Suite en D La Ré, Tierce Majeure   listen                                                                                  Michel de la Barre
                    from Pieces pour la Flute Traversiere, Ouevre Quatrième, 1702                                                    (1680-1743)

                          Prélude, Gravement
                         Allemande, l’Angeliqu
                         Air, le Badin
                         Air, L’Espagnol
                         Gavotte, la Chevry
                         Gigue, L’Angloise

                 from Airs et Brunettes… Ornez d’Agremens par Mr. Hotteterre le Romain, ca. 1723   listen

                        Pourquoy doux Rossignol                                                                                                  Air de Mr. de Bousset
                        Lieus Charmantes                                                                                                              Air de Mr. Desmarets
                        Brunette, L’Autre jour ma Cloris                                                                                               [Anonymous]

                Troisième Suite en G Ré Sol, tierce mineure    listen                                                                Joseph Bodin de Boismortier
                from Six Suites de Pièces, Op. 35, 1731                                                                                         (1689-1755)

                         Prélude, Lentement
                         Courante
                         Sarabande
                         Gavotte

                Suite in G-Major, BWV 1007      listen                                                                                   Johann Sebastian Bach
                                                                                                                                                                        (1685-1750)
                         Prelude
                         Allemande
                         Courante
                         Sarabande
                         Menuets I & II
                         Gigue

                 Sonata in a-minor, H. 562        listen                                                                                       Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
                 From Musicalisches Mancherley, 1763                                                                                              (1714-1788)

                         Poco adagio
                         Allegro
                         Allegro
 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the baroque transverse flute was still a relatively new instrument. The flute had, of course, existed for centuries, but in a much simpler cylindrical form that was best suited to playing in a just few of the ancient modes. By the second half of the seventeenth century the need for a new type of flute was met with the development of an instrument with an inverse conical bore and a single key. This still seemingly simple instrument had several advantages over its precursor in playing the music then current. It was capable of playing more powerfully and in tune in its lowest octave, and could be played in any key. Nineteen different keys are used by Hotteterre in his Op.VII L’Art de Preluder sur la Flûte Traversière, 1719; pieces in eighteen keys are used by Boismortier in his Op. 22 Diverses Pieces pour une Flûte-Traversiere seule, 1728. Although much of the published solo literature stays in a relatively limited number of keys (this may reflect, in part, the desire of publishers to sell music that was accessible to amateurs) the use of a broad range of key signatures was not limited to didactic works. Telemann’s ca. 1730 cycle of fantasias for solo flute uses twelve keys. Martin Blockwitz’ Sechtzig Arien (undated, but probably early 1720’s) uses fifteen keys and is described on the title page as being for violin or oboe but ‘especially for the flute traversiere.’  And, finally, Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773) in his Versuch, 1752, probably the best-known treatise on flute-playing of all time, urges beginning players to practice playing in all the keys while they are all still difficult, so as to avoid over-familiarity with “easier” keys at the expense of fluency in “harder” ones.

The first piece on tonight’s program is the opening work in the first-ever publication for solo flute and continuo. Michel de la Barre was the pre-eminent flutist of his day, and according to the preface to this work, he decided to publish these pieces in part to counter the faulty transcriptions of them in circulation as manuscripts. He mentions that there are several special, new features to these pieces, including use of notes in the third octave and the low c-sharp (a semitone below the lowest natural note of the instrument), and says that anyone who wishes to know more about the techniques for producing these notes and playing the pieces may stop by his house for a free lesson (imagine, say, James Galway making such an offer today!). Even though his fame rested in part on his way of playing the airs tendres which had made up the flute’s solo repertoire in the late seventeenth century, de la Barre here promoted a new style that was a bit more “instrumental” than “vocal.” His preface also gives some opinions on performance, suggesting that theorbo (a large lute) goes with flute better (“ils convient mieux”) than the metal-strung harpsichord because of the lute’s softer-sounding gut strings, and states that most of the pieces in this collection may be played unaccompanied. Finally, de a Barre says that his motive for publication is “pour la gloire de ma flûte.”

Although they were published in the 1720’s the three little airs heard next come from the seventeenth-century repertoire of airs de cour and brunettes that made up the original solo repertoire for flute. The first two flute players to hold positions at Court were Philibert Rebillé (fl 1667-1717) and Rene Descoteaux (1645-ca. 1732). Both were singers, and used the solo vocal repertoire as the basis of their flute playing. By the early eighteenth century many of these songs were “standards” for flute players, even though some of them had been composed fifty or more years earlier. Several collections for flute like Hotteterre’s were published through the first half of the eighteenth century, using this repertoire and usually having the text underlaid as a guide to shaping phrasing and articulation. The explicit rationale was that the French style was difficult to learn, even for native French speakers, and that knowing the song would inform the way the tune was played. (Try rephrasing a familiar tune like “Happy Birthday”: we “know” how it goes partly because we know the words.) In addition there was a style of ornamenting these pieces that combined sweeping Italian ornaments with the agrements or little ornaments that are central to the French style, and this, combined with a languishing, sighing tenderness, was the hallmark of French flute-playing at this time. The text of the air de cour was usually pastoral in theme, and there is much rhyming of houlette (shepherd’s crook) and herbette (a lawn or meadow). The brunette is a related type of pastoral verse, the subject of which is a maiden who, as luck would have it, is a brunette.

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was one of the first composers in history to make a living directly from the sale of his compositions without the assistance of a patron. He was prolific, publishing a total of over 100 opus numbers -- as was customary at the time, most of the numerous instrumental works in his ouevre were comprised of six or twelve individual suites or sonatas – and earned a substantial fortune.
 

While any serious exploration of Boismortier’s catalogue reveals that in fact many of his compositions are of outstanding musical quality, he had his critics, who felt that he tended to publish anything he wrote rather than choosing only the best works for publication. To them he replied simply “I’m earning money… ” Many of his compositions used the increasingly popular flute in various inventive combinations. The title page to op. 35 notes that the pieces have been ornamented with all their agremens [sic] and that one may learn them by heart and play them without the bass accompaniment.

The influence of French musicians and especially flute-players on German music making (and to some extent vice-versa) in this period should not be underestimated. The virtuoso Pierre Gabriel Buffardin (ca. 1690-1768) worked at the Dresden Court for thirty-five years and inspired a whole generation of German flutists including Quantz and Blockwitz. Buffardin was also friendly with Johann Sebastian Bach, and it has been suggested that such works as Bach’s a-minor Partita for solo flute (probably a transcription, but very possibly not transcribed by Bach) were inspired by Buffardin’s playing.

J.S. Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello seem most likely to date from around 1720, when he was working in Cöthen. In creating my transcription of BWV 1007 I have followed the manuscript copy in the hand of Anna Magdalena Bach. Works for solo flute from this period use arpeggiation and grace notes spanning wide intervals as a means of more clearly indicating the harmony, and taking that as a precedent I have preserved most of the arpeggiated chords of the original.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was J.S. Bach’s second son, and one of the pre-eminent composers of his generation: in much of Germany for much of his working life, “Bach” would have meant C.P.E., not J.S. Most of his works for the flute were written during his years in the employ of Frederick the Great, the flute-playing Prussian king.  This was not the happiest period of Bach’s life. While he reported with some pride that he had accompanied Frederick in his first flute concert as King, Emanuel’s salary was never commensurate with his position, and he came to be quite sensitive about being overworked and underpaid. In 1767 he took over the post of music-director for the city of Hamburg, a post that had been held for the previous forty-six years by his godfather, Georg Philipp Telemann. In 1783 the blind flutist Friedrich Ludwig Dülon (1769-1826) visited Bach in Hamburg and played the a-minor sonata for him. According to Dülon, Bach commented that it was strange that the one for whom he had written the sonata (the king?) could not play it, while one for whom it was not written, could. Dülon was fourteen years old at the time.

The three flutes used in tonight’s program are based on originals from the eighteenth century. The first, a three-piece instrument, is a copy of the sole surviving flute of Chevalier, a maker who flourished in the decades around 1700. With its small, almost round embouchure hole (the hole into which the player blows to sound the flute), small tone holes, and massive turnings on the joints and end-cap this is a typical early baroque French flute. As is typical of many French flutes of this period, the pitch is a=405.

The second flute is my reconstruction of the only surviving flute of Johann Heinrich Eichentopf (1678-1769), a Leipzig woodwind maker from whom J.S. Bach purchased instruments and with whom Bach apparently collaborated in developing the oboe da caccia. This solid ivory flute was altered, possibly as late as the nineteenth century, in such a way that using “reverse engineering” and the surviving original dimensions, one can make a plausible recreation of the original. In general this flute preserves the proportions of a three-piece flute, and this one may in fact be one of the very earliest examples of the four-piece type. Early eighteenth German chamber pitch was often very low: the flute plays at a=396. Due to modern restrictions on the use of genuine ivory, I have used a synthetic ivory substitute to make this flute and the Chevalier model.

The third instrument is a copy of a boxwood flute by Heinrich Grenser dating from the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Dülon is known to have preferred Grenser’s flutes through much of his career, and probably used such a flute in his performance for C.P.E. Bach in 1783. In keeping with later eighteenth century Classical taste, this flute has a much brighter tone color – its pitch is a=432.
                                                                                                              --Rob Turner