Ensemble Caprice
directed by Matthias Maute

Purchase Tickets: $64, $49, $38, $25

PROGRAM NOTES

The Uhrovska collection of 1730 (named for the eponymous town in present-day Slovakia where it was found) is a fascinating document that provides a direct glimpse into the world of gypsy music. The approximately 350 melodies it contains were probably intended to be as comprehensive a collection of gypsy music as possible. Its multi-national character documents the extent to which the gypsies—and with them their music—traveled. Hungarian melodies stand next to Czech songs and the location where the Uhrovska was discovered in Slovakia suggests further ethnic influences.

Contrary to the oral tradition of the gypsies, in essence without written record, a traveling master violinist must have attempted to assemble the music of his people into a comprehensive “catalogue.” Few gypsies would have studied notation and so we must infer that Uhrovska was compiled by a traveling musician who had come into contact with the educated classes of his time. In this case, he utilized a kind of shorthand, leaving plenty of room for creativity.

Apart from a few exceptions, the music in the Uhrovska collection is notated in a single voice and therefore the bass line and the harmonic and rhythmic fleshing-out in the mid-range would have been improvised. Thus, it was implied that the pieces would be arranged ad hoc by gypsy bands. We have adopted this practice and expanded the melodies into multi-voiced pieces.

The melodies contain surprising twists that can make harmonizing in the traditional Baroque sense impossible. The eventful history of the Sinti and Roma, who found their way to Europe during the Middle Ages from their origins in India, has left its traces here and it is impossible to establish exactly how this music would have sounded. We have attempted to do justice to the inner richness of these melodies with arrangements that are as diverse as possible.

That the rough and fresh Gypsy music could have exerted a great fascination for composers such as Vivaldi, Telemann, or Schmelzer became obvious to us because the undercurrent of kinship between these two different musical styles is too insistent to ignore.

Schmelzer lived in Vienna, not far from the gypsy musicians in the Balkans. His ballet music La bella zingara (The Beautiful Gypsy Girl) was designed for the Emperor’s court, but at the same time it brought to life a spectacle that all Viennese citizens must have enjoyed at the time: exotic gypsy musicians playing their extraordinary music.

In Telemann’s case, the connection is also quite obvious, since he moved to Sorau (now Zary, Poland) in 1705, where he worked for a while as Kapellmeister at the court of Count Erdmann II of Promnitz. In one of his autobiographies, Telemann comments that listening to gypsy music for one week can inspire a serious composer for the rest of his life. It comes therefore as no surprise that his own compositions often reflect gypsy influences.

For some of the other composers in our program, the link is somewhat less direct. The principle of theme with variation enjoyed widespread popularity among both court composers and itinerant gypsies. In 1553, the Spanish composer Diego Ortiz published striking examples of highly developed variations on steady bass patterns. His embellishments of Pierre Sandrin’s madrigal Doulce memoire combine the flow of fast runs with expressive melodies, a practice that had been the unique privilege of expressive singers. Ortiz’s pieces clearly mark the beginning of the emancipation of instrumentalists, who became stars in their own right, no longer in the shadow of singers.

In a similar way, Uccellini’s Bergamasca and Falconiero’s La Follia are examples of seventeenth-century Italian composers with the same folkloristic concept in mind. The brilliant variations that both ingenious minds succeed in putting above an apparently simple bass line are wonderful examples of creativity within the harmonic language of the Baroque period. The limited number of chords that are used (only three in Uccellini’s case) leave plenty of room for improvisation and the flourishing upper parts are clearly drenched in the spirit of “wild” and passionate gypsy music.

For Vivaldi, the connection with gypsy music is surprisingly easy to establish. As a virtuoso and composer, he traveled widely. He is known to have attended performances of his operas in Prague and also Vienna, which took him close to the Balkans, and it is likely that he encountered nomadic musicians during these excursions. But this is only one indication. More important is the fact that Vivaldi taught for many years at the Ospedale della Pietà, the orphanage school famous for its shining musical life. This institution (in reality a home for the illegitimate daughters of noblemen) was located on the Riva degli Schiavi, the Slavic Quay. One can easily imagine how travelers arriving from Eastern European countries would perform their music with their instruments and songs, practically on Vivaldi’s doorstep! The assumption in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians about Vivaldi’s style suddenly becomes quite logical: “His melody shows a penchant for Lombardic rhythms and for syncopation-betraying, perhaps, Venice’s connection with Dalmatia and the Slavonic hinterland” (Grove,Vol. XX, p.38).

The striking relationship between gypsy music of the eighteenth century and some specific compositions by the “classical” Baroque composers like Telemann and Vivaldi reveals a fascinating aspect of music which is created on the spur of the moment during the performance—a spirit of improvisation that shines through the music of both genres.

— Matthias Maute

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