56 Fall 2010 Early Music America

The Cambridge History ofEighteenth-Century Music.Simon P. Keefe, editor. 816 pages.Cambridge University Press, 2009.Reviewed by Mark Kroll.

This remarkable book, written byan impressive array of establishedand younger scholars, represents amajor contribution to our under-standing and appreciation of the18th century. Covering more than100 years of music in ContinentalEurope, Britain, America, and eventhe South American colonies ofSpain and Portugal, it is a must-havefor any early music library.

The book is divided into threelarge parts (“Church,” “Theatre,”and “Salon and Concert Room”) andconsists of 24 chapters on just abouteverything you would want to knowabout this era. Three appendices(“Chronology,” “Institutions in majorEuropean cities,” and “Personalia”),a “Prelude” (“The musical map ofEurope c. 1700”), a “Postlude”(“Across the divide: currents of musi-cal thought in Europe, c. 1790-1810”), and two delightful andinstructive “Interludes” (“Listening,thinking and writing” and “Perfor-mance in the eighteenth century”)round out the volume.

One of the work’s mostadmirable features is its organiza-tion, a major challenge in a study ofthis magnitude. W ith so many dif-ferent threads, styles, and genres tobe traced and discussed, the bookcould have easily become a disjoint-ed series of individual articles onlymarginally connected to each otherand to the subject. Editor SimonKeefe avoids this pitfall at every turnand miraculously succeeds in main-taining a sense of unity and coher-ence throughout. He does so, as hetells us in the preface, “by eschew-ing a chronological approach….[W]e organize our volume bygenre…[, and] as a counterbal-ance—and potential respite forthose reading cover to cover—weinclude ‘interludes’ on topics rele-vant to all genres…as well as a ‘pre-lude’ and ‘postlude.’” A ll of thisworks perfectly, and the decision touse footnotes makes the work evenmore user-friendly. I am sure I amnot the only reader who dislikes flip-ping continually between the middle

and back of a book to find a citationin an endnote. In fact, I w ish myown books had adopted this for-mat!

Now comes the reviewer’s chal-lenge: to evaluate an 800-pagebook in 800 words. Since it is virtu-ally impossible to describe the con-tents of each chapter in detail, oreven to list the names of all theauthors w ithout running out ofspace, I w ill single out a few repre-sentative contributions to whet yourappetite for more.

Good things can be found in theopening pages: in the “Prelude” weread about “the eighteenth-centurypreoccupation w ith national style.”Most people know that this was a

style-conscious period, and authorStephen Rose provides several color-ful quotes to underscore this fact,including several attributing nationalstyles to the flora, fauna, and cli-mate of a country (this was, ofcourse, before global warming).Charles Burney, for example,believed that “Music, indeed likevegetation, flourishes differently indifferent climates,” and AthanasiusKircher in Germany was of a similaropinion: “the Germans for the mostpart are born under a frozen sky andacquire a temperament that is seri-ous, strong, constant, solid and toil-some, to which qualities their musicconforms.”

We are also reminded that the18th century was not only a style-conscious era, but an historical andliterary one as well. Thus we readlater in this book that “The first his-tories of music originated in theeighteenth century, reflecting a newinterest in music of the past,” andthat many of the famous musicaldebates (such as the Querelle desBouffons) were led not by musicians

but “by men of letters…who wereoften involved in spoken theatre.”

The section on performancepractice was, not surprisingly, ofparticular interest to this reviewer,and I was pleased to see that thefocus here is placed on the conceptof music “being spoken”; that is, onthe importance of using rhetoric andrhetorical gesture when performingthis repertoire (or the music of anyera, I should add). Embellishment—or as the author puts it, “Goingbeyond the text”—is also discussedw ith clarity. We read, for example,that “Corelli’s music” was “not con-ceptual…. [I]t lived in sound, in per-formance.” Any questions?

A ll good things must come to anend, and so does the 18th century(and this book). The final chapterexamines the major changes in stylesand tastes that occurred as the“ long” 18th century morphed intothe 19th. The author here takes aninteresting approach, comparing thelength of the “Mozart” entry in twoeditions of Ernst Ludw ig Gerber’sHistorisch-biographisches Lexiconder Tonkünstler, the first publishedbetween 1790 and 1792, the sec-ond between 1812 and 1814. In theearlier edition, the article on Mozart“ is roughly comparable to those onPasquale Anfossi, W ilhelm Friede-mann Bach, Carlo Broschi, LeopoldKozeluch…and significantly shorterthan those on the likes of JohannAndré,…Reinhard Keiser,…G.E.Nauert” and a host of other com-posers. By 1812, however, “atalmost twenty-four columns”Mozart’s “new entry marks a thir-teen-fold increase” in length. Well,he finally got it right!

So does this book. Congratula-tions to Simon Keefe, to all hisauthors, and to Cambridge Universi-ty Press for making this resourceavailable to us.

Mark Kroll recently edited Six Con-certi Grossi by Francesco Scarlattiand Charles Avison’s ConcertoArrangements of Geminiani’s ViolinSonatas, op. 1 for A-R Editions. He iscurrently preparing Geminiani’sSonatas for Violin and Basso Contin-uo, op. 4 for the complete edition ofthe composer’s works.

BOOKreviewsEdited by Mark Kroll

Stephen Rose providesseveral colorful quotes

attributing nationalstyles to the flora,

fauna, and climate of acountry (this was, of course, before global warming).

Continued on page 59

Early Music America Fall 2010 57

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Amanda Forsythe, NiobePhilippe Jaroussky, Anfione

Laura Pudwell, DidoDouglas Williams, Aeneas

November 27–28, 2010New England Conservatory’sJordan Hall, Boston

June 12–19, 2011Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston

June 24–25, 2011Mahaiwe Theatre, The Berkshires

58 Fall 2010 Early Music America

www.handelandhaydn.org | 617 266 3605

Highlights include:

Beethoven by Levin, Haydn by Labadie

Handel’s Messiah

Handel’s Israel in Egypt

Harry’s Vocal Voyage, celebrating Tomás Luis de Victoria

Mozart’s Requiem

Prepares for its 2015 Bicentennial

– Featuring works the Society originally premiered in Boston and the U.S.

Refreshingly Period

www.baroqueband.orgChicago’s period-instrument orchestra

Early Music America Fall 2010 59

Beethoven aus der Sichtseiner Zeitgenossen. KlausMartin Kopitz and Rainer Caden-bach, editors. 1187 pages (2 vol-umes, slipcased). G. Henle Verlag,2009. Reviewed by Lew is Lockwood.

This beautifully produced bookin two volumes is the largest andmost authoritative collection of con-temporary impressions of Beethoventhat has ever been published. ManyBeethoven enthusiasts know the lit-tle volume brought out years ago bythe estimable O.G. Sonneck(Beethoven: Impressions by His Con-temporaries, 1926, 1964, Doverreprint 1967). By comparison thisnew compilation, mostly in Germanbut w ith all material in original lan-guages, including English andFrench, is six times the size of Son-neck’s little book. It has been mas-terfully edited by Klaus Martin Kopitzand the late Rainer Cadenbach, w ithhelp from O livier Korte and NancyTanneberger. Its scope is as w ide asthe world of Beethoven’s acquain-tances, from Adamberger toZmeskall, and includes their letters,memoirs, poems, descriptions, andall manner of personal accounts ofBeethoven the man.

To give a sample, Julius Benedict(1804-1885), a pupil of Hummeland of Weber, told Thayer in 1861that one day in 1823 he hadencountered in a music shop “astout, short man w ith a very redface, small, piercing eyes, and bushyeyebrows, dressed in a very longovercoat which reached nearly to hisankles.” Introduced to Beethoventhe follow ing week in the same shopand then meeting him later, Bene-dict remembers Beethoven’s interestin current opera performances, hisopinion that “Germans cannot writea good libretto” and much more,including Benedict’s description ofthe Schuppanzigh Quartet’s inabilityto make sense of Opus 127 whenthey gave its premiere in 1825.

Another sample is provided bythe English composer Cipriani Potter(1792-1871), who met Beethoven in1818 and wrote his memoirs in1836, nine years after Beethoven’sdeath. Potter’s account is more sub-stantive than anecdotal and hedwells at some length onBeethoven’s works and styles. Buthis poignant description of the wayin which Beethoven’s piano playing

was affected by his deafness isenlightening, and another piece oftestimony that he gave to Thayer in1861 gives us vivid evidence ofBeethoven’s opinions of composersand pianists, including Mozart, Han-del, Cherubini, Moscheles, andCramer. When Potter told Beethoventhat his Septet had made a powerfulimpression on him, Beethovenreplied that when he wrote it he didnot know how to compose, but thatnow [in 1818] he did. “I am writingsomething better now.” It was the“Hammerklavier” Sonata.

Careful editing amplifies, andhere and there corrects, statementsby these contemporaries. Thus,when the notorious Anton Schindlerwrites in a letter of 1839 to JuliusRietz, a conductor in Dusseldorf,that, to his horror, Ferdinand Rieshad performed the “Eroica” w ith anorchestra of 135 members, of whom41 were w ind-players, Schindler tellsRietz that if Beethoven had knownabout such a thing he would have“killed him.” Schindler claims that“Beethoven never wanted his sym-phonies to be played by an orchestralarger than 60, because he did notwant to write very loud music, andsaid that a large orchestra could notproduce the many and frequentlychanging nuances that he wanted.”But Kopitz points out that inBeethoven’s “Tagebuch” (his person-al diary) of 1812-1818, he writes,“At my last concert in the Redouten-saal [in 1814] there were 18 firstviolins, 18 second violins, 14 violas,12 violoncellos, 7 contrabasses, and2 contrabassoons.” Admittedly, the1814 orchestra size was apparentlymuch larger than usual, but it showsthat on some occasions very largeforces were used, and modern ideasof fidelity to historical conditionsneed to take into account that theseconditions could vary considerably incertain times and places.

Elsewhere in these volumes wefind several accounts of Rossini’stwo visits to Beethoven in 1822,including one by Ferdinand Hillerand a long one that purports torecord a conversation betweenRossini and Wagner, when they metin Paris in 1860. Rossini says that in1822 he heard the “Eroica” for thefirst time, was “staggered” by it, andresolved to meet Beethoven. Doingso, he was glad to find that

Beethoven admired The Barber ofSeville, but there is much more toread and ponder in their exchanges,including Beethoven’s allegedremark that while Italians excelled inopera buffa, opera seria was nottheir strong suit because “you donot have enough musical know l-edge....” Remarks like this are notentirely surprising, coming fromBeethoven in his last years, and thevarious accounts brought togetherin this book help us to see them inperspective.

These samples can be multiplieda hundred-fold throughout thebook, and each commentator w illhave to be read w ith a critical senseof who he or she was and what thewriter’s viewpoint may have been,both musically and personally. Buteveryone interested in Beethovenw ill be grateful to Klaus MartinKopitz for providing us w ith thisenormous compilation, carefullyedited and annotated, which w ill be a standard work for many yearsto come.

Lew is Lockwood is an emeritus pro-fessor of music at Harvard University.His fields of study in musicologyhave been primarily the Italian Ren-aissance and the music and life ofBeethoven.

Unaccompanied Bach: Performing the Solo Works.David Ledbetter. 288 pages. YaleUniversity Press, 2009. Reviewed byRaymond Erickson.

This is a book to be studied, notsimply read, and the last four chap-ters, which deal w ith the unaccom-panied works for violin, cello, flute,and lute, require scores at hand tofollow the analyses. Thus, the vol-ume is not really for the generalreader, but for the early music per-former and scholar grounded in har-

mony and counterpoint. A reader soequipped w ill, however, learn agreat deal.

The focus is mainly on Bach’sstrategies of composition: large- andsmall-scale thematic and harmonicorganization w ithin a movement;thematic and other relationshipsbetween movements of multi-move-ment compositions; parallels w ithother composers and works; aspectsof French and Italian style that arecombined to make the “mixed style”that was recognized as distinctlyGerman.

Chapter One, “German Tradi-tions of Solo Violin Music,” providesa rich account of Italian and Germanviolin traditions from the early 17thcentury to Bach. Composers andmusic unmentioned in most discus-sions of this topic are cited. In simi-lar detail Ledbetter treats the cello(including its relationship to the bassviol) and the lute tradition—this lasta particular strength of the authorand of this book. The 174 endnotesfor this chapter demonstrate thatLedbetter has certainly done hishomework.

Chapter Two, “Concepts of Styleand Structure,” defines the princi-ples underlying Ledbetter’s subse-quent analyses of Bach’s unaccom-panied works. His statement that“the infection of the dance by thesonata is largely the story of theinstrumental suite between 1680and 1720” adumbrates one of themain arguments underlying hisanalyses. Moreover, he identifies cer-tain structural templates—both the-matic and harmonic—that under-gird much of Bach’s unaccompaniedmusic.

Particularly valuable in the analy-ses of the individual works are thefigured bass abstracts given formany movements. This is not a newidea, but it is gratifying to see thisdevice used to such good advan-tage. For example, comparing theabstracts for the A llemanda andCorrente of the D minor Partita(Bach’s term) for Violin, one easilysees the use of C! and B" in the bassof the first few bars of these move-ments (and of the Sarabanda,too)—which explains the unortho-dox (if embellished) tetrachordD–C!–B–B"–A used at the beginningof the Ciaccona (Bach’s term), ahugely important point Ledbettermakes very casually. He also gives 26versions of the bass formula, someof which he relates to the bestknown 17th-century Italian ciacconapattern. However, I find these con-nections too tenuous and instead

BOOKreviews

60 Fall 2010 Early Music America

regard all the bass formulas astransformations of the descendingtetrachord characteristic of theFrench theatrical passacaille, theform and mode of which Bach’swork best approximates. This is notto ignore the fact that Bach’s Ciac-cona, in its textural features, drawssubstantially on Italian and Germantraditions, producing a true monu-ment in the German “mixed style.”(Those w ishing to pursue this fur-ther are referred to my article“Toward a 21st-Century Interpreta-tion of Bach’s Ciaccona for SoloViolin, BWV 1004/5,” whichappeared in the Newsletter of theAmerican Bach Society in Spring2003, especially since it is notincluded in Ledbetter’s extensivebibliography).

But what about “Performing theUnaccompanied Works”? Here thebook fails to live up to its subtitle.Ledbetter never lays down generalguidelines of Baroque performancepractice and how they differ frommodern conventions. He does dis-cuss notes inégales and highlightspoints of particular expressivepotential; for example, his continuoabstract for the A llemande of theflute suite beautifully elucidates theaccelerating harmonic rhythms thatcould influence a performer’s articu-lation and phrasing. But there is nosystematic treatment of meter signa-tures (which have implications fortempo and affect), and there areonly occasional suggestions (properto a specific piece) having to do w ithbow ing, tonguing, other aspects ofarticulation, vibrato, and the like. Heseems unaware that the minuetdance step unit was six beats, whichimplies a lesser stress on the down-beat of even-numbered measures,and the Index contains no entries for“articulation,” “bow ing,” “meter,”“tempo,” “tonguing,” movementheadings such as “Adagio,” or indi-vidual dance types, although “vibra-to” is listed.

These issues are importantbecause enough has been learnedabout Baroque performance prac-tices to justify a fundamentalrethinking by performers of Bach’sunaccompanied works, which aremore burdened by 20th-century per-forming traditions than other reper-tory. Recent recordings testify thateven period instrument players arestill bound to many of these conven-

tions.Because Ledbetter does not chal-

lenge these performance traditionsdirectly, the book on “Playing theUnaccompanied Works of Bach” inthe light of modern performancepractice scholarship, remains to bewritten. Nonetheless, he has givenus myriad penetrating insights intothis very important repertory andinto Bach’s compositional process.

Raymond Erickson, editor of TheWorlds of Johann Sebastian Bach(Amadeus Press, 2009), has taughthistorical performance practice for35 years at Queens College and theCUNY Graduate School ; he is direc-tor of “Performing Bach in Style,” aworkshop for players of moderninstruments to be held in June 2011.

Aspects of the Secular Can-tata in Late Baroque Italy.M ichael Talbot, editor. 452 pages.Ashgate, 2009. Reviewed by MariaAnne Purciello.

It has long been an idiosyncrasyof contemporary scholarship thatthe solo cantata—one of the domi-nant vocal genres of the Baroqueperiod—should be so largely neg-lected. When viewed in light of theconsiderable number of soundrecordings of this repertory, the ever-w idening gap between performanceand scholarship becomes even moresurprising. M ichael Talbot’s volumeof collected essays, Aspects of theSecular Cantata in Late BaroqueItaly, takes an important first step inbeginning to redress this imbalance.

Focusing on the solo cantata, asconceived by Italian-born composersworking between 1650 and 1750,

BOOKreviews

Early Music America Fall 2010 61

Lazar’s Early Music

International SeriesJaap ter Linden - Monteverdi Vespers - Paolo Pandolfo

St. John Passion - Anonymous 4

Seattle Baroque OrchestraPergolesi: Stabat Mater - Bach & Friends - Vivaldi Folia

Handel's Grand Concertos - Sound the Trumpet

Baroque OperaA Day on the Town, A Night in Hell

Vecchi: L'Amfiparnaso and Monteverdi: Il ballo delle ingrate

Special PerformancePlaine & Easie

the essays in this volume offer some-thing for everyone, whether thereader is new to the genre, a sea-soned performer, or a veteran histo-rian. Essays range from general con-siderations of the cantata and itsincorporation of dramatic elements,to specialized source studies. For thegeneralist, several chapters addressworks by “canonized” composers,exploring topics such as changingaesthetics and poetics in Scarlatti’smusic and Stradella’s subjectiveapproach to poetrywhen setting ariososections. Those whow ish to delve deepermight turn to theessays on Bononcini’sreception history, thepublished cantatarepertory in Veniceand Bologna, Leonar-do Vinci’s “Neapoli-tan” cantatas, or sty-listic distinctions inBenedetto Marcello’scantatas. Theoristsw ill enjoy the chapter on functionaland expressive qualities of harmonicmovement in recitative, while per-formers and recording connoisseursalike w ill delight in essays addressingspecific issues in performance practice.

While all of the essays offerimportant contributions to ourunderstanding of the genre, twoessays in particular stand apart fortheir originality and their potentiallong-term effect on performanceand scholarship. The first of these,by Graham Sadler, provides a freshnew look at orchestration in theearly 18th-century cantate françoise.A lthough an essay focusing on theFrench cantata might seem out ofplace in a collection professing toaddress the cantata in late BaroqueItaly, Sadler provides the necessarylink to the Italian repertory by com-paring the French cantata w ith itsItalian predecessor before embark-ing on an extraordinary reassess-ment of our expectations for thegenre. Examining the French ten-dency to use reduced scores, Sadleroverturns the assumption that theFrench cantata soloist was tradition-ally accompanied by relatively barecontinuo scoring, concluding that,unlike its Italian counterpart, thecantate françoise often featured afull orchestral texture. Such a revisedunderstanding of the instrumenta-tion used in this repertory signifi-cantly expands our modern-day con-cept of the Baroque instrumentalpalette, calls for a broader range of

color and sonority in contemporaryperformances of the genre, andchallenges the generic classificationstraditionally ascribed to the cantata.

Similarly, Roger-Claude Travers’essay introduces a relatively newperspective on the role that therecording industry played in therevival of early music in the 20thcentury. In an era when the ever-increasing number of early musicsound recordings seems to existindependently from the level of

scholarly interest,not enough atten-tion has been paid tothe ways in whichthese two seeminglyunrelated fields actu-ally influence eachother. By focusing onthe history of theBaroque chambercantata recordings,Travers is able toidentify three periodsin the revival of thegenre that, in retro-

spect, parallel the advances in theway that contemporary audiencesand scholars have come to under-stand early music repertory in gener-al. In so doing, he reveals an inti-mate relationship between perform-ance, the music industry, andscholarship and the way that eachacts to spur the others forward.

When taken together, the essaysin Aspects of the Secular Cantata inLate Baroque Italy provide a fairlycomprehensive overview of the cur-rent state of scholarship on thechamber cantata, highlighting thosetopics that have received scholarlynotice and calling attention (byvirtue of its omissions) to thoseareas deserving further exploration.One avenue for future studyrevealed by the present volume is astudy of cantatas written by femalecomposers during this period. Whileseveral articles in the collection makereference to contributions to thegenre made by Barbara Strozzi andElisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, thepresent volume lacks a detailedexploration of the cantata as con-ceived by either of these composersor their female contemporaries andthus leaves the door open, invitingscholars to pick up where the cur-rent contributors have left off.

Maria Anne Purciello is a member ofthe music history faculty at WestChester University’s School of Music.Her research focuses on questions ofgenre and the role of comedy inBaroque vocal and dramatic music.

Performers and recording

connoisseurs alikewill delight in

essays addressingspecific issues in

performance practice.