Ravinia 2019, Issue 2, Week 4

A heap of Louis d’or coins, which filled a goblet rewarded to Bach for the “Goldberg Variations.” A facultymember of the school of music at Northwestern University once facetiously suggested that all music ma- jors should be required to take a course in poverty, because mere musicianship will not necessarily put food on the table. If it’s true that there is no such thing as a free lunch, the same is true of music; some- one has to pay for it. In the earliest time of the Western art music we collectively call “clas- sical,” virtually the only source of income for a composer was the patronage of the royal families and wealthy noblemen. If the only surviving legacy of Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) was the unprecedent- ed flowering of music that occurred during her reign, the Elizabethan era would still be reckoned a Golden Age. On June 18 the Brit- ish vocal ensemble Stile Antico will explore this magnificent repertoire and the way mu- sic was used to curry favor with one of the greatest music patrons of all time. Since Elizabeth’s time, composers have found diverse ways to finance their careers, and a consideration of some of the compos- ers whose music will be performed at Ra- vinia this summer shows how cleverly their solutions evolved over the years. Following in the footsteps of the composers at the court of Queen Elizabeth was Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), one of the supreme masters of Baroque keyboard music. It was his role of music teacher to the Portuguese Princess Maria Barbara that resulted in his greatest legacy. He taught her keyboard in Lisbon from 1719 to 1727 and again beginning in 1733 in Ma- drid after she married into the Spanish royal house and later became queen. Scarlatti spent the rest of his life in Spain, and it was for Maria Barbara that he composed the more than 550 keyboard sonatas upon which his fame rests. (A sampling of these sonatas and later works inspired by them will be present- ed by pianist Alon Goldstein on September 8.) Born the same year as Scarlatti, Johann Sebastian Bach (d. 1750) was concerned most of his life with the creation of music for the Lutheran church, primarily more than 200 can- tatas intended for liturgical use. The church where Bach served as cantor, however, displayed less largesse than a wealthy monarch, and with his enormous family—he had 22 children, although only 10 survived to adulthood—additional income was always welcome. Like countless other composers in need, he tried dedicating some of his works to someone he hoped would become his patron. Such dedications were often obsequious to an almost embarrassing degree; Bach’s dedication of his six most famous concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg concludes with him “begging Your Highness most humbly not to judge their imperfection with the rigor of that discriminating and sensitive taste, which everyone knows Him to have for musical works, but rather to take into benign Consideration the profound respect and the most humble obedience which I thus attempt to show Him.” Unfortunately Bach groveled in vain, receiving no remuneration from the Margrave. He fared much better with the “Goldberg Variations” he wrote for Count Kaiserling, who presented him with a golden goblet filled with gold coins. (This evergreen collection will be played on harpsichord, the instrument it was written for, by Jory Vinikour on August 30.) Composers needed clever commitments to keep themselves in coin By J o hn Sch a uer JUNE 17 – JUNE 30, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 23