The use of integrated time-signature changes in eighteenth-century music has received little attention, probably because it is not considered a significant part of an eighteenth-century composer's ...toolkit. If mixed metre is discussed at all, it is linked with the late eighteenth-century conceptual shifts in metric theory brought about by Johann Philipp Kirnberger's circle. There exists, however, a substantial repertory of mixed-metre pieces from the first two thirds of the eighteenth century, with many examples to be found in the works of Georg Philipp Telemann. This repertory destabilizes any direct connection between mixed metre and the so-called Akzenttheorie, reminding us that the relationship between theory and practice at this time was far from straightforward. Beyond setting out how early eighteenth-century mixed metre operated within and against contemporary understandings of musical time, this article explores aspects of the origins, function and performance of these remarkable pieces.
New Voices in Research Eanes, Christopher
The Choral journal,
03/2019, Volume:
59, Issue:
8
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
...Telemann follows Brockes's text closely, seldom deviating from the original poetry. Because the text had its origin as a poem and not as a theatrical work, it lacks a structural framework and the ...clean breaks one finds in staged works. While there are a number of da capo arias, most are through-composed or strophic. ...Telemann sometimes sets two verses strophically but inserts another movement between the strophes. In this way, Peter's aria musically evokes his distress over both his moment of betrayal and the anticipation of Jesus's looming crucifixion. ...as Peter sings this melodic material, the composer indicates that Peter, in fact, knows the consequence of his denial. ...it is clear that Telemann was giving thought to the difference between solo and ensemble sonorities, and he used each to great effect throughout.
Exner takes a look at the background for the appointment of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach as Hamburg's music director for the city's five main churches in the late 1760s. The composer was 54 and had ...served as cembalist in the Royal Prussian Kapelle at the court of Frederick II in Berlin for nearly 30 years. The new position became available following the death of Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), Bach's godfather. Bach remained at Telemann's former post for the rest of his life, often reperforming his godfather's compositions and following in his entrepreneurial footsteps. Taking the new job marked a new beginnign in Bach's career, but was also the culmination of a journey that began over a baptismal font in Weimar more than a half century earlier.
Telemann concertos and suites Roche, Elizabeth
Early Music,
11/2009, Volume:
37, Issue:
4
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
Roche reviews eight CDs of Georg Philipp Telemann's orchestral music, including Telemann: Wind Concertos vol.1, Telemann: Wind Concertos vol.2 and Telemann: Wind Concertos vol.4.
In his autobiography of 1718, Georg Philipp Telemann distinguished between the Ancients, who had no art of melody, and himself, who cultivated a `singing' manner appropriate to his own time. He ...thereby showed his debt to conceptual categories born of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Yet if Telemann thought of himself as a Modern, he drew upon a mode of thought developed above all by the champions of Antiquity (that is, the Ancients). This article examines this heritage, identifying particularities of the debate in France and Germany and in literary and musical spheres. The article identifies a strain of galant aesthetics and practice championed by seventeenth-century French salon participants with close ties to the Ancients. It follows this strain through the writings of the German academic Christian Thomasius and examines its centrality to Telemann's self-image. In his insistence on good judgement, proper choice of models, and relative autonomy from his chosen traditions, Telemann took up modes of thought formulated by the Ancients but applied them to modern styles. Telemann owed more to the Ancients than he was willing to profess.
This study contends that the characterization of Georg Philipp Telemann's music throughout reception history as simplistic and shallow is based on the composer's personal convictions and objectives. ...The specifics of Telemann's beliefs and their correlation to music become clearer when a comparison is drawn with Johann Sebastian Bach. Analyses of their Passions and selected written statements illustrate their respective convictions regarding God, human existence, and earthly strivings and how these correspond to their compositional methods. Bach, who saw in God the reason for and goal of all human endeavor, advanced a hermeneutic, quasi exegetical approach: "To the glory of the most high God, that my neighbor may be benefited thereby" (1720). Telemann viewed God as the ultimate authority but not as the reason and end goal for all human thought and action, and, as laid out in the preface of his journal Der getreue Music-Meister (1728), he devoted his musical "work" to the "service" of facilitating the listener's comprehension.
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