The Mad Lover
Program
John Eccles (1668-1735)
Ouverture from “The Mad Lover”
John Blow (1649-1708)
from “Venus and Adonis”
Dance of the Cupids, Saraband of the Graces, A Ground
Carlo Farina (1600-1640)
Carpiccio Stravagante
Capriccio Stravagante, Lira Variata, Qui si batte col legno, La Gallina, Il Gallo, Il Fiferino della Soldatesca, Il Gatto, Il Cane, La Chitarra Spagnola
John Eccles
from “The Mad Lover”
Slow Air, Air V
Francesco Durante (1684-1755)
Concerto No. 8 in A major “La Pazzia”
1st movement
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
from “The virtuous wife”
Slow Air, Quick Air, Hornpipe
Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783)
Fuga and Adagio in G minor
John Eccles (1668-1735)
Ouverture from “The Mad Lover”
John Blow (1649–1708)
from “Venus and Adonis”
Dance of the Cupids, Sarabande of the Graces, A Ground
Carlo Farina (1600–1640)
Capriccio Stravagante
Capriccio Stravagante, Lira Variata, Qui si batte col legno, La Gallina, Il Gallo, Il Fiferino della Soldatesca, Il Gatto, Il Cane, La Chitarra Spagnola
John Eccles (1668-1735)
from “The Mad Lover”
Slow Air, Air V
Francesco Durante (1684–1755)
Concerto No. 8 in A major “La Pazzia”
1st movement
Henry Purcell (1659–1695)
from “The virtuous wife”
Slow Air, Quick Air & Hornpipe
Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783)
Fuga and Adagio in G minor
What is madness? In the Baroque era, this question was not a clinical one, but a poetic – and a musical – one. In addition to the lively “Folia” (madness), which has its origins in the folk traditions of Southern Europe, also the northern countries knew their own distinct forms of madness. There, melancholy was considered the noblest of the four humors, a sign of a sensitive, artistic disposition that feels deeply and threatens to be shattered by that very depth. Heartbreak, despair, rebellion against an indifferent world: all of this found its most direct expression in the music of the 17th and early 18th centuries. This program brings together works that explore these frontiers of human experience in a wide variety of ways – from heart-wrenching grief to ecstatic exuberance, from painful lament to a complete loss of control.
The concert is framed by John Eccles (1668-1735) and his stage music for “The Mad Lover”, a play by the Jacobean dramatist John Fletcher about a soldier who loses his mind due to unrequited love. Eccles was a composer at the royal court and one of the most influential theater musicians of his time – his music captures the sound of the soul when it begins to falter: expressive, fragile, at times almost dance-like in its lightness, and at other times marked by a dark, pressing heaviness.
Eccles’ mentor, John Blow (1649-1708), created “Venus and Adonis”, a work now considered the earliest surviving English opera. Under Blow’s pen, the graceful pastoral is transformed into a true tragedy. The goddess of love falls in love with the mortal hunter Adonis – and, driven by unwise desire, sends him to his death. Adonis dies in her arms, and Venus laments, striking up a funeral march. What remains is a pain beyond consolation, which, in its unfulfilled longing, finds release in the form of a sublime melancholy. Blow wrote this sole stage work for the court of Charles II – his young pupil Eccles carried on the art of composing this kind of stage music in the spirit of Blow.
With Carlo Farina (c.1600-c.1640), the program enters an entirely different world of madness: one of eccentric humor and musical grotesque. Farina’s “Capriccio stravagante”, published in Dresden in 1627, is one of the most avant-garde works from a highly experimental phase in music history. Farina uses the violin to imitate animal sounds – such as barking dogs and fighting cats – as well as trumpets, shawms, organs, and guitars. The piece is a sonic cabinet of curiosities, a collection of musical oddities – and at the same time a serious virtuoso piece that pushes the capabilities of the violin, then still a relatively new instrument, to their limits. Madness appears here as creative liberation: “stravagante” means nothing less than extravagant, fantastic, and strange.
Henry Purcell (1659-1695), a student of Blow and the consummate master of 17th-century English Baroque music, represents another facet with his incidental music for “The Virtuous Wife”: Here it is not madness, but wit, the grotesque, yet also grace and the sweetness of unfulfilled longing that permeate the music. Purcell was the English master of “affetto”, that art of transforming emotions into sound without ever exaggerating them. In his plays, the music conveys what language alone cannot express.
Francesco Durante (1684-1755) reveals his most radical side in his Concerto No. 8 in A major, to which he gave the programmatic title “La Pazzia” – Madness. The work’s shifting tempos and fluctuating moods range from confused and pensive to frenzied, alternating with interludes marked “affettuoso” in which the middle voices sing a love duet. The work is a peculiar composition that only superficially follows the established pattern of alternating tutti and solo sections – the strange sequence of ideas reflects a penchant for capricious expressions, which is also found in some of Vivaldi’s most advanced concertos.
The program concludes with Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783) and his Fuga e Adagio in G minor. Hasse, a native of Hamburg, traveled – like so many of his contemporaries – to Naples, where he studied with Alessandro Scarlatti and quickly rose to become one of Europe’s most celebrated opera composers. He became music director of the court opera in Dresden, where Rousseau described him as the leader of the best orchestra in the world. As a student of Scarlatti – and thus a musical heir to the Neapolitan tradition from which Durante also drew inspiration – he combines contrapuntal rigor with the melodic warmth of the galant style in this sonata. The Adagio sings with that quiet, contemplative melancholy that does not cry out but remains silent – and it is precisely this that touches the listener most deeply.
And so this program explores its theme from every angle: heartbreak and grief, ecstasy and madness, humor and quiet despair. What connects us to these composers, who wrote three to four hundred years ago, is a shared realization: the very core of the human being – their passions, their fractures, their longings – can be captured in musical notes. Perhaps even more powerfully than in words.