Performers:
Isabelle Douailly-Backman, baroque violin
Tristan Best, viola da gamba
Jonathan Addleman, harpsichord
Performed in Redpath Hall, May 17 2021, as part of my M.Mus Baroque Violin program at McGill University.
Program:
Coming from a long line of musicians, Jean-Féry Rebel studied violin and composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully at an early age. This impressive training would eventually land him a position as one one of the Twenty-four Violons du Roy and ultimately the director of the ensemble. As court composer under Louis XIV, his compositional output included dance, dramatic, and chamber music. Much of Rebel’s compositions were extremely innovative at the time and contributed to the development of violin sonatas in France. Alongside with François Duval, Rebel was the first to introduce the Italian violin sonata in France.
His set of Recuiel de douze sonatess á II et III parties, published 1712-13 but composed in 1695, contains 7 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo followed by 5 sonatas for violin and b.c.. The final 5 sonatas in this set are considered some of the earliest “solo” violin sonatas from France, alongside those by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre and Sébastien de Brossard. Each of the sonatas have a literary or mythological title. Compared to his French contemporaries, Rebel’s sonatas were much more Italian in nature.
Sonata no. 11, “La Brilliance” is the only sonata out of the set to include a dance movement: the Chaconne. The sonata opens with the flare and fire of the virtuosic Italian style, followed by gentil French harmonies and ornamentations. The opening idea returns throughout the sonata as a closing statement to each movement or section. Finally, the piece finishes with a beautiful yet electrifying chaconne, occasionally intercepted by bits of tender largo lines, before the final return and closing of the opening idea.
Sources:
Cessac, Catherine. Rebel Family. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Newman, William S. The Sonata in the Baroque Era. Revised Edition. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Presss, 1966.
Straeten, Edmund S J van der. The History of the Violin; Its Ancestors and Collateral Instruments from Earliest Times to the Present Day. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1933.
---. The History of the Violin; Its Ancestors and Collateral Instruments from Earliest Times to the Present Day. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1933.
21 фев 2022
