Exquisite Delight

Exquisite Delight

»I must fear, that […] we shall in time lose the elegance and Expression, which have so often charmed us, in a cantabile song; and that the exquisite delight which the adagio movement of an Abel […] has inspired will be unknown to us.«

When Carl Friedrich Abel died in London on 20 June 1787, he had been at the centre of London musical life for nearly 30 years, shaping the musical scene as composer, performer and teacher. Abel was born on 22 December 1723 in Köthen into a musical family. His father Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761) was violinist and viol player at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen (1694–1728). Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) who arrived at Köthen in 1717 was godfather to Christian Ferdinand Abel’s first daughter Sophie-Charlotte (* 6 January 1720). It is possible that Carl Friedrich Abel received music lessons from Bach in Leipzig during his stay there in the early 1740s. In 1745 Abel secured an employment as viol player at the court in Dresden, where he stayed until at least 1755. After touring Europe as performer with concerts documented in Frankfurt, Mannheim and Paris, he arrived in London in early 1759 and quickly became a central protagonist of the musical scene of the city. He was granted a royal printing privilege for the publication of his compositions in 1760. Two years later, he was appointed chamber musician to Queen Charlotte (1744–1818). In 1765 Abel set up the famous Bach-Abel-concerts in collaboration with Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782), who had also settled in London. The concert series with 10 to 15 concerts a year proved to be highly influential for the musical taste of the London public. Abel published a wide range of chamber music for the burgeoning amateur music market and also several collections of symphonies and overtures for orchestra.

Abel gave his debut concert at the Great Room on Dean Street in Soho on 5 April 1759. He was the first musician to perform on the viol in a public concert in London for 25 years. Abel’s popularity brought about a small but prominent renaissance of viol playing amongst English amateurs and musician colleagues: the writer Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), the artist, author and musician Ann Ford (1737–1824), Elizabeth Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1737–1831), Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, and the painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) were among the amateurs inspired to pick up the instrument by Abel. Two professional cellists, Walter Clagget (1742–1798) and Stephen Paxton (1734–1787), started performing on the viol and the violin virtuoso Wilhelm Cramer (1749–1799) as well as François Hippolyte Barthélemon (1741–1808), who both took composition lessons with Abel, also learned to play the viol.

This renewed interest in the viol a hundred years after the golden period of viol music in England had ended was on the one hand influenced by Abel’s brilliant and expressive viol playing. On the other hand, the delicate and resonant sound of the viol accorded well with the modern ideal of sensibility. Thus an amateur could exhibit his choice taste as well as his sensitive persona by playing the viol. The anonymous author of an obituary, which appeared in The Daily Universal Register on 23 June 1787, makes this link between Abel’s music and sensibility explicit: »The death of Abel occasions a great loss to the musical world. Sensibility is the prevailing and beautiful characteristic of his compositions. – He was the Sterne of Music – the one wrote, the other composed to the soul.« There is another contemporary anecdote linking Abel and Laurence Sterne: one evening Abel improvised on the touching deathbed scene of the lieutenant Le Fevre from Tristram Shandy, »till he brought Tears into the Eyes of his Hearers«.

Apart from England, viol playing was still being cultivated at German courts in the late 18th century. The viol had always been associated with nobility and aristocracy and thus the instrument was thought fit for princes and dukes. Often, not only the distinguished sound of the viol but also its highly decorated exterior would mark out the player as someone special and high-ranking. Even more lavish, baryton instruments exceeded viols in grandeur and ornamentation: they had 6 or 7 gut strings to be bowed and in addition up to 27 brass strings, which heightened the resonance of the instrument and which also could be plucked with the left hand. The most famous exponent of this instrument was Prince Nikolaus I. Joseph Esterházy de Galantha (1714–1790). Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), Kapellmeister at Esterházy since 1766, composed more then 126 trios and several other works for baryton for his employer. In 1769 Andreas Lidl (c1750 – before 1788) gained a post as baryton player at the court in Esterházy. He also played the cello and the viol and presumably acted as a tutor to the prince, too. After leaving the court in 1774, Lidl toured Europe as viol and baryton virtuoso. He arrived 1777 in London and, from then on, he appeared almost exclusively as a baryton player – possibly in order to find his own niche in a town where Abel prominently occupied the position as the outstanding viol virtuoso. Lidl published numerous collections with instrumental compositions, mostly for string instruments, in London. His duos, trios and quartets proved highly popular during the late 18th century and several works were reprinted on the continent in Paris and The Hague.

Franz Xaver Hammer (1740–1817) was also a member of the court orchestra at Esterházy under Haydn’s direction. Born in Oettingen in South Germany, he was baptized there on 4 October 1740. Nothing is known about his musical studies or his employments prior to arriving at Esterházy in 1771. His substantial starting salary of 100 ducats suggests that he had already established his reputation as cello and viol virtuoso at that point. In 1775 Hammer played a cello concerto of his own composition in between the two parts of Haydn’s oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia and one or both of the cello concertos by Haydn were possibly written for Hammer. A concert review in the Preßburger Zeitung on 24 November 1779 gives us an impression of Hammer’s excellence as performer and composer: »The princely virtuoso Xaverius Hammer was heard on the violoncello in a concerto of his own composition in the most impressive manner. The ears, engrossed and filled with pleasantness, were unable to decide, whether the craft of his composition or the exceedingly felicitous performance merited higher praise and fame.« The year before, Hammer had moved from Esterházy to Bratislava into the employment of Cardinal Joseph Batthyány (1727–1799). In 1785 Hammer received a post as chamber musician at the court of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Ludwigslust. There he met Carl Friedrich Abel’s older brother Leopold August (1718–1794), who had been concert master in Ludwigslust since 1769. Hammer continued to enjoy a high reputation as a virtuoso on the viol and the cello and appeared as a soloist at court until at least 1813, when he was 73 years old. It remains pure speculation if Hammer knew Abel’s music for viol via his brother. Carl Friedrich visited Ludwigslust in 1783 on his last European journey, which brought him also to the court of the Prussian crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm (1744–1797) in Potsdam. Yet no viol music by Abel is extant in the music collection of the court of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

Extraordinarily, Hammer’s personal viol is still identifiable: it was built by Johann Joseph Stadlmann (1720–1781) in 1778 in Vienna and is now located in the collection of the state library of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in Schwerin. Five sonatas for viol and bass written by Hammer are also extant at the music collection of the library. Some of this music seems to originate from Hammer’s and Andreas Lidl’s common time at the court in Esterházy, because several pieces are also included in a Paris manuscript where they are ascribed to Lidl.

Franz Xaver Hammer’s sonata in D-major for viola da gamba and violoncello (D-SWl, Mus.2285/4) is an example of such a composition from around 1770. The brilliant Allegro Spirituoso serves as an ouverture to this recording, while the following Adagio cantabile immerses the listener in the particular sound world of Empfindsamkeit. Full of expressive chromatic alterations and virtuoso embellishments of a floating, timeless character, the movement is the central musical event of the sonata. The concluding Tempo di Menuetto – Rondeau returns to courtly conventions after the outburst of personal sensibility and expression in the Adagio and the listener is invited to take delight in the well-ordered patterns of the dance.

Hammer’s Adagio in A-major (Track 10) is the first movement from his Sonatta à Viola di Gamba (D-SWl, Mus.2285/1). The scope and the tone of this sonata, in which the first movement alone lasts as long as a complete baroque sonata, point to a later compositional date around 1800. The many arpeggios in different guises, which reach up into the highest register of the viol, imitate the rich resonance of the baryton and define the magical sound world of this movement.

A stately and proud gesture defines the opening Moderato of Andreas Lidl’s sonata in C-major for viola da gamba and violoncello (F-Pn, Vm7-6298/1). Highly idiomatic figurations and a refined resonance pay tribute to the instrumental virtuoso Lidl. The extremely expressive middle movement is a masterly written cantilena, which brings time to a standstill and which takes the viol into its highest register. The following Rondeau starts with a rhythmical, folksy theme. The drone bass on the open G-string of the viol and the second couplet, which imitates the sounds of a dulcimer, bring to mind some Hungarian compositions by Joseph Haydn. While this sonata probably originated as music for Lidl’s own use as viol and baryton virtuoso, all three movements also appear in modified versions in his Six Solos for a Violin and Bass (Op. 9), which he published in London around 1780. Since there were hardly any amateur viol players but an increasing amount of violin amateurs, this was a reasonable move to market his compositions.

In view of Carl Friedrich Abel’s status as the foremost viol virtuoso of the late 18th century the small body of surviving works for viol by him must be only a fraction of his compositional output for the instrument. The majority of his extant sonatas for viol and bass come from the music collections of two aristocrats, Elizabeth Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, and Count Joachim Carl Maltzan (1733–1817). The so-called »Pembroke Manuscript« (GB-Lbl, Add. MS 31697) includes a sonata for viol and bass and several pieces for viol solo in Abel’s own handwriting. In addition, the manuscript contains two sets of 15 viol sonatas by Abel not in his hand and an anonymous transcription of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s aria »In diesen heil’gen Hallen« from the Zauberflöte for viol solo.

Count Joachim Carl Maltzan lived in London from 1764 until 1784. He was Prussian envoy in town and probably played the viol himself. A collection of 30 sonatas for viol from his estate is now located at the library of the Adam-Mickiewicz-University Poznan: 28 sonatas of the collection are by Abel (including some autographs) and the other two compositions are by Andreas Lidl und Johann Christian Bach.

Three sonatas by Abel are recorded on this CD and they testify to his compositional creativity and the wide range of musical styles in which Abel was perfectly well versed. The Duetto in D-major (AbelWV B73) can be found in the »Pembroke Manuscript« as well as in the Maltzan-collection and it is exquisite, pleasing music for the nobility and the bourgeoisie. The first movement is a bright and merry Allegro, in which the viol and the cello share the melodic material and bask in sweet parallel thirds. The optimistic character, expectable harmonic progressions and moderate demands on the technical capabilities of the performer provide uncomplicated musical entertainment for the player and her audience. The sonata misses the traditional slow and pensive middle movement; instead, a gallant Rondeau in form of a minuet concludes this short composition.

The sonata in g-minor from the Maltzan-collection (AbelWV B92) has a far more virtuosic viol part. The first upbeat of an ascending minor sixth in the melody and the melancholic appoggiatura on the first bar draw the listener immediately into the sound world of sensibility, as it was cultivated in England and Europe in the late 18th century. The slow middle movement is a particularly beautiful elegy and sounding proof for Abel’s fame as a master of the adagio. As Charles Burney noted in his History of Music: »Yet in nothing was he so superior to himself, and to other musicians, as in writing and playing an adagio; in which the most pleasing, yet learned modulation; the richest harmony; and the most elegant and polished melody were all expressed with such feeling, taste, and science, that no musical production or performance […] seemed to approach nearer perfection.«

Abel’s sonata in e-minor (AbelWV B39) is one of the few sonatas that have been transmitted outside the above-mentioned two collections. The work is part of the Prussian royal music collection, now located at the Staatsbibliothek Berlin. Abel composed the sonata on his European journey in 1782/3 in Potsdam and the music testifies to Abel’s impressive ability to match his compositional style to local norms and expectations without losing his personal characteristic sound. Style as well as the form of the piece are clearly inspired by works of Berlin composers, such as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788) or Christoph Schaffrath (1709–1764): the first movement is slow and profound, the second an extensive Allegro and a light fast movement concludes the sonata. The opening Siciliano is full of chromatic alterations and melancholic appoggiaturas. It is a prime example of musical Empfindsamkeit, doleful and comforting at the same time. A solo cadenza stands at the end of the first movement, a feature, which can be found regularly in the works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. The following Allegro is marked by abrupt changes of character and affect within a couple of bars, while the final Presto is more unified in its elated spirit.

Abel’s private music, which he played before his friends and colleagues, was fundamentally different from his public performances: »justly admired as he was at his publick Performances, it was a few only of his intimate Friends in private who were Witnesses of his most wonderful musical Powers, to come at which, a Bottle or two of good Burgundy before him, and his Viol di Gambo within his Reach, were necessary«.

Naturally, such spontaneous improvisations were not written down and thus we have to count ourselves lucky that an autograph collection of pieces and cadenzas for viol solo has survived in the so-called »Drexel-manuscript« (US-NYp, Drexel MS 5871). Three solos from the collection are included on this recording and they continue to astonish the listener for their fantasy and daring modulations. The Adagio in d-minor is a free floating lament, which oscillates between highly expressive sections of personal grief and the expanse of the virtuosic ornamentation. In the Allegretto in A-major Abel appears as musical jester: the folksy composition is full of surprises and exhibits a playful enjoyment of instrumental virtuosity. The Adagio in D-major is a dreamy nocturne, in which the sounds glimmer like stars on the firmament. In the mind of at least one 18th-century writer, the viol was directly linked to the night: for Christian Friedrich David Schubart (1739–1791) the viol was an instrument »of exceptional charm. Nocturnes can be performed on it marvelously and, in general, anything graceful and tender.« Presumably, it was the performance of such slow movements with which Abel inspired »exquisite delight« in the hearts of his listeners.

The recording ends with a piece of music that leads us away from the universe of viol music and sensibility. The transcription of the Sarastro’s aria »In diesen heil’gen Hallen« from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute is included in the »Pembroke manuscript«. A later hand added the anonymous transcription into the collection of Abel’s music. In Sarastro’s aria the personal expression of the composer and performer give way to the presentation of universal wisdom:

Within these sacred bowers,
The wretch shall find repose,
No gloomy vengeance lowers,
Soft pity heals his woes.
While friendship’s hand his steps shall stay
And hope shall point to brighter day.
Here, far from noise and folly,
Fraternal love presides;
And sweetest melancholy,
A hallow’d guest resides:
If scenes like these thy heart can share,
Then bide a welcome pilgrim here.

(The English translation is taken from the earliest extant English version of the aria published by Monzani & Cimador around 1800 under the title »Within these sacred Bowers. Canzoneta«. This publication shares some variants and the transposed key of G-major with the anonymous arrangement for viol and it may well have been the basis for the transcription.)
 
Thomas Gainsborough and Carl Friedrich Abel

»Poor Abel died at about one o’clock today. […] For my part I shall never cease looking up to heaven – the little while I have to stay behind – in hopes of getting one more glance of the man I loved from the moment I heard him touch the string.«

These were Thomas Gainsborough’s words in a letter to a friend after he learned of Abel’s death in 1787. Abel and Gainsborough first met in Bath in February 1760 and they developed a fruitful artistic friendship over the next decades. Abel visited Gainsborough several times and he possessed a couple of paintings by him: apart from the two portraits painted by Gainsborough Abel owned at least two more landscape paintings and the picture of his Pomeranian bitch and puppy, which adorns the cover of this CD.

An anecdote describes the arrival of the painting at Abel’s home: »the deception was so complete that the elder subject, irritated at the presence of a supposed rival, flew at her own resemblance with such fury that it was found necessary to place the picture in a situation where it was free from her jealous anger«.

Gainsborough’s musical interests were highly varied and he spared neither time nor money to pursue them obsessively. During the course of his life he learned to play the violin, oboe, harp, cello and the viol. According to contemporary sources Gainsborough was regularly inspired by hearing the greatest virtuosos to pick up their instruments. The violinist Felice Giardini (1716–1796), the oboist Johann Christian Fischer (1733–1800) and the cellist John Crosdill (1751–1825) were his musical idols apart from Abel, whose playing repeatedly brought him back to the viol as his favourite instrument. In each instance, Gainsborough became obsessed with the actual instruments of the performers and hoped that he would attain their musical powers just by acquiring their instruments. He acquired one of Abel’s viols, too, supposedly in exchange for one of the portraits of the musician.

A letter from 1769 testifies how music was an essential aspect of life for Gainsborough: »I’m sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my Viol de Gam[bo] and walk off to some sweet Village where I can paint Landskips and enjoy the fag End of Life in quietness & ease. […] My Comfort is, I have 5 Viol’s da Gamba, 3 Jayes and two Barak Normans«. There remains a slight chance that the viol heard on this recording, which was built by Barak Norman in London in 1722, was one of these two viols in Gainsborough’s household…

Viktor Töpelmann, 2023

Recorded march 14–17, 2023

Location: Cavalli Records Studio, Bamberg (Germany)
Balance engineer & recording producer: Jonas Niederstadt
Cover painting: Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Pomeranian Bitch and Puppy (c1777), oil on canvas, 832 × 1118 mm, © Tate, Photo: Tate
Page 3 photography: Julian Weiß
Page 17: Thomas Gainsborough, Karl Friedrich Abel (c1777), oil on canvas, 88 3/4 x 59 1/2 in. (225.4 x 151.1 cm.), The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Produced by Jonas Niederstadt

© 2023 Carpe Diem Records