Classical Music | Ensemble Music

Henry Purcell

Suite from Abdelazer Play Play

Ensemble

Recorded on 05/24/2007, uploaded on 09/24/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Suite from Abdelazer Henry Purcell

Ouverture, Rondeau, Aire, Aire, Minuette, Aire, Jigg, Hornpipe, Aire

Baroque music was intensely national in its manifestations—of particular importance were the traditions associated with France, the Italian peninsula and the German-speaking world. The Italians, of course, had initiated the whole matter of the baroque style in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The style made its way north again, to be absorbed and transmogrified into the cultures of France, where it was refined and distilled, especially under the watchful eye and ear of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), and of the German-speaking part of the Holy Roman Empire. Lully carefully molded the baroque style into a uniquely French type of music that had much to do with the enhancement of the artistic life of the Court of Louis XIV — of particular importance to the French "Classique" (the French invented the term, "baroque" in the early eighteenth century as a pejorative description of music that sought to astonish rather than to move the listener) tradition is the setting of the problematic French language to music and the art of dance. While Bach and Handel employed aspects of the French style in their music, Georg Muffat was a German of Scottish ancestry who was instrumental in disseminating the French style outside of France. Born in 1653, he went to Paris to study with Lully and others in 1663, By 1674, he had returned to middle Europe by way of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, Vienna, Prague, and finally to Salzburg, then to Passau, where he died in 1704. He also studied in Rome with Pasquini and had the opportunity to hear Corelli's music. Some of the music which he composed while in Italy appears in his Armonico tributo, from which the passacaglia heard tonight is taken. The Armonico tributo belongs to the early development of the concerto grosso—although the tributo is defined as "chamber sonatas suitable for few or many instruments," the five works in the collection are based on the concerto priciple of alternating groups. The use of the passacaglia certainly shows French influence—this dance type was frequently employed in French lyric tragedy to focus upon a particular point, usually melancholy or tense in nature (to wit, the Passacaille in Lully's Armide). French influence is also demonstrated in the piece's elegant simplicity of harmony and clear structure of phrase. Muffat, in the preface to one of his later works, the "Florilegium primum," is outspoken in his advocacy of Lully's style, in particular with regard to matters of bowing and basic musical outlook. David Schrader