Included with permission of author.
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 14:13:29 +0100
From: Rachel Brown <rachelbrown.butterfield@VIRGIN.NET>
Subject: Telemann Fantasias question, CPE Bach at Wigmore Hall and thanks
Hello!
So sorry, slow to respond, as ever! Royal Wedding and helping my parents clean up after a fire at their home... (all fine).
May I first say that I don't claim to be "correct"? It was my gut instinct to play D natural to C sharp trill in bar 35 of the first Telemann Fantasia and as some of you seem interested I'll try to explain why.
To my ears, I hear bar 32 in E major but bars 34 to the end very much in A major with the D sharps enhancing E as the dominant of A. I feel the movement is left very much up in the air - unfinished, if you like - with a sort of Phrygian cadence which leads to the final movement. Phrygian cadences you find at the close of many Handel sonata slow movements. They commonly follow a full cadence in the tonic key, then wind down, sometimes marked at a slower tempo. The final dominant chord is preceded by a note a step higher in the bass, figured 7 6. In bar 36 I hear the seventh resolve to a sixth (E-D sharp) above the bass F sharp. I'm so often amazed how Telemann manages to disguise so many standard cadences and come up with something original!
Phrygian cadences are more common and more striking in minor keys but another major key example would be at the end of the Presto in the C major sonata BWV 1033 by ???Bach (let's not open that can of worms here)!
To answer your question about the trill. D sharp to C sharp trill can be very clumsy, moving several fingers at once and oscillating over a break, but that would never be a deciding factor for changing an accidental.
Often checking the original sources will help answer a question like this but here it doesn't entirely solve it. If you look in the facsimile reprinted by Amadeus and Musica Rara you'll see that Telemann was following the practice common at that time, where accidentals did not last for a whole bar: where repeated notes occurred on the same pitch, the accidental held but if the melody moved away, then returned to that note, the accidental had to be restated.
So, for instance, in this Telemann Fantasia at bar 28 there are two G naturals. Bars 30-32 all contain four D sharps and bar 35 has three and bar 36 has two D sharps. You could argue that because no D sharp is indicated in the trill on the second beat of bar 35 that it must therefore be D natural, although the addition of accidentals above or below trill signs was not standard at that time, so you could justify the D sharp trill too!
I hear all the marked D sharps leading upwards to Es, whereas this trill seems to lead downwards to B and a D natural trill seems sweeter and I feel I'm in A major despite all the D sharps. D sharp trill seems quite shocking to me - guess we're all different! Whatever you choose you can make the upper note more prominent or hardly noticeable according to your taste.
Adrianne asks about other occurrences of similar harmonic clashes. The one that springs immediately to mind is the trill in bar 158 of the second movement of JS Bach's Musical Offering trio sonata. The highly complex texture and whole series of rapid, bizarre intervals comes to a sudden halt at that bar, marked adagio. All parts have a minim (half note) but the two upper voices are both trilling. The flute has a trill on E flat (presumably from F natural) above the F sharp in the bass. (Quantz rules out minor 3rd (or augmented 2nd) trills though admits they were "customary of old, and still the mode nowadays among some Italian violinists and oboists).
There's another trill making a diminished octave in bar 27 of the first movement of JS Bach's trio sonata in G. The first flute trills C natural to B flat above a C sharp in the bass, again leading to a dominant close.
In the Quantz Sonatas I've recently published there are some beautifully melancholic instances of the same kind of thing in the Larghetto, 1st movement of sonata in B minor, no.267 and in the Moderato mà arioso, 3rd movement of the G minor sonata, no.336 and I've mentioned it in the performance notes.
Perhaps closer to the original question and within the Telemann Fantasias there is another example of a spiced-up dominant. At the end of the G major Fantasia from bar 22 Telemann keeps reiterating C sharp-D at the lower octave but clearly C natural at the upper octave in bar 23.
CPE Bach railed against "repulsive" before-the-beat appoggiaturas except where they created a weird interval such as this diminished octave - fig. 89a, pp.98-99 in my English translation.
On the subject of CPE - if anyone is free and in London tomorrow night, Sunday May 1st, 7.30pm, do join us at the Wigmore Hall for the last concert of this year's London Handel Festival. Along with the great D minor CPE Bach concerto flute concerto my dream team of the London Handel Players will be playing a gorgeous Telemann concerto for flute and violin, Handel organ concerto, Brandenburg 5 and a lovely Leclair violin concerto.
Apologies for not responding on a Handel question recently - I have lent my facsimile of op.1 to a keen violinist at the school where I teach and still not had it back! May I take this opportunity to thank everyone who responded on and off list to my question about a tremor in the hands. Thankfully my pupil is being monitored medically and doesn't suffer from any of the additional complications many of you have met with. A happier more well-adjusted teenage boy would be hard to find. I have found the Pneumo Pro invaluable with this pupil to minimise disruption to the embouchure. And thanks to all who keep this list going and contribute.
All best wishes,
Rachel
Principal Flute, Academy of Ancient Music
Professor of Baroque Flute, Royal College of Music
www.rachelbrownflute.com
