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Presents
Quicksilver
November 7, 2014 (Fri) at 7:30 | St. Paul’s Episcopal Church | Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Robert Mealy & Julie Andrijeski, violins and co-directors
David Morris, cello ♦ Avi Stein, harpsichord ♦ Charles Weaver, theorbo & guitar
Stile Moderno:
New Music from the Seventeenth Century
Sonata undecima ...................................................................................... Dario Castello (fl. early 17c)
from Sonata Concertate in Stil Moderno, Libro II (Venice 1629)
Sonata a tre ................................................................................. Giovanni Paolo Cima (c. 1570-1622)
from Concerti Ecclesiastici (Milan 1610)
Sonata prima ........................................................................................................................... Castello
from Sonata Concertate in Stil Moderno, Libro II (Venice 1629)
L’Aguzzona .................................................................................................Biagio Marini (1595-1663)
from Affetti Musicali (Venice 1617)
Toccata ......................................................................... Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (c.1580-1651)
from Libro IV d’intavolatura di chitarrone (Rome 1640)
Ballo deo Pollicio ................................................................................ Tarquinio Merula (1594-1665)
Ballo detto Eccardo
Ciaconna
from Canzoni ovvero Sonate Concertate, Libro III (Venice 1637)
Sonata decima.......................................................................................................................... Castello
from Sonata Concertate in Stil Moderno, Libro II (Venice 1629)
INTERMISSION
Sonata undecima ..................................................................................................................... Castello
from Sonata Concertate in Stil Moderno, Libro II (Venice 1621)
Sonata ottava ......................................................................... Giovanni Battista Fontana (1589-1630)
from Sonate . . . per il violino (Venice 1641)
Toccata settima .................................................................................. Michelangelo Rossi (1602-1656)
from Toccate e correnti (Rome c. 1630)
Sonata seconda, La Luciminia contenta ................................................. Marco Uccellini (1603-1680)
from Sonate, correnti et arie, Op. 4 (Venice 1645)
L’Eroica, sonata a tre.......................................................................... Andrea Falconieri (c.1585-1656)
from Il primo libro di Canzone, Sinfonie, Fantasie (Naples 1650)
Sonata terza ....................................................................................... Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690)
from La cetra, sonate a 2-4, Libro Terzo Op. 10 (Venice 1673)
Sonata duodecima.................................................................................................................... Castello
from Sonata Concertate in Stil Moderno, Libro II (Venice 1629)
Program Notes for “Stile Moderno”
The turn of the seventeenth century was a transformative moment in our Western cultural history. The world
became modern: new technologies were emerging, a mercantile economy was developing, Galileo was proving
that the earth was not at the center of the universe, people were suddenly aware of larger perspectives and new
ways of regarding our world. Among the cultural revolutions was one in music. Composers consciously began
to create a nuove musiche or stile moderno of dramatic oppositions and vivid emotions, in striking contrast to the
smooth tapestry of Renaissance polyphony. Tonight’s concert is an examination of this new music, and of that
new invention, the sonata: a pure instrumental work, a piece simply meant to be “sounded,” with no agenda
but the imagination of the composer – and no standard formal shape except the passionate give-and-take of
friends in conversation.
Our concert revolves around one composer in particular from this period, a remarkable figure who wrote some
of the most striking flights of seventeenth-century musical imagination. Apart from his music, we know
absolutely nothing about Dario Castello. There are no records that someone with that name even existed in
Venice during the early decades of the century, or that (as he claims on the title pages of his two books of
sonatas) he ever worked at San Marco, although there is a Giovanni Battista Castello who was hired as a piffaro
to the Doge in 1626. Judging by some musical details they share, it’s clear that Monteverdi knew Castello, and
vice versa. All that we know of him today is through his sonatas, which (unusually for the time) were reprinted
– proof that his contemporaries thought they were something very special.
Castello’s highly sectionalized sonatas, with their abrupt transitions, passionate rhetorical declamation, and
quirky dance rhythms, are a high point of the stile moderno. One of the earliest experiments in this style, and
indeed one of the first sonatas to call for specific instruments, is the Sonata a tre by G.P. Cima. This early work
(it was published in 1610) creates a wide spectrum of moods without ever changing its meter; there are no
sectional marks in the piece at all, and yet the punctuation of its musical rhetoric is completely clear.
Although nearly all of Castello’s sonate concertate are for multiple instruments, he does include two seminal solo
sonatas in his second collection. They are printed, unusually, in score in the basso continuo part, to make the
continuo players’ life just a bit easier. Castello himself writes in the preface to this second book of sonatas that
“it might be good to try these sonatas out once or twice before performing them, though nothing is hard to
those who love it.” His Sonata prima from this collection is a good example of his vivid musical imagination.
Its alternation of brilliant passagework with rhapsodic adagios closes with a striking version of his trademark
jagged cadential trill.
The idea that these passionate musical gestures could transform your mood – cause you to laugh, to cry, to be
moved in unsuspected ways – is at the heart of this nuove musiche, and Biagio Marini highlighted this by
calling his collection of sonatas Affetti musicali, or “musical emotions.” His L’Aguzzona is, like the Cima
sonata, all in one meter; but it moves even further afield in its pursuit of dramatic musical gestures and sudden,
agonized shifts of moods.
With the “nobile alemano” Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (originally Johann Hieronymus) we move to
another center of musical innovation in the seventeenth century, the salons and accademie of Rome.
Kapsberger’s father was a noble in the service of the Emperor; thanks to his aristocratic heritage and his
extraordinary talents on the theorbo and lute, the son was able to find many supporters among the powerful
families of Rome. His own accademie at his home in Rome was regarded as among the “wonders of Rome” by
contemporary observers; Athanasius Kircher regarded him as the true heir to Monteverdi. His vocal music
(including the spectacular Apotheosis of Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier) is little performed today, but his
virtuoso music for the theorbo has found an enthusiastic modern audience. Tonight’s toccata is characteristic of
his style with its extreme virtuosity and sudden juxtapositions of contrasting textures, a musical language very
close to that of his colleague Frescobaldi.
Of course, sonatas weren’t the only musical diet of instrumentalists in early 17th-century Italy. Violins were
invented as dance-instruments, the saxophone of their day, and part of a string player’s job was to play for
parties and dances. The splendidly-named Tarquinio Merula, a native of Brescia, wrote especially brilliant
dances, some in the non-specific form of a “ballo,” others using one of the standard Italian dance basses – in
this case, the infectious import from the New World, the sexy early version of the ciaconna.
We follow this with one of Castello’s most outrageous sonatas, the Sonata decima from his second book. This
work actually follows the classical form of an oration, with an introduction, a setting-forth of the terms of the
argument, a discussion of opposing ideas, and a final closing speech. In this case, Castello packs his argument
with especially vivid musical figures, including wild and virtuosic passagework, declamatory solos, and a
sensational close, with a hair-raising final trill in parallel fourths.
Our second half opens with a sonata from Castello’s first collection, a set of works as daring as those in his
second collection but with a more rough-hewn charm. Note especially the exceptionally rhapsodic and brilliant
bass solo in the coda of this sonata.
One of Castello’s colleagues was the great violinist G.B. Fontana, a victim of the plague of the 1630’s whose
sonatas were gathered together after his death in a posthumous collection. His style is striking for its purity and
its seemingly effortless spontaneity of gesture; his meditative Sonata ottava alternates periods of slow, spacious
contemplation with sudden and unexpected bursts of ornamental virtuosity. Interestingly, Castello himself
quotes a good chunk of this sonata in one of his own works — or is it the other way around? In either case, it is
clear that these two composers knew and respected each other’s craft.
We then hear from a few non-Venetians: first a Roman, Michelangelo Rossi. He was known as a brilliant
violinist, but none of his violin music survives. We have only some extravagant toccatas for keyboard. His
Toccata settima uses the full effect of 17c mean-tone tuning, where some keys are heartbreakingly pure and
others are wildly dissonant; it ends in a blur of chromaticism. We then hear a solo sonata by the virtuoso Marco
Uccellini, a Modenese composer who was head of music for the d’Este court. His solo sonatas are adventurous
and imaginative, employing his own characteristic vocabulary of sudden disjunct sequences and highly
expressive blue notes.
Born in Naples, Falconieri received his musical training in Parma and worked at the courts of Mantua (where
he may have known Monteverdi) and Florence. After travels in Spain and France he ended up in Genoa, until
he was censured for "distracting the nuns with music." He eventually returned to his hometown, where he
became maestro di capella. His L'Eroica, from his one published volume of instrumental music, includes a
wonderfully wayward ciaconna as its middle section.
Giovanni Legrenzi’s third sonata from his collection La Cetra is an excellent example of how the sonata was
changing by mid-century, influenced by the lyricism of Venetian opera composers like Cavalli and Cesti. The
overlapping dissonances heard in the opening of this sonata were later to become a staple in the works of
Arcangelo Corelli. Legrenzi dedicated this publication to Leopold I, perhaps hoping to land a job at the
Hapsburg court in Vienna, but to no avail.
We close our program with one last Castello work, perhaps his most theatrical sonata in collection full of
remarkable works. This begins with a classic Renaissance canzona subject, tossed back and forth between the
players. But suddenly we are in a kind of ensemble recitative, with all the instruments declaiming a wordless
rhetoric together. After this charged adagio, we move into a syncopated triple-time dance; then comes a series of
passionate solo episodes, broken up by brusque interjections. The work is rounded with a return to the opening
material, and closes with a particularly spectacular coda, featuring a brilliant series of echo effects.
– Robert Mealy