Exquisite Harmonies

Anthony and I have worked together for many years and often discussed a duo project. We eventually developed a program that highlighted some of the best-known baroque era composers for the viola da gamba interspersed with harpsichord solos.

As a centrepiece I assembled a Grande Suite featuring music by several French masters, which serves as a kind of French baroque smorgasbord. I hope these gentlemen forgive me from the grave! The links between them are noteworthy. Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, who famously added the seventh string to the viola da gamba, taught the young Marin Marais. Forqueray’s fearsome virtuosity was said to have exceeded that of the celebrated Marais, whose career he overlapped with. Both men attracted the attention of, and employment by, the music and dance-loving monarch, Louis XIV. A contemporary commentator, Hubert Le Blanc, wrote that Marais played like an angel, and Forqueray like the devil!

François Couperin needs no introduction to music lovers. Although best known for his splendid harpsichord pieces, he also wrote for the viola da gamba as did Abel and Telemann who are of Germanic rather than French extraction. Again, the links are fascinating. Abel was taught as a schoolboy by J.S. Bach, later founding a music promotion business in London with his son, J.C. Bach.

The outliers in the mix are Anthony’s improvised Fantasia in the style of Telemann, and The Acceptance by Biripi and Gamillaroi musician and composer, Troy Russell. I asked Troy to write The Acceptance as a kind of musical acknowledgement of country. It gently reminds us that First Nations’ artists preceded European musicians on this continent by dozens of millennia.

The Fantasia after Telemann is my attempt to imitate the compositional model that Telemann presents in his Three Dozen Fantasias. Following Telemann’s model, my fantasia uses da capo form to explore and contrast melodic ideas. I was able to develop these ideas – as products of the imagination – by using my knowledge of eighteenth-century counterpoint and harmony to improvise the fantasia at the harpsichord. This process helped me to better understand the idea that eighteenth-century compositions are simply written records of a composer’s improvisations. It is interesting to reflect on this concept and consider the sheer number of improvisations (thousands, if not millions) that eighteenth-century musical masters left unrecorded. Moreover, however, I believe that by practising improvisation and composition we may come closer to experiencing the intimacy and immediacy that eighteenth-century music has to offer.