Our program this evening, though devoted nearly entirely to the work of a single composer and played by only two performers, nonetheless offers a wide variety of timbres for the discerning ear to savor. We open with the first of the six suites Johann Sebastian Bach composed in Cöthen about 1720 a Violoncello Solo senza Basso, that is, for a solo violoncello without the accompaniment of a bass line. The quasi-improvisatory first movement belongs to the “pattern prelude” genre in which a series of elaborated and arpeggiated chords is strung together with snippets of connective tissue to produce a short piece of surprising power. There follows a “suite” of five dances, with the four common to all six of Bach’s unaccompanied cello works—Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue—enlivened by a pair of Menuets, played alternativement, or in ABA order, in the penultimate position.

The etymology of “violoncello” is tied to advances in string technology. In 17th century Italy, the bass member of the violin family was called the violone, the suffix  -one denoting large size, hence “big violin” (violino  + one). When string makers discovered how to wind metal wire on gut cores, they found that the resulting strings, being denser than those of pure gut, could produce the low pitches that had previously needed extra length which required of the player an extended left-hand position, and also were quicker to speak. Surviving instruments from this period, including by some famous Cremonese makers such as members of the Rugeri family, are often dismissed today as “three-quarter-” or ‘five-eighths-” sized instruments when compared to the “full size” standard—still well over an inch smaller than the violone—set by Stradivari in the first decade of the 18^th century. Though now frequently dismissed as “child’s” or even “lady’s” cellos, at the time of their manufacture they were cutting-edge tools designed for the new virtuoso literature that was being written for them. Cello is a diminutive, so the violoncello is, quite literally, a “small big violin” (violino  + one  + cello). By the middle of the 18^th century, cellists who desired to play solos in addition to participating in large ensembles were advised to have two instruments, a true violoncello for sonatas and unaccompanied pieces, and a larger instrument, closer to the 17^th-century violone, for orchestral work. Since that time, many of the larger instruments, including about thirty made by Stradivari, have been cut down to make them conform to the normal “full” size, and a number of the smaller celli have been meticulously enlarged for the same reason, such is the desire for conformity. The small Tononi instrument heard tonight has, fortuitously, escaped all modification, and even retains its original “baroque-style” neck and fittings.

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The Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903, is one of Bach’s stunning displays of his own wide-ranging harmonic imagination and keyboard brilliance. It survives in three differing versions, of which the first, like the cello suites, also originated in Cöthen, and is thus roughly contemporary with the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, with its equally extravagant solo harpsichord cadenza. The final version, heard here, probably dates from the 1730s. Curiously, while one might have expected to find numerous copies had Bach taught the work to his pupils (as was the case with many of his pieces), it seems that Bach reserved the piece for his own use. A contemporary description of Bach’s improvising at the keyboard specifically cited the Chromatic Fantasy as an example of his inventive style.

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The surviving harpsichords of the Antwerp-based maker Johann Daniel Dulcken include seven single-manual instruments (“singles”) and five doubles. Thanks to the availability of a detailed technical drawing made in the wake of its 1960-61 restoration by William Dowd, the Smithsonian’s Dulcken has been frequently copied since that time. The copies are recognizable not only by the instrument’s distinctive outline, which is unusually long, reflecting its scaling (string band layout), but also since most of them reproduce the twelve-bannister trestle stand, which is, however, not original to the instrument. The long scaling results in a brilliance and power of tone that is approached by the best of the copies. The Dulcken has three sets of strings for each key, two at normal pitch (in the organ-builder’s terminology adopted for harpsichords, “at eight-foot pitch,” or 8’), and one an octave higher (4’ pitch), each activated by a set (“register”) of jacks. A fourth register plucks one of the 8’ sets of strings close to the nut that defines one end of their speaking lengths, producing a pungent nasal sound called the “lute stop,” nasale, or Nazard.

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Carl Friedrich Abel’s father, Christian Ferdinand Abel, worked as principal viola da gamba player and cellist in the court orchestra of the gamba-playing Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, and has been thought by some to have been one of the possible players for whom the Bach cello suites were intended. Christian Ferdinand became director of the orchestra in 1723, when J. S. Bach, its previous director, took the position of Thomaskantor in Leipzig. Born that same year, Carl Friedrich eventually became Bach’s pupil at the St. Thomas school. With a recommendation from Bach, he joined the Dresden court orchestra in 1743. Abel moved to London fifteen years later, becoming chamber musician to Queen Charlotte in 1764, joining on her staff J. S. Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian (the “London Bach”), and with him starting a subscription concert series, the first of its kind in England. A decade later, the series moved to the The Hanover Square Rooms, assembly rooms established, principally for musical performances, on the corner of the fashionable Hanover Square by the impresario Sir John Gallini in partnership Bach and Abel. Though demolished in 1900, the Hanover Square Rooms remained the principal concert venue in London for nearly a century. A contemporary report opined:

April the 16th, 1776 Lord Fauconbery [sic] sent me a ticket for Bach and Abel’s Concert at the Assembly room in Hanover Square the performers were the two above mentioned, the second played a solo extremely well; the others were Giardini, who plays on the Violin surprising well as Cramer; Crosdill on the Violoncello plays exceeding well, Fischer on the hautboy the same, all Capital performers, Savoi, Grassi & several others sang; Signora Grassi has a surprising voice being a tenor, which is very singular and I think disagreeable. In all about 22 musicians; this concert is reckoned the best in the world, everything executed with the greatest taste and exactness; a very fine room 115 feet long 40 broad; it was almost full, everybody Dressed; very elegantly painted; between the acts they go in another room underneath where you have tea; it is by subscription; it begins at 8 and ends at 10 everything is elegant.

Two portraits of Abel painted by his friend Thomas Gainsborough (himself an amateur gamba player) exist, one in London’s National Portrait Gallery, the other in at The Huntington in San Marino, California.

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J. S. Bach left a total of eleven complete sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and a melodic instrument, six with violin, two with flute, and three with viola da gamba. The sonatas with violin or flute resemble the typical Italian mid-to-late-17^th-century trio sonata, exemplified by those of Corelli, in which two soprano voices unfurl over a bass line played by the left hand of the harpsichordist. In these instances, one of the upper voices taken by the harpsichordist’s right hand, the other by the “melody” instrument. For the three sonatas with viola da gamba, Bach turned to the late -17^th-century north German trio sonata, such as those by Erlebach or Buxtehude, in which the two “upper” voices are a violin and a viola da gamba (viz a soprano and a tenor), with the violin part assigned to the harpsichordist’s right hand. (There also exists a version of the G major “gamba sonata” for two flutes and continuo, proving that the downward octave transposition necessitated by the employment of the gamba does not alter the essential content of the music.)

For well over a century, the “gamba sonatas” were presumed to have been written pre-1723, during that remarkable period in Cöthen during which Bach produced so much chamber music. More recently, however, scholarship based on handwriting and watermark analysis of the only Bach-autograph source (a set of parts for the G major sonata entirely in Bach’s hand) suggests that that piece, at the very least, might have been written out in the late 1730s or early 1740s, perhaps for performance at one of the Collegium musicum concerts Bach organized. This revised dating is of interest for our program because it was exactly at this time that the younger Abel was present, and studying with Bach, in Leipzig. Though we have no direct evidence, it is tempting to speculate that Abel and J. C. Bach might have, at least for their own private delectation, read through, or even performed, during their time together in London in the 1760s or 1770s.

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According to the most recent—and extremely useful—catalogue of historical harpsichords, John Watson’s Boalch-Mold Online (www.boalch.org), there are about forty extant Jacob Kirkman singes and an approximately equal number of doubles. (Instruments by other members of this prolific family swell the number twofold). This weekend’s concerts are the first at which the 1770 Kirkman single formerly belonging to Smithsonian curator John Fesperman will be heard in public since its recent restoration (discussed in the pre-concert talk). Is it stretching the limits of credulity to image that Bach and Able might have used a similar instrument to rehearse these sonatats?

—Kenneth Slowik