When considering compositional influence in the Baroque era, it is Arcangelo Corelli’s Op. 6 set of concerti grossi that gets the most historical attention for its widespread impact on the development of the genre across Europe. Yet many other Baroque composers also owned and studied German composer Georg Muffat’s Armonico tributo (published in 1682), a set of chamber sonatas for strings and continuo that blended elements of Corelli’s Italian style and French dance music. Muffat studied under Jean-Baptiste Lully in Paris, where he was steeped in the French style of orchestral and keyboard composition. This he brought back to the German-speaking lands before traveling to Italy to study with Bernardo Pasquini in Rome (and where he undoubtedly heard Corelli’s music). Upon his return, he worked in Salzburg, Augsburg, and then Passau until his death in 1704. His music publications, including the Armonico tributo as well as one book of orchestral suites and two volumes of concerti grossi, continued to circulate throughout Europe posthumously, providing the next generation of instrumental composers with models for how to compose instrumental works for smaller and larger forces.
Muffat’s training in both France and Italy provided the composer with a diverse array of tools and techniques when it came to his ensemble works in Armonico tributo. His sonatas—which he indicated could be performed one on a part or by larger forces, if available—include a mixture of dance movements and non-dance movements. Elements of the French style dominate the dance movements; besides the usual inclusion of the allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, Muffat also incorporated the bourrée, the passacaglia, and the rondeau, among others. In the non-dance movements, the Corellian style reigns, replete with chains of suspensions, running bass lines, and virtuosic string writing.
The program today is a tribute itself to Muffat and his legacy. Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel almost certainly knew Muffat’s music; their own contributions to instrumental genres in the 18th century built upon Muffat’s convention of blending and synthesizing styles across geographical boundaries.
Muffat’s first sonata in Armonico tributo shows clearly the conventions he established for ensemble music. There are seven movements, four of which come from the sonata da chiesa, or church sonata genre. These are abstract movements not based on any dance form, and in these you can hear Corelli’s influence. The opening Grave pits the treble instruments against the chordal accompaniment and features plenty of suspensions and dissonances, as well as familiar harmonic patterns for which Corelli’s Italian style became so well known. In the following Allegro e presto, one can hear lively instrumental writing and playful imitative counterpoint between various string parts. Muffat’s preference for dissonant and unpredictable chordal progressions plays out in the second Grave, while the third is simply a transition, providing space for improvisation.
The French influence appears prominently in the three dance movements as well as the overall scoring—five-part string writing was the typical French orchestral texture preferred by Lully. The Allemanda places the melody squarely in the treble instruments, and it is in typical binary form, with repetition of both halves. The Gavotta brings a lively duple meter to the set, with a simple harmonic progression that clearly demonstrates its French influence. The final Menuet, also in binary form, has all the elegance of an actual dance as the ensembles trades the melody from one part to the next.
The second sonata in Muffat’s set opens with a dramatic Grave that builds up the musical tension as the five voices are added gradually and extend their melodies into higher registers. The Allegro features solo and tutti passages that trade off in a concerto grosso style, juxtaposing the full ensemble with the nimble soloists. The next Grave and the following Forte e allegro are really one movement, opening with a slow, chordal introduction, moving to a short interjection of up-tempo, playful string writing that again invokes Corellian solo versus tutti textures, before relaxing into a closing Grave.
Muffat also includes French-style movements that are unique to the sonata / concerto grosso genre. The Aria is a quick binary-form movement in two halves that features a running bass of eighth notes and short interjections between soloist and ensemble. After a transitional Grave, Muffat includes a French Sarabanda, a slow triple-meter dance with the emphasis on the second beat. The following Grave is almost a reverse of the opening movement, starting high and imitatively in the instrumental registers and gradually moving lower through unpredictable chord progressions and plenty of crunchy suspensions. The final movement is a lively Borea (bourrée), an energetic French dance that both Bach and Handel also used in their orchestral compositions.
Muffat brought together the French and Italian styles in his Armonico tributo, but he was also a German composer—a stylistic identity that comes out in this final sonata. The first movement is a French Allemande, and the second is an Italianate Adagio. In the Fuga, Muffat explores his German penchant for densely imitative counterpoint. The fugal melody begins in the top voice, immediately followed by the second treble, and then the inner and lower voices. This original melody appears throughout, often accompanied by new imitative passages (that is, latter voices mimicking the melodic shape of a leader voice). Another Adagio follows, propelled forward by a constantly moving bass line and long suspensions in the treble instruments. The sonata ends with a long French Passacaglia, in which Muffat again juxtaposes a group of three soloists against the full ensemble. The theme repeats with episodes—passages of unrelated musical material—interspersed. Once again, Muffat demonstrates his facility across a multitude of styles and genres, bringing yet more diversity to the developing genres of instrumental works at the end of the 17th century.
Ever the efficient composer, Handel’s Concerto in G Major, HWV 399, borrows considerably from pre-existing music. Published in 1739 in an arrangement for performances at home as the fourth trio sonata in his Op. 5 collection, Handel repurposed previously composed instrumental music from his 1734–1735 opera and oratorio season. The opening Allegro previously opened his oratorio Athalia. Handel borrowed the elegant Passacaille from his 1720 opera Radamisto, using it in a revised opera Il pastor fido in 1734, which included new dance music to feature the French dancer Marie Sallé, who was in London that season. (He borrowed the other movements too. One, in the style of a French overture, he drew from his serenata Parnasso in festa—which itself also included music from Athalia. The closing Gigue and Menuet movements were from numbers Sallé also danced in the 1735 opera Alcina.)
Like Muffat, Handel demonstrates his mastery of the French and Italian styles, blending in the lyricism and virtuosity of Italianate string writing with the graceful clarity of French harmonies. But Handel does more than pay homage to popular musical styles. This concerto, and other genres that borrowed from pre-existing works, serves as a tribute to his own successful season of music from a few years earlier. As a kind of musical game, Handel not only reminded those purchasing the Op. 5 print of his greatest hits, but he also allowed his audience to memorialize his works through their own performances.
Historians still do not know exactly when Bach composed his four suites, BWV 1066–1069, which he referred to as overtures. It is possible that he wrote them as Kapellmeister in Cöthen (1718–1721) for Prince Leopold, whose love of orchestral music—and his own talents on the flute—required Bach to furnish him with works to play. Or he may have written them a few years later in Leipzig for the famous Collegium Musicum ensemble. No matter the context, these works include some of Bach’s finest instrumental writing and demonstrate how the composer built upon the conventions of the concerto grosso by featuring both ensemble and solo playing.
The C-Major Overture is decidedly French in its construction. The work opens with an expansive French overture, which begins in a regal quadruple meter propelled by double-dotted rhythms; the second half is a lively imitative section in cut time. The triple meter Courante revels in hemiola (the alternation of three and two beats per measure), while the subsequent Gavotte showcases first the full ensemble, followed by the oboes with the melody in the second. Just as Muffat added new types of French dances to his sonatas, so too did Bach: The Forlane is a French version of an Italian folk dance. Bach’s Menuett and Bourrée combine instruments in new ways in an experiment of musical timbre and texture. The final Passepied rounds out the suite with a lyrical duet between the oboes and the strings.
—Alison DeSimone