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ABOUT THE PROGRAMPETER HALSTEAD
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Sonata No. 1 in G Major for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord, BWV 1027
Bach adapted his Trio Sonata for Two Flutes and Basso Continuo in G Major, BWV 1039, composed around the same time, giving the basso continuo rote figuration a dynamic and innovative identity, turning the harpsichord into an equal partner and not just an accompanist, although here the cello’s lyrical inventiveness initially shocks the piano into collaborative trills and repetitions of the cello theme.
A basso continuo is a figured bass, or through-bass, a kind of paint by numbers or a guitar “fake book,” where chord symbols or numbers indicate the proper key, but leave it up to the performer to decide exactly which notes might fulfill the command. There were unspoken rules, however, as to how far you could go, so often the accompaniment would take the path of least resistance, such as single notes or, later, an Alberti bass, most famously used by Mozart in his well- known Sonata No. 16 in C Major, K. 545. (Glenn Gould said he recorded the Mozart Sonatas so he would never have to think of them again. Every pianist grows up playing each one of them to death; the way Gould tried to make them fresh was to play the slow parts fast, and vice versa.)
When both instruments end the first movement in a mutual trill, an agreement has been reached, and the piano suggests the theme for the joyous second movement.
Later the cello became an accompanist, and it was Beethoven who, in his third Cello and Piano Sonata, brought the cello back to the point where it initiated melo- dies rather than just repeated what the piano had invented.
So the history of the piano and cello (or cembalo and viola da gamba) has been a struggle for equality, championed by unique soloists to forge a partnership which we now take for granted, but which has always been dependent on players whose talent has transcended the traditions of their time.
The fourth movement is a moto perpetuo where the cello wittily intrudes its syncopated comments where it can amongst the frenzied scales and arpeggios of the piano.
The balance has shifted between these instruments over history. A viola da gamba was mightier than a cembalo,
and its brief sallies would put the busier cembalo, clavier,
or harpsichord in its place. The cellos of Stradivari or Sam Zygmuntowicz (David Finckel has both) are immense,
and dominated the weak-spined spinets and virginals, even the French design of the Érards and Pleyels. Broadwoods brought a more robust sound to the equation. Beethoven took delivery of his six-octave Broadwood in 1818, which he kept all his life, and felt the need to write more powerfully for the cello because of the newfound power of the piano. Even so, piano harmonics remained on the thin side.
Needless to say, the available instruments affected the way composers wrote and performers played, until the Chickering and the modern Steinway gave Stradivarian strings a worthy partner and made it easier to volley phrases back and forth effortlessly, so the well-matched sparring we hear today (Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night; Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Gal Friday; Burton and Taylor or Olivier and Leigh in Noel Coward’s Private Lives) is 300 years in the making.
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The Music at Tippet Rise