Johann Christian Bach

Orkesterverk

Overtures

In the mid-eighteenth century the overtures to Italian operas, both comic and serious, were almost always in three short movements – fast, slow, fast – and almost invariably merely had the function of announcing the beginning of the evening’s entertainment, without any attempt being made to reflect the subject material of the opera. Johann Christian Bach’s early overtures for the theatre conformed to type but, in general and unlike many of those by his contemporaries, were carefully and imaginatively composed.

Artaserse (G 1)

(Teatro Regio, Turin, 1760)
Overture:

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante
3. Presto

On 3 May 1760 the management committee of the Teatro Regio in Turin met to discuss a letter which had just arrived from Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783) in response to its invitation to him to compose the first opera for the forthcoming Carnival season. Hasse was the most successful composer of serious Italian opera at that time and competition for his services by all the major theatres was intense. At the same meeting therefore, the committee resolved to get in touch with Bach and others as a precaution should the Hasse commission fall through. This must have happened later the same month, because at its meeting on 30 May the committee decided to place the commission with Bach. So it was that Bach’s first opera Artaserse (Artaxerxes) reached the stage of the Teatro Regio on 26 December, with Gaetano Guadagni (soon to be Gluck’s first Orfeo) in the cast. However, because of illness both in the royal family of Savoy and in the cast, the opera ran for only seven performances.

The overture begins in an arresting fashion – in unison and with a rising figure based on the notes of the common chord. The general mood is one of excited anticipation. The slow movement is in total contrast. The strings, coloured from time to time by two flutes, offer a moment of reflection. The finale is a miniature Rondo, with two Episodes (the second in the minor), bringing back the festive mood of the first movement.

Cantata to celebrate the Birthday of King Charles III of Spain (G 11)

(Teatro San Carlo, Naples, 1762)
Overture:

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Allegro assai

In 1739 the French antiquarian, Charles de Brosses (1709-1777), described Naples as “the capital of the world’s music” and many later visitors confirmed his opinion. Since 1737 the focus of musical activity in this capital, which also happened to be the political capital of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, had been the Teatro San Carlo. This had been built on the instructions of the kingdom’s energetic 21-year old ruler, Charles III (1716-1788), not because he was especially fond of opera, but because opera was the court entertainment par excellence and a famous theatre reflected great prestige on a monarch and his realm. After a reign of 25 years in Naples, Charles became King of Spain in 1759. However, the custom of performing an annual cantata in the San Carlo in honour of his birthday (20 January) lasted for a number of years after his departure. The 1762 cantata had the usual cast of three, including the veteran castrato Caffarelli (Handel’s first Serse), and music by Bach, who had been working in Naples for some months.

The use of repeated chords at the beginning of an operatic overture was a cliché, but here Bach, by placing then over the nervous syncopation in the second violins, produces a delightful and ingenious effect. The texture of the Andante is mostly two parts (violins and bass) but the melody line already displays many of the gestures of Bach’s mature style – the Scotch snap, the longish trill followed by shorter notes, and triplet semiquavers towards the end of a section. Note also the imitation of the violin melody in the bass at the beginning and elsewhere. The finale is another miniature Rondo.

Gli uccellatori (G 23)

(Regio Ducal Teatro, Milan, 1759)
Overture:

1. Allegro con spirito
2. Andante
3. Allegro assai

The première of Gli uccellatori (The bird-catchers), the first comic opera (to a text by Carlo Goldoni) by Florian Leopold Gassmann (1729-1774) took place at the Teatro S. Moisè in Venice during the 1759 Carnival. The opera reached the stage of Regio Ducal Teatro in Milan the following autumn, but with a new overture composed by Johann Christian Bach. This was not the first music by Bach to have been performed at the Regio Ducal but it seems to have been his first overture for that (or possibly any other) theatre. Johann Christian Bach’s overture was eventually published (slightly revised) in London in June 1763 as the first number in Robert Bremner’s series The Periodical Overture, but here it is performed according to a copy of the manuscript of the complete opera as performed in Milan made for the King of Portugal and now perserved in the Ajuda Palace in Lisbon.

The Allegro con spirito is characterised by the unison passage with which it begins. The rare use of trumpets heightens the general atmosphere of bustle. An elegantly poised Andante follows. The festive mood returns with the vigorous Allegro assai, which like the first movement opens in unison.

Alessandro nell’lndie (G 3)

(Teatro San Carlo, Naples, 1762)
Overture:

1. Allegro con spirito
2. Andante
3. Allegro assai

On 20 January 1762 the first performance of the Birthday Cantata was followed by the première of Johann Christian Bach’s third opera, Alessandro nell’Indie (Alexander in the Indies). Alessandro received only three productions (the other two were in the small town of Lodi near Milan), but it included Bach’s most famous aria, Non so donde viene, which Mozart much admired.

The first movement of the overture contains a number of imaginative moments, some of which we would now describe as Mozartean, but the real treasure is the Andante. The use of the minor key seems to bring out the best in Bach and here is a fine example of his early style. The finale restores the high spirits of the first movement, but even here as the opening melody cascades down from the first violins to the seconds and then the bass you are aware that a composer of genuine talent is at work.

La Giulia (G 22)

(Regio Ducale Teatro, Milan, 1760)
Overture:

1. Allegro di molto
2. Andante
3. Allegro

La Giulia (Julia) was a pasticcio – an opera assembled from the works (existing or newly composed) of a number of composers - compiled by Giovanni Battista Lampugnani (1708-1788), harpsichordist of the Regio Ducal Teatro. The two surviving scores of the complete opera do not name Bach as the composer of the overture (or indeed any of the music), but, since he himself published it in London in 1765, there is no doubt about its authenticity.

It is a strange fact that, while most orchestral scores composed in the third quarter of the eighteenth-century have viola parts which spend most of the time merely doubling the bass line, there are others where there are two quite independent parts for significant passages of a movement or even of a complete work. Bach’s overture La Giulia is one of these and his use of divided violas in all three movements gives it its special character.

Il tutore e la pupilla (G 24)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1762)
Overture:

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Presto

Early in 1762 Bach’s successful operatic career in Italy brought him an invitation from the King’s Theatre in London to compose two operas and to act as Musical Director for the 1762-3 season. This was one of the most significant events in his career and led to his making London the centre of his activities until his death nearly 20 years later. Then, as now, London was the largest city in Europe and one of the richest. All the really important people in Britain had a house there and at the centre of society was the German-speaking court of George III. Opera however was not the state-supported activity it was in Naples but a commercial venture which bankrupted many of those foolhardy enough to undertake it. The spielplan contained comic as well as serious operas and when Bach arrived in London the public was beginning to become more interested in the comic. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Bach, who never composed a comic opera in his life, made his debut at the King’s Theatre on 13 November 1762 directing one, the pasticcio Il tutore e la pupilla (The tutor and the girl pupil). In the cast was Anna Lucia de Amicis, later a very famous prima donna indeed and the first Giunia in Mozart’s Lucio Silla, but then merely a member of a family of touring comic opera singers, albeit its star.

The overture Bach provided is a reworking of the one to the Birthday Cantata. The Presto is largely unchanged, although there is an attractive new passage over a static bass near the end. The first movement is quite extensively revised, but the Andante is completely new. A commentator in a London newspaper later noted that Bach seemed to have taken note of the English fondness for the music of Handel. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to look upon this movement as one of the earliest pieces of evidence for this opinion.

Catone in Utica (G 2)

(Teatro San Carlo, Naples, 1761)
Overture:

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro assai

The feast day of St. Charles Borromeo (4 November) was also the name day of Charles III and therefore a day of celebration in Naples. From 1737 it was the pretext for a brilliant new opera production at the San Carlo too. In 1761 the opera was Catone in Utica (Cato in Utica) and the composer Bach. He was already well known in Naples both as a performer and as a composer and this was not the first time he had been considered for an opera commission by the San Carlo. Bach arrived in Naples around the end of September, with a letter of introduction to the Co-Regent of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from the Austrian Governor of Milan, Count Firmian, in his pocket. In the title role of Catone was the famous tenor Anton Raaff, then 47 and ten years later Mozart’s first Idomeneo. Raaff, in the first of the four major roles Bach composed for him, undoubtedly contributed greatly not only to the success of the opera but to the later dissemination of his music. Catone was revived in Naples in 1764 and in all received nine productions, including one in Brunswick (Braunschweig) in 1768.

The overture follows the by now familiar outline: a ceremoniously festive first movement (with trumpets), an Andante and a brisk triple-time finale. The slow movement has certain Handelian characteristics – and that was before Bach went to London.

La cascina (G 26)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1763)
Overture:

1. (Allegro)
2. Andante
3. Presto

By the beginning of 1763 Bach still had not presented the first of his two commissioned operas before the London public. Instead on 8 January he directed a new comic pasticcio with a text adapted from Goldoni called La Cascina (The Farm). However, in spite of the charms of Anna Lucia de Amicis and her family, the opera failed and was taken off after its second performance. Bach’s overture alone appears to have survived.

This overture is superficially similar but in detail unlike any of the others on this CD. The first movement is the only one in triple- as opposed to quadruple-time, the Andante is rather like a march and the finale is in duple-time. It is performed here in the version published in London by John Walsh in November 1763.

La cascina

Alternative Andante

A number of manuscripts of the overture to La Cascina give a slightly different version of the Andante, a few bars longer and with wind instruments. Whether this version was earlier or later than the one published by Walsh is unclear.

La calamita de’cuori (G 27)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1762)
Overture:

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante grazioso
3. Presto

On 3 February 1763, little more than three weeks after the failure of La cascina, Bach directed another comic opera at the King’s Theatre, La calamita de’cuori (The magnet of the hearts). Once again the text was largely by Goldoni but this time most of the music was by Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785). The overture once again was by Bach, but it was not a new piece and had already been published in Paris in June 1762. The reason why he chose to use o work which already existed is not too difficult to imagine, the première of his own first commissioned opera was only a few days away.

The overture was almost certainly composed for on earlier opera which has yet to be identified because it has features generally found only in opera overtures: all three movements are in the same key, the first movement does not end firmly in its home key but inconclusively in the dominant and the last two movements are linked. As usual outer movements strive to generate the excitement expected at the start of a theatrical performance. The Andante is another of Bach’s neo-Handelian movements, rendered more poignant by the use of flutes. Mozart uses the first four bars of this movement (not quite accurately quoted) as the main thematic material of the slow movement of his piano concerto in A major, K 414, of 1782. It would be nice to think (as some writers have done) that Mozart was paying homage to his old friend and teacher in the year of his death, but unfortunately there is not a scrap of evidence to support this idea. Rather the reverse, since Mozart had already used much the same theme in a piano piece (K 315g, no. 4) nine years earlier.

Gioas, re di Giuda (D 1)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1770)
Overture:

Grave – Allegro – (Grave) – Andante

During Johann Christan Bach’s time in London, one or other and sometimes bath of The Theatres Royal in Covent Garden and Drury Lane presented a series of oratorio performances on the Wednesdays and Fridays beginning after Ash Wednesday and ending the week before Holy Week, when all theatres were closed. The eleven performances of these series, which replaced the regular repertory of plays, English operas and afterpieces, were almost entirely of works by Händel and usually ended with Messiah.

In 1770, a year when both Covent Garden and Drury Lane were offering largely Handelian oratorio seasons, Johann Christian Bach mounted a series of Italian oratorios at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, the home of Italian opera in London. Since he was already occupied on Wednesdays with the Bach-Abel concerts, he performed the oratorios on Thursdays. The repertory was Nicolò Jommelli’s celebrated La passione di Gesù Cristo of 1749, Pergolesi’s even more famous Stabat Mater of 1736 and a (mostly) new work by Bach himself, Gioas, re di Giuda, based like many of Händel’s oratorios on an Old Testament subject. The story of Joash, King of Judah, related in 2 Kings 11 & 12 and 2 Chronicles 22-24, formed the basis of a libretto Pietro Metastasio wrote for Georg Reutter the younger for performance at the Imperial Chapel in Vienna in 1735. Bach set a version of the some text, heavily revised by the resident poet of the King’s Theatre, Giovanni Gualberto Bottarelli Gioas was performed three times that season and a further three the following January. However, as the music historian Charles Burney wryly reported shortly afterwards “the success” of Bach’s first oratorio season “was neither flattering nor profitable, though the undertaking was patronised and frequently honoured with the presence of their Majesties.” In his second season, in 1775, Bach significantly played safe with a totally Handelian repertory. Even in 1770, however, he was only too well aware of the hold Händel’s music had on the London musical public. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the overture to Gioas. The opening bars of the Grave are Handelian in spirit, the Allegro pays homage to his robust Anglicised-style and the Andante resembles some of his lilting movements. Moreover, the opening Grave, its return after the Allegro and the coda with trumpets and drums which concludes the otherwise lightly-scored Andante, clearly reflect Handelian formal precedents. Nonetheless, it needs to be noted that all these features seem to have been grafted on to the two instrumental movements of a pre-existing work, the overture to a court ode probably composed for George III’s birthday (4 June) in 1768 or 1769.

La clemenza di Scipione (G 10)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1778)
Overture: Allegro assai
No. 22, March in E flat major
No. 5, March in G major

In the last opera he composed for the London stage, Johann Christian Bach broke away from the three-movement form he had previously used in all his Italian opera overtures. He was, of course, well aware of the possibility of composing on opera overture in one movement, since he had made various arrangements for London and Naples of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, which has one, in the early 1770s. Gluck’s overture of 1762 was a rather formal composition, reflecting the work’s origins as part of the ritual of the Imperial court rather than anticipating the tragic events which were about to unfold. Bach’s overture on the other hand may possibly be regarded (and almost certainly would be by some present-day opera producers) as depicting the fighting between the Romans and the Carthaginians, which Scipio orders to cease with the very first words of the opera. This may, of course, be imposing a late twentieth-century aesthetic on the piece, but its relentless forward movement and sharp dynamic contrasts tempt such an interpretation. The published full score – one of the very few to be issued of an Italian opera composed for London in the second half of the eighteenth century – prints the overture without trumpets and drum parts. Perhaps this is how Bach conceived it, keeping their sound in reserve for the first chorus “S’oda il suon delle trombe guerriere”.

In mainstream eighteenth-century Italian opera seria the orchestra’s only solo contribution to the proceedings, apart from the overture, was to play the marches to bring on or take off the processions called for by the drama. These marches were usually routine pieces of utilitarian music, composed with competence but little more. Bach’s two marches in La clemenza di Scipione are among the better examples of the genre, as was recognised at the time by their publication in arrangements for a variety of instrumental combinations The march in E flat major begins the final scene of the opera, when Scipio’s act of clemency resolves all the various conflicts, personal and political, which have formed the basis of the action. It is notable for its use of divided violas and passages for unaccompanied wind band (including clarinets). The march in G major comes from the first act, probably not immediately after the overture (as in the score) but in the middle of scene 4, where the libretto calls for a march to accompany the arrival of the “ambassador” of the defeated Carthaginians under Roman military escort. This is a more conventional piece, but also rich in fine detail.

Adriano in Siria (G 6)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1765)
Overture:

1. Allegro con brio
2. Andante
3. Allegro assai

The Mozarts, father and son, were in London during the run of Johann Christian Bach’s third Italian opera for the British capital. No documentary evidence has yet been discovered that they attended any of the performances. However, since they were well acquainted with Bach and the castrato Giovanni Manzuoli, who was that season’s musical sensation and the creator of the opera’s most important role of Farnaspe, their total absence seems unlikely. Certainly the circumstantial evidence is strong. Mozart senior or junior knew and admired Manzuoli’s main aria, “Cara, la dolce fiamma”, sufficiently to compose a set of vocal embellishments for it. More relevant still are the almost identical openings of the Wolfgang’s Symphony in D major, K 45 (January 1768), his overture to La finta semplice (Spring-Summer 1768) and Bach’s overture. Moreover, Bach’s overture, unlike the aria and uniquely among his known London opera overtures, was not published in his lifetime, so Wolfgang would have had difficulty in hearing it except in the opera house. It follows the usual three-movement form of the time, but with the unusual scoring (for then) of flutes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and strings.

Zanaida (G 5)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1763)
Overture:

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Allegro di molto

The original scoring of the overture to Zanaida is even more unusual – flutes, tailles (tenor oboes in F – played here on cors anglais), clarinets, bassoons, horns and strings. Since this is also the original scoring of the overture to Orione but occurs (as far as I know) in no other contemporary works, it may reasonably be assumed that the opera orchestra in London during the 1762-3 season contained some visiting virtuosi, probably from continental Europe. It is difficult in the late twentieth-century to appreciate how rare clarinets were in the 1760s, let alone cors anglais, but it is significant that there are works published in the 1770s in the former French Royal Music Library where the printed clarinet parts have been transcribed for oboes, presumably because clarinets were not available.

The musical establishment of the king of France, however, was not the only organisation lacking the necessary instruments, so, when the overtures to Zanaida and Orione were printed by the younger Walsh, he (or possibly even Bach himself) provided an arrangement for more conventional forces. It is in these arrangements that the works have so far been recorded. Indeed, we have recorded the arrangement of the Zanaida overture, better known as the Symphony in B flat major, op. 9, no.3.

Here however we offer the original version, initially assembled from printed parts dispersed in various collections and subsequently checked against the recently rediscovered autograph score of the complete opera. Once again the overture follows the usual three-movement plan.

Carattaco (G 7)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1767)
Overture:

1. Allegro di molto
2. Andante
3. Presto
No. 20, March in B flat major
No. 26, March in G major

Caratacus (also known as Caractacus), the British chieftain, who in 43 AD defied the Roman Emperor Claudius, was betrayed to him and paraded through the streets of Rome but subsequently pardoned on account of his dignified behaviour in captivity, was an unusual subject for an Italian opera in 1767 The opera itself is unusual in many respects: it breaks the classic unities of time and place and features large choral scenes, to give just two examples. The overture, however, is conventional enough to serve for any serious Italian opera of the time, if rather better composed than most. Indeed, the first movement (with the addition of trumpets and drums) did subsequently also serve as the opening movement to Bach’s first Mannheim opera Temistocle in 1772.

The march in B flat major introduces the last scene in the second act, when Roman soldiers and their prisoners are embarking on the south coast of Britain en route for Rome. The march in G major accompanies the entrance of Caratacus and the Emperor for the final scene and dénoument of the opera.

Orione (G 4)

(King’s Theatre, London, 1763)
Overture:

1. Allegro con brio
2. Andante
3. Allegro

The original version of the overture to Orione has always been available but this is its first recording. One contemporary commentator remarked that Bach had adapted his style in this his first London opera to suit the English taste. Certainly, by comparison with the overtures for his first three operas composed for Italy this is a rather more robustly constructed piece. The opening allegro, although marked con brio, has to be taken more slowly than usual in order to let the elaborate instrumental detail register. The use of a Minuet finale, complete with a Trio for unaccompanied wind band would have been inconceivable in an Italian opera written in Italy.

Symphony in D major, Schmitt op. 18, no. 1

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Allegro assai

This work is something of a curiosity. The first movement is the overture to La clemenza di Scipione, with additional parts for trumpets and drums. The second movement is the Andante from the overture to Bach’s only completed French opera, Amadis de Gaule, of 1779, but with the horn parts removed and a few extra bars added on at the end. The third movement is a repeat of the second half of the Scipio overture. We have recorded it here from the point where the Schmitt edition indicates. An earlier recording, based on a twentieth-century German edition, presents a cut version of the whole movement.

Joseph Schmitt (1734-1791) was a German priest and composer, who was also active in the Netherlands as a music publisher. He had been a pupil of Carl Friedrich Abel in Dresden before 1758 and it is just possible that he came into contact with Bach through him. There is therefore the very slight possibility, I suppose, that Bach himself had some hand in the publication. However, it is much more likely that, as the director of a publishing firm specialising in reprints, Schmitt himself assembled the work recorded here from the printed editions by Welcker and Sieber.

Ernest Warburton

Endimione (G 15)

Overture in D major:

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro assai

The serenata Endimione was premiered at the King’s Theatre in Haymarket, the theater for which Johann Christian Bach wrote all his London operas, on April 6, 1772. The occasion of its premiere was a concert “for the Benefit of Mr. Wendling”. The flutist Johann Baptist Wendling, a member of the famous Mannheim Orchestra, had taken up residence in London in 1771 together with his wife Dorothea, who was an outstanding singer, and his daughter Elisabeth Augusta. Wendling played an active role in the premiere of the work both as a musician and an organizer. Bach’s later wife, the soprano Cecilia Grassi, sang the demanding part of Diana.

Endimione is based on a libretto by Pietro Metastasio from 1721. Giovan Gualberto Bottarelli, the house librettist at the King’s Theatre revised it for the London production. The story concerns the love of Diana, the goddess of the hunt, for the hunter Endimione, with Amor contriving this passion. The nymph Nice, who also loves the hunter, goes away empty-handed. The clever Amor is the one who triumphs from the confusions wrought by love. He is praised in song in the concluding chorus: “Viva Amor, che dolce e lento del suo fuoco ogn’alma accende.” In keeping with the prescriptions of the serenata form, the action is relatively compact, does without the grand gesturing of the heroic-tragic opera seria, and derives its subject matter from the pastoral genre.

The first movement of the overture, however, is anything but light fare. One also has the impression that one is hearing anticipations of Mozart’s Haffner Symphony K 385 (1782) in the powerful unison be ginning, energetic octave runs, and cantabile second subject. The symphonic élan of this allegro finds an effective counterbalance in the cheerful peace of the andante. Formally, the andante has a da capo form follow the opening sonata-form movement. With its prominent horn parts the finale in 6/8 time reminds us that Diana, the goddess of the hunt, is the main character of Endimione.

The London publisher William Forster included the overture in full as no. 3 in a printed edition issued us Bach’s op. 18 and containing six symphonies by this composer. The work probably came out in the winter of 1781/82. The only change introduced by Forster was the elimination of the timpani and trumpets in the instrumentation. The other overtures included on this recording were also reused in various ways by Forster in op. 18. Whether Bach himself had a direct hand in this publication has not been settled. It is possible that it was issued prior to his death on New Year’s Day 1782 It is interesting to note that in op. 18 Forster also published overtures and instrumental movements from operas by Bach which had not been composed for performance in London and thus could hope to obtain greater attention from the English public: Temistocle, Lucio Silla, and Amadis des Gaules.

Temistocle (G 8)

Overture in D major:

1. Allegro di molto
2. Andante
3. Presto

Bach wrote Temistocle as a commissioned work for Carl Theodor, the Prince Elector of the Palatinate, with Johann Baptist Wendling arranging for the commission. The performance was supposed to take place during the festivities held on the prince’s name day in Mannheim in November 1772. Inasmuch as at the time Carl Theodor’s court was not just any address, this represented a distinguished commission for Bach. Contemporaries, among them Leopold Mozart and Charles Burney, ranked the prince’s orchestra, led by Christian Cannabich, among the best in the whole of Europe.

Temistocle is set in Greece end Persia during the Persian Wars of the fifth century B.C.E. The original libretto, again going back to Metastasio, was also set by Caldara, Porpora, and Jommelli. Bach’s setting was based on the version by the Mannheim court poet Mattia Verazi. The central motif of the work is Themistocles’ love for his fatherland. Although Xerxes has taken him into his service, he refuses to march against his native Athens on behalf of this Persian king. It is in a complex finale, set before Xerxes’ throne and stamped by the technique of ensemble writing, that the drama reaches its climax. Themistocles, believing that he can rescue himself from his dilemma only by committing suicide, intends to drink a cup of poison in the king’s presence, but Xerxes is so impressed by the Greek’s heroic courage that he abandons his plans for war against Athens.

The premiere of Temistocle on November 5, 1772, opened the new Mannheim opera season. The performance could draw not only on first-class singers such as Anton Raaff in the title role and Dorothea Wendling as Aspasia but also on all the pomp that Mannheim had at its command. The prince was willing to invest his fair share in this performance held in his honor and saw to it that it was filled out in excellent style. Moreover, the whole celebration was accompanied by splendid court ceremony. A great many illustrious guests from the ranks of the high nobility, among them the Margraves of Baden, the Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Kassel, and the Prince of Nassau-Weilburg, were in attendance.

The festive pomp and circumstance of the first movement of the overture, an allegro sonata-form movement, seems in particular to measure up to what may have been the greatest success in Bach’s career as an opera composer. Here the sumptuous effect more clearly occupies the foreground than is the case in the first movements of the other overtures heard on this compact disc. The motivic work is based on broken chords to syncopated string chords, double-stop motifs over drum basses, and short melodic formulas – in other words, on the usual ingredients of an effective overture from this period. The opening formed by Bach from this “raw material” hurries forward, aims at grabbing the audience’s attention, and is perhaps not necessarily to be classified as a little symphonic cabinet piece. Three clarinetti d’amore lend the andante a very unique sound. Bach also emphasizes this sound in a number of solo passages The clarinetto d’amore was an only rarely employed variant of the clarinet, with the addition of a Liebesfuß, a pear-shaped bell, serving to extend its tonal range. Bach’s Temistocle is perhaps the most outstanding example of all of the employment of this apocryphal instrument. (Apart from the andante of the overture, the three clarinetti d’amore are employed only in one aria.) When the andante was reused as the middle movement of the Symphony op. 18 no. 4, the three clarinetti d’amore were eliminated from the score. Their parts were distributed among the other orchestral instruments in the symphonic structuring of the work. The allegro and presto of the overture were not included among the Symphonies op 18.

Lucio Silla (G 9)

Overture in B flat major:

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Presto

Bach’s Temistocle come across very well with its discriminating Mannheim public. As a result, the 1773 season also began with this opera, and further works by Bach, among them Endimione and the cantata Amor vincitore, were also subsequently presented at the Mannheim court. It is thus not surprising that Carl Theodor gave Bach a commission for another opera. The libretto for his Lucio Silla, this time originating with Giovanni De Gamerra, was again revised by the court poet Verazi. (Mozart also composed music for this subject, but his setting was based on Gamerra’s original.) Bach’s opera was premiered at the court theater in November 1775, again on the occasion of the prince’s name day and with almost the some stags cast as for Temistocle. Bach was not able, however, to repeat the great success of his first Mannheim opera with Lucio Silla. Mozart wrote to his father from Mannheim as late as 1777, “Bach wrote two operas here, of which the first was more pleasing than the second. The second was Lucio Silla”. According to the some letter by Mozart, Georg Joseph Vogler, the assistant conductor in Mannheim, had very unfavorable things to say about an aria from Bach’s Lucia Silla: “What kind of aria? – Well, the hideous aria by Bach, the wretched thing – yes, ‘Pupille amate’. He certainly wrote it while punch-drunk.” Mozart did not agree with this judgement.

The central figure of Lucio Silla is the Roman dictator Lucius Sulla (Anton Raaff), who at the end of this opera experiences a change of heart much in the manner of the Persian king Xerxes in Temistocle. Instead of executing Giunia (sung by Dorothea Wendling), whom he desires but who remains true to another man, he pardons her and her beloved. Moreover, he relinquishes his political command and makes peace with his political enemies. Although the dramatic parallels to Temistocle are obvious, Bach’s second Mannheim opera is less open to reform than its predecessor in formal matters and musically less remarkable. It is thus that the overture has always attracted much more attention than the opera itself. The overture is regarded as one of Bach’s best orchestral works of all. Forster published it without any changes at all in the printed collection of symphonic works forming Bach’s op. 18. The concentrated allegro with its festive dotted chord beats at the beginning is followed by an andante with an extremely beautiful melody. Its hymnic theme, looking back almost yearningly on a fading idyll, numbers among Bach’s most powerful ideas.

Amadis des Gaules (G 39)

Overture in D major:

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro

Ballet Music:

1. Gavotte
2. Ballet
3. Air (lent)
4. Allegro
5. Choeur (Allegro)
6. Ballet (Adagio)
7. Choeur (Allegro)
8. Ballet (Adagio assai)
9. Ballet (Allegro maestoso)
10. Gavotte (Allegretto)
11. Ariette et choeur
12. Tambourin

Bach did not conclude his career as an opera composer where one might have expected him to do so, say, in London or Italy. He wrote his last (and perhaps best) opera in 1778/79 for the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris. He received this commission not so much because of his reputation as an opera composer but because his instrumental works enjoyed a wide circulation in Paris. A good many of his symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and chamber compositions were printed by publishers operating in the French capital.

Bach’s Amadis des Gaules based on an already quite old libretto by Philippe Quinault got caught up in the midst of the aesthetic debates being carried on by Parisians about the “true form” of the opera, a question bound up with the priority of a national style, by which the French style and the Italian style were meant. One of these controversies, the quarrel between the “Gluck party”, which represented the French tradition, and the “Piccini party”, which preferred the Italian style, created a stir in Paris during the years prior to Bach’s Amadis. The Académie Royale, which had presented Gluck’s operas on the stage, may have thought of drawing Bach too into the conflict. At least the program assigning him the task of composing music for a libretto which had been set by Lully in 1684 cannot simply he disregarded. In any event, the opera had to he shortened from five acts to three (with Alphonse Marie Denis de Vismes doing the editing job), which was already occasion for criticism. Bach himself does not seem to have been fully aware of the fact that he was supposed to become involved in an aesthetic controversy with his new work. He had spent the winter of 1778/79 in London and had completed the opera there. In August 1779 he traveled to Paris, where the press was eagerly awaiting him. When Amadis des Gaules was finally presented before the queen in the Palais Royal of the Opéra on December 14, 1779, it was a failure and was quickly forgotten.

The compromise formed by Amadis between the French style and the Italian style at the time would not have made either of the two parties happy. As was obligatory for the French opera, all three acts end with divertissements; they take the form of ballet inserts and are only loosely connected with the action. All the recitatives are accompanied by the orchestra, which also represents a feature corresponding to Gluck’s style. On the other side, however, Bach draws on the aria types of the Italian opera, on their virtuosity and extended da capo form, which normally was not employed in France. The overture with its three interconnected movements also represents the Italian type. For its part, however, the subject matter featuring some fairy-tale elements contrasts with most Italian libretti in that it is set in the world of chivalric romance and goes back to a late-medieval source. Magicians and knights, demons and fairies are the main characters of this love story centering on Amadis, a knight who must defend his love for Oriane against magic intrigues but triumphs in the end.

The characterful, colorful overture leaves behind the model of the attention-grabbing opera sinfonia of the mid-eighteenth century, which was composed only with its opening function in mind. The gifted symphonist shows his hand and confirms his lineage as the youngest of Bach’s sons everywhere in the masterful and nuanced design. After the first overture movement has ended on the dominant with a quite unfinished effect, a bucolic andante immediately follows with beautiful solo wind passages. The allegro following it in turn is nothing other than the continuation of the first movement and thus brings the expected completion of the same. The first two movements of the overture are reused in the Symphony op. 18 no. 6, albeit in revised form. In the symphony two dance movements from the opera replace the concluding allegro of the overture. Whether Bach himself undertook this revision or it was supplied by Forster, who may also have put together the whole symphony edition of op. 18, remains an open question.

Ten movements from the last scene of Act III and the finale of the opera occupy the center the ballet music compiled for this recording. The lovers Amadis and Oriane have finally been united and are acclaimed by the retinue of the good fairy Urgande in a “Fête de l’Arc des Loyaux Amants”. Dance movements in which the baroque heritage of Rameau is clearly audible and choruses of joy occur in sequence. Prior to this, an A major gavotte from the seventh scene of Act I is heard. (It is the third movement in the Symphony op. 18 no. 6.) An effective D major allegro in rondo form from the end of Act II (superscribed “Tambourin” owing to its instrumentation with piccolo and percussion) forms the conclusion of the suite.

Andreas Friesenhagen

(C... *) = Thematic Catalogue of JCB’s works by Ernest Warburton
New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1999