria-like main section with what will become an accompanying ostinato figure. Thus, as in several others of his concertos and sonatas, Telemann conceives the movement as an instrumental recitative-aria pair. Perhaps a desire for dramatic verisimilitude explains why the ‘aria’ ends with just a brief recollection of the opening ritornello. The concerto adagio movements in Telemann’s sonatas are in some ways more interesting than those in his concertos. That the allusion is in fact to the concerto – and perhaps ultimately to the aria – is clear enough, not least because half of the movements in question abut one or more in concerto allegro 7 REBECCA KAN, Vivaldi, Bach and Their Concerto Slow Movements, in Irish Musical Studies 8: Bach Studies from Dublin, eds Anne Leahy and Yo Tomita, Dublin, Four Courts, 2004, pp. 65-91. 8 See the brief discussion in PIPPA DRUMMOND, The German Concerto, cit., p. 210.

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form. One therefore has a stronger sense of these works as Sonaten auf Concertenart, to use a term invented by Telemann’s Hamburg colleague Johann Adolf Scheibe.9 In part to compensate for the absence of an accompanying string body, Telemann typically sets off the framing ritornello from the central section through tonal disjunction, textural contrast, and, in the Trio for oboe, violin and continuo, TWV 42:g5, by tempo change. Note in Example 2 that the ritornello ends on the dominant of G minor, but that the central episode is in B flat; note as well that the ritornello is to be played slightly faster than the episode. Michael Talbot and Bella Brover-Lubovsky have called attention to the frequency in Vivaldi’s music of temporary modal shifts to the parallel minor. Such gestures often take the form of major-minor echoes of material or, especially in concerto and aria ritornellos, of temporary minor-mode enclaves preceding a principal or terminal cadence. In many cases, tension is generated not only harmonically, but also through a reduction in dynamic level and a change in texture, often involving the use of a bassetto.10 Telemann may have first employed this gesture in a C major violin concerto introducing his 1724 pastoral opera Der neumodische Liebhaber Damon, TVWV 21:8.11 But by far his most interesting use of the minor-mode enclave occurs in the opening Allegro of the Concerto for three violins, TWV 53:F1. Brover-Lubovsky has already pointed to this work as an example of an Italian – and particularly Vivaldian – device transferred north of the Alps. Now, the first-movement ritornello, given in Example 3, does not sound especially Vivaldian; its initial segment reminds one more of the opening phrase of Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. Yet the ritornello does exhibit a classic tripartite organization in which the final segment is interrupted by a turn to the parallel minor, effected by the three soloists above a bassetto accompaniment. As Table 2 shows, this brief interlude (labeled with an “I” in the “ritornello material” column) returns not in a subsequent ritornello, as one might expect, but during the third solo episode. Even more strikingly, it seems to inform the tonal plan of the entire movement, for as a quick glance at the table reveals, most of this F-major movement explores minor tonalities. In fact, aside from the opening and concluding ritornellos, only a relative handful of measures is in the major mode; even the first solo episode turns to G minor after a few measures. To my knowledge, no other concerto movement by Telemann features this kind of tonal ‘composing out.’ Brover-Lubovsky points to several major-mode concerto movements by Vivaldi in which an entire solo episode in the tonic minor precedes a closing 9 JOHANN ADOLF SCHEIBE, Critischer Musikus, Leipzig, Breitkopf, 1745; repr. Hildesheim and New York, Georg Olms, 1970, pp. 675-678. 10 MICHAEL TALBOT, Modal Shifts in the Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, “Chigiana”, 40, 1985, p. 33; BELLA BROVER-LUBOVSKY, ‘Die schwarze Gredel,’ or the Parallel Minor Key in Vivaldi’s Instrumental Music, “Studi vivaldiani”, 3, 2003, pp. 108-109. 11 It is possible that the concerto was also performed at the opera’s 1719 Leipzig premiere (as Die Satyren in Arcadien).

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ritornello containing a tonic minor phrase, and to other movements featuring more extended sections in the tonic minor.12 Given that some of these movements occur in Vivaldi’s latest published works, it seems possible that Telemann’s extreme ‘minorization’ of his movement (published in 1733) was a conscious response to this type of tonal planning. The intensity arising from the odd modal trajectory of Telemann’s allegro carries over to the concerto’s middle movement, another adagio with a ritornello frame. As shown in Example 4, the ritornello features canonic imitation and suspension chains between the soloists, who are accompanied by an ostinato broken up between the ripieno violin and viola parts. As in so many of Telemann’s ostinato-based slow movements, the repeated figure migrates to one of the solo parts as the ritornello concludes. The following episode allows the soloists to shine in turn, and much of the action happens with only bassetto support. Predictably, the third movement is lighter than the first two. But its fugal ritornello adds a kind of contrapuntal intensity that has so far been lacking in the piece. Viewed as a whole, this concerto seems consciously designed as a meditation on the Vivaldian style – its somewhat retrospective musical language all the more striking in comparison to the high galant mode of the triple concerto for flute, violin, and cello, TWV 53:A2, that Telemann published alongside it in his Musique de table. There are no encroachments of the French and Polish styles upon the Italian, relatively few markers of the galant idiom, limited integration of tutti and solo material, and an avoidance of the four-movement plan so favored by Telemann. One might accuse the composer of pandering to the European-wide taste for Vivaldi’s concertos, especially as the Musique de table was heavily marketed in Vivaldi-crazed Paris during the early 1730s. But I prefer to see the concerto as more of a personal omaggio a Vivaldi, as an acknowledgement of Telemann’s considerable musical debt to the Venetian composer. Let us conclude with what might be considered a humorous take on one aspect of Vivaldian style, namely, the soloistic interruption of a ritornello late in a concerto allegro. In the second movement of the Concerto for flute, oboe d’amore, and viola d’amore, TWV 53:E1, a mature work probably composed during the 1730s, Telemann wittily allows the soloists to extend their third and final episode by continually interrupting what purports to be the concluding, tonic ritornello. Here he exploits the modular organization of his Vivaldian ritornello, for each brief phrase is separated by soloistic interjections.13 The joke’s BELLA BROVER-LUBOVSKY, ’Die schwarze Gredel’, cit., pp. 110 and 115. HANS ENGEL, The Concerto Grosso, trans. Robert Kolben, Cologne, A. Volk; New York, Leeds Music, 1963, p. 42, also saw the humor in this formal operation: “Telemann resorts to the most amusing method of of splitting up the opening tutti into seven fragments that return as later tutti – looking at it the other way around, the later tutti, when put together, are a repetition of the first tutti, except of course they were meanwhile interrupted by the soli between them”. 12 13

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punchline comes when the twenty-eight-measure ritornello (given in Example 5), now doubled in length owing to the soloists’ interruptions, at last manages to reach its concluding phrase – only to have its terminal cadence denied by the soloists at the last second. Undeterred, the ritornello backs up a few measures for another, successful, run at the cadence. After the soloists get in their final word, the tonic ritornello is at last heard in its uninterrupted entirety. In setting up a dramatic opposition between the ritornello, which struggles mightily to end the movement, and the soloists, who attempt to thwart it, Telemann burlesques a formal device inherited by him from Vivaldi and other Italian composers. As this brief survey of selected movements has shown, Vivaldi’s concerto style did not merely inspire Telemann to ‘think musically.’ Movement types or formal devices such as the concerto adagio with ritornello frame, minor-mode enclave, and interrupted ritornello also helped him to think dramatically by nourishing his gifts as a musical storyteller. And it is this aspect of Telemann’s Vivaldi reception, as much as any other, that makes his music “inconceivable” (to quote Ahnsehl) without the Venetian composer’s influence.

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Table 1. Telemann’s Concerto Adagios with Ritornello Frame TWV

40:106/iii 41:g7/iii 42:D5/iii 42:D6/iii 42:d5/iii 42:E6/ii 42:e3/ii 42:G6/ii 42:g5/iii 42:A3/iii 43:A1/iii 51:D5/iii 51:G4/ii 51:A2/iii 52:C1/iii 52:e1/i, iii 52:F1/iii 53:D5/ii 53:F1/ii 54:D2/ii 54:Es1/iii

Scoring (with continuo)

Duet for two unaccompanied flutes Solo for flute or violin Trio for two flutes Trio for flute and obbligato harpsichord Trio for two flutes or violins Trio for violin and viola da gamba Trio for flute and obbligato harpsichord Trio for viola da gamba and obbligato harpsichord Trio for oboe and violin Trio for flute and obbligato harpsichord Quartet for flute, violin, and viola da gamba or cello Concerto for oboe and strings Concerto for violin and strings Concerto for oboe d’amore and strings Concerto for two chalumeaux and strings Concerto for flute, recorder, and strings Concerto for recorder, bassoon, and strings Concerto for violin, trumpet, cello, and strings Concerto for three violins and strings Concerto for three horns, violin, and strings Concerto for two horns, two violins, and strings

Table 2. Structure of TWV 53:F1/i Measures: Ritornello/Solo: Key: Ritornello Material: Measures: Ritornello/Solo: Key: Ritornello Material:

1-16 R1 I V, F, I, E 73-81 R4 V V, F

16-30 S1 —ii 81-95 S4 ––V/vi

30-33 R2 ii V

95-100 R5 vi E´

Comments

Sonates sans basse (1727) XII Solos (1734) Musique de table (1733) Six concerts (1734) Sonates en trio (1738-42)

Six concerts (1734) Essercizii musici (c. 1728) Essercizii musici (c. 1728) Six concerts (1734) Quadri (1730) doubtful

Musique de table (1733) Musique de table (1733)

33-47 S2 —iii 100-118 S5 ––I

47-50 R3 —iii V

118-132 R6 I V, F, E, E´

50-73 S3 —V I

Ritornello material: V = Vordersatz, F = Fortspinnung, E = Epilog, I = (Solo) Interlude

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Example 1. Telemann, Concerto for recorder, flute, and strings, TWV 52:e1/iii.

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Example 2. Telemann, Trio for oboe, violin, and continuo, TWV 42:g5/iii.

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Example 3. Telemann, Concerto for three violins and strings, 53:F1/ii. Reproduced from Georg Philipp Telemann, Musique de table, ed. Max Seiffert, Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst, vols 61-62, Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1927.

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Example 4. Telemann, Concerto for three violins and strings, 53:F1/iii. Reproduced from Georg Philipp Telemann, Musique de table, ed. Max Seiffert, Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst, vols 61-62, Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1927.

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Example 5. Telemann, Concerto for flute, oboe d’amore, viola d’amore, and strings, TWV 53:E1/ii.

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