VANGUARD - The Bach Guild
1 LP - BG-556 - (p) 1957
1 CD - ATM-CD-1653 - (p) & (c) 2006

PIÈCES DE CLAVECIN EN CONCERT





Jean Philippe RAMEAU (1683-1764) Premièr Concert
7' 52" A1

- La Coulicam (2' 27") · La Livri (2' 52") · Le Vézinet (2' 33")
 


Quatrième Concert
7' 24" A2

- La Pantomime (3' 00") · L'Indiscrète (1' 23") · La Rameau (3' 01")



Cinquième Concert
8' 24" A3

- La Forqueray (2' 17") · La Cupis (4' 26") · La Marais (1' 54")



Deuxième Concert
12' 23" B1

- La Laborde (3' 38") · La Boucon (3' 06") · L'Agacante (1' 31") · Menuet 1 et 2 (4' 08")



Troisième Concert
11' 31" B2

- La Poplinière (2' 40") · La Timide, rondeau 1 et 2 (6' 03") · Tambourin 1 et 2 (2' 48")







 
Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord
Lars Frydén, baroque violin
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, viola da gamba
 





Luogo e data di registrazione
Brahmssaal, Musikverein, Vienna (Austria) - novembre 1955

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer
Professor Karl Wolleitner

Engineer
Franz Plott

Prima Edizione LP
Vanguard - The Bach Guild | BG-556 | 1 LP - durata 48' 34" | (p) 1957

Edizione CD
Artemis Classics | ATM-CD-1653 | 1 CD - durata 48' 34" | (p) & (c) 2006 | ADD

Cover Art
-

Note
Billboard, 6 May 1957












These little entertainments of Rameau are among the more charming examples of social music making in 18th century France. The existence of a sound tradition in amateur performance is always a source of gratification to the professional composer. During the 18th century a tradition of this kind was fairly widespread both in Europe and in America. Bach wrote für Kenner und Liebhaber e.g. for the professional and the amateur, for those who knew music and those who enjoyed it. (A wise distinction, not without its point today.) And nowhere in the 18th century did the taste of the cultivated amateur count for more than it did in France. These pieces of Rameau have much in them - either by instinct (a word Rameau much admired) or by calculation - for the pleasure of performers; for they are alive, truly and continuously so, when one shapes the wonderful patterns of sound with one's fingers. The pleasure of the non-performing listener is necessarily intimate and immediate, for this is living room music, whether performed live or on phonograph records. This music, as delicate and as unpretentious as it must in essence be, has still no less noble a purpose than to delight the ear, charm the intellect and give pleasure to the soul.
Flexibility in medium of performance was not only a long standing tradition in Rameau's day, but a certain freedom in the performer's exercise of options is necessarily to the point in music as sociable and usable as this. The Title of the work in its 1741 edition reads as follows: Pièces de clavecin, en concertos, avec un violon ou une flute et une viole ou un deuxieme violon  (Pieces for harpsichord in concert with either a violin or flute and either a viol or a second violin). In his introduction (Advice to Performers) Rameau further makes it clear that these are essentially harpsichord pieces and may be played as such without the added parts. ("These pieces performed on the harpsichord alone," he writes, "leave nothing to be desired; one does not suspect then that other instruments are required.") Interestingly enough, when the other instruments are added, they sometimes achieve an importance in the musical texture which one would scarcely suspect in view of the self-sufficient harpsichord part. As for the alternatives in the instruments to be added, there was a certain predilection for the flute among 18th century amateurs, and, particularly in France, a marked feeling against the violin as an instrument which tended to dominate if not, indeed, domineer over its colleagues. It was not uncommon for the 18th century French composer to warn violinists to moderate their tone; and upon occasion the French violinist was even enjoined to resist the brilliant virtuoso blandishments fashionable among contemporary Italian composer-violinists. Gabriel Guillemain, a contemporary of Rameau, issued in 1745 a group of harpsichord pieces "with violin accompainiment", and admitted that "he felt compelled to add that part" semply "in order to conform to the present taste." Howewer, he cautioned that he found the violin "somewhat too overbearing" and urged that the violin part "be performed quite softly." Rameau's strictures, if less blunty expressed, amount to the same thing. His advice to performers reads as follows:
"I have written some small concerted compositions for harpsichord, a violin or flute, and a gamba or second violin. Four parts usually prevail. I thought it well to publish them in score, for not only must the three instruments blend well togheter, and the performers understand each other's role, but above all, the violin and gamba must yield to the harpsichord and must distinguish that which is only accompaniment from that which is part of the subject, by softening their tone still more in the first case. The long notes should be played softly rather than forcibly, the short notes very sweetly, and where the notes follow each other without interruption the rendition should be mellow."
He then goes on to say that the pieces can stand for harpsichord alone. As for the manner of converting a violin part  quickly into a range manageable upon a flute, Rameau provides the performer with a few convenient devices. Where the violin part goes too low for the flute, he places an octave mark (the number 8). All notes from the number 8 to the letter U (unison) the flute player simply renders an octave higher. In rapid passages, he remarks, furthermore that "It suffices to substitute adjacent notes which are in the same harmony for those which descend too low, or to repeat those which one considers suitable; except where one finds small noteheads on the stems, almost like specks, which indicate exactly what should be played on the flute."
The habit of titling instrumental pieces is a long standing one in French music. While the focus shifts from generation to generation, certain general habits are persistent enough for us to regard them more as a matter of national temperament than as the peculiarity of a particular period. Thus among the many features that mark both Rameasu and Debussy as characteristically French in their keyboard music, is their common mastery of the programmatic miniature. Both are expert craftsmen, in their way as perceptive in problems of musical structure as the Germans. But abstract design in large scale musical structures is not anything either composer is attuned to temperamentally. Rameau is not a fugue-maker in the Bach manner, anymore than Debussy is a symphonic architect in the sense of a Beethoven. Like everything else, national musical temperament is subject to change; but the 18th century French notion, so marked in these pieces of Rameau, that instrumental music is either "fit for dancing" (proper à dancer) or for use as a clear and delicate color palette for painting images in tone, has never entirely disappeared in French music.
Notes by Abraham Veinus, Syracuse University
Gustav Leonhardt
Gustav Leonhardt, the eminent Dutch harpsichordist, organist and baroque scholar, typifies the deeply serious and musically dedicated artists who have appeared in Europe alter the late war. Born in Holland in 1928, he studied at the Schola Cantorum of Basle, receiving “cum laude" honors. He then went to Vienna for iurther research, specializing in baroque music, and also studied conducting under Clemens Krauss. In 1952 he became Professor of Musicology. and also Harpsichord, at the Vienna Academy of Music. His teaching has since been divided between Vienna and Amsterdam, where he became professor at the Amsterdam Conservatory in 1953. He is however in increasing demand as a soloist on the harpsichord and organ, for his mastery of 17th and l8th century musical style, combining both a deep feeling for musical communication with a unique study of the ornamentation and notation of the period. He gave a historic Sweelinck cycle in Switzerland. His celebrated reading, on harpsichord, of Bach's Art of Fugue, was presented, to great acclaim, at Wigmnre Hall in London, the Brahrnssaal in Vienna, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Also notable have been his performances of Bach's Goldberg Variations, at Vienna, Zurich, Amsterdam and Leyden. In 1952 his hook, The Art of Fugue, Bach’s Last Harpsichord Work, devoted to a stylistic analysis of Bach‘s great work, appeared at The Hague.