"Living apart together"
Solo recorder recital
Erik Bosgraaf
 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)
From: 6 Suites a Violoncello Solo senza Basso
Suite no. 1 (BWV 1007)
Courante
Sarabande
Menuet I & II
Gigue
 
Giovanni Bassano (ca. 1550 – 1617)
From: Ricercate / Passaggi et Cadentie (1585)
Ricercate Terza & Quarta
 
Toshio Hosokawa (*1955)
Atem-lied
 
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681 – 1767)
From: Fantaisies pour flûte traversière seule (TWV 40)
Fantasie 11
 
Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971)
From: Pièces pour clarinette seule
Pièces I & III
  ‘Living apart together’

Normally, musical lines of different pitches and orientation are assigned to different instruments; the bass line is played by a low instrument, the top line played by a high instrument. In solo music, therefore, the rather strange situation occurs that voices normally assigned to different instruments are brought together as one, but still convey the separate parts; they are ‘living apart together’… In 1717 Johann Sebastian Bach was appointed Kapellmeister at the court in Cöthen. However, the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen was Calvinist and therefore the use of elaborate music was not permitted in his worship. For this reason Bach wrote mostly instrumental music at his court. Next to the cello suites, Bach also wrote the first book of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier, the solo violin sonatas and Brandenburg concertos in this period.

The ricercate by Giovanni Bassano were primarily designed to be instructive pieces for the demonstration of skilful playing. However, the pedagogic purpose of the form is surpassed in Bassano’s artful writing of lush diminutions. Giovanni Gabrieli probably had Bassano in mind for his elaborate cornetto parts; we know that Bassano was responsible for the instrumental ensemble in St. Mark’s in Venice.

The contemporary Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa has become known to bridge musical cultures of the East and the West, like his teacher and mentor Isang Yun. In a masterclass I had from Hosokawa, he explained the function of silence and his ideas about the emancipation of non-pitched sounds within a musical composition.

The origins of the baroque fantasia lie in the renaissance fantasia, these being large polyphonic pieces in which the inventio of composers was challenged. The renaissance fantasia was the first purely composed instrumental form in the history of Western music, although it shared much of its form with the vocal music of its time. Since then, the fantasia has remained a purely instrumental form and a playground for compositional ingenuity and instrumental virtuosity. English early baroque composers have used the fantasia to experiment with ‘vocal’ qualities of musical instruments. Late baroque composers such as Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach stripped the instrumental fantasia from its vocal quantities and made the fantasia into a virtuosic piece often combined with a toccata, as in Bachs famous Toccata and Fantasies for organ solo.

Stravinsky’s pieces for clarinet solo are the first pieces of note composed for the modern clarinet. The first piece was inspired by the sonority of Russian folk music. The last piece was inspired by the ragtime, a dance form popular in the beginning of the twentieth century. Some consider the ragtime to be a genre of classical music since it was distributed in sheet music and piano rolls (notably by Scott Joplin) rather than through recordings.