Martinez Sinfonia in C Major

Martines is the first known female composer to write a symphony. This is her only surviving symphonic work but it is likely she wrote others, just as it is also likely that other female composers wrote symphonies at the around the same time or earlier which have not been preserved. In an era that often resisted women taking a public role in any profession, Martines, who lived in Vienna and counted Haydn and Mozart as colleagues, managed to tread a fine line in being accepted and acclaimed as a musician. She was the first woman inducted into the illustrious Accademia filarmonica of Bologna, and was evidently an extremely accomplished singer and harpsichord player. Charles Burney (who called Stamitz’s orchestra in Mannheim an ‘army of generals’) wrote that her performance of her own songs ‘surpassed all that I had been made to expect’.

Other women composers in Vienna (notably Coccia) were subject to a public backlash against their professional careers but three factors most probably helped Martines to prevail: 1) her many professional connections partly made through performing at and hosting musical soirees 2) the support of her mentor Metastasio (who wrote opera librettos for Mozart among others) 3) careful management of her public persona by portraying herself as a dilettante and publishing her lighter works rather than her more learned ones.

Martines initially titled this work as an Overture and it is a clear example of how the origins of the symphony lie in Italian opera, which often opened with a sequence of fast-slow-fast movements in binary form. Overall the sinfonia is clearly in the Galant style, in particular its elegant middle movement and the lively finale. The first movement, however, is full of dramatic gestures and contrasts (perhaps reflecting Martines background as primarily a vocal composer) that is comparable to the dramatic style of C.P.E. Bach.

© Tom Pankhurst

Mozart Piano Concerto No.23 in A Major K.488

Boulogne Symphony No.2 in D Major, Op.11 No.2

A pioneer, polymath, and one of the most remarkable figures of the 18th century, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges’s career trajectory spanned humble beginnings on a plantation in Guadalupe to regularly performing in duet with Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. An accomplished swordsman, swimmer, dancer, composer and violinist, Saint-Georges attained stature and influence such as had been never achieved by a musician of African descent. Even when faced with prejudice and career setbacks, his compositions demonstrate a refinement of style and substance that made his success in French court circles all the more evident.

The three movements of Saint-Georges’s Symphony No. 2 comprises a re-formulation of the overture to the composer’s opera L’Amant Anonyme (“The Anonymous Lover”). Central are two stylistic themes; one of the brilliant, sprightly instrument style cultivated by the Mannheim School of symphonists, and the other the tuneful, voice-like melodic invention found in arias and other operatic writing of the era. Scored for modest orchestra forces (strings, oboes, and horns), the symphony opens with energetic fanfares that map out the movement’s tonal center. Contrasting these by-now-established initial structures are graceful passages for strings that trip about daintily and offer a respite from the brash utterances that continuously reappear. The Andante movement opens with scenes from a measured, stately minuet in ¾ time; the signature dance of European nobility in the mid-18th century. Saint-Georges adds a degree of complexity by opting for his supporting string forces to enter in sequence, an effect that resembles the canonic writing of the baroque masters. Torrid, driving momentum characterizes the writing of the finale; here, Saint-Georges utilizes devices that would become a recognizable feature of the later Classicists, namely Mozart and Salieri: upper strings outlining suspended closing cadences while lower strings rush upwards in driving, insistent passages.

© Kemper Edwards

Haydn Symphony No.83, ‘La Poule’

I               Allegro spiritoso

II              Andante

III             Minuetto

IV             Finale: vivace

Despite Haydn’s singular seclusion at Eszterháza, by the early 1770s his music had spread far and wide across Europe, to places as distant from Austro-Hungary as Spain and England. Parisians in particular took Haydn’s music to their hearts as shown by the large number of local publications of his works, with as many by other composers passed off under his name. Haydn therefore particularly favoured Paris when responding for commissions from abroad; the most important of these resulted in the six so-called ‘Paris’ symphonies, numbers 82 to 87.

Concert life in Paris during the eighteenth century (and indeed later) was organised by various societies that ran orchestras, staged musical events and even held competitions. The best known of them was the Concert Spirituel, but the most significant in terms of Haydn’s symphonies was the Concert de la Loge Olympique, based in the theatre-like surroundings of the Salle de Spectacle de la Société Olympique. Founded in 1769 as the Concert des Amateurs with the Belgian-born composer François Gossec as its conductor, the Loge Olympique, as it was renamed in 1780, was run by a group of Freemasons.

Principal among them was one of the most important late-eighteenth-century Parisian musical patrons, Claude-François-Marie Rigoley, Comte d’Ogny (1757-1790). It was

at his instigation that in about 1784 the Loge Olympique commissioned six symphonies from Haydn (he later also commissioned numbers 90, 91 and 92).

Haydn’s native inventiveness is revealed in the counterpoint between the earnest G minor opening and the naive humour of his ‘clucking’, major-key second subject, from which the symphony derives its nickname, The Hen. It is in fact a work in which the major key comes to dominate: the first movement itself is brought to a close in a triumphant G major.

The Andante is in E flat and is a movement full of dramatic dynamic contrasts. The following Minuetto and Trio are both in G, and so is the lively finale with its continuous, busy quaver movement of a sprightly galop.

© Elizabeth Boulton