The Early Eighteenth Century
Opera seria in the early eighteenth
century
• Addressed to aristocratic audience
• Dramatic style — libretti brought to high level by
Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782)
– Rationalistic
– three acts
– dialogue in simple recitative alternating with
affective/rhetorical arias generally in da capo form
– characters allotted a number of arias according to
carefully developed schemes of theatrical hierarchy
– emphasis on solo arias rather than character interaction
Intermezzo
• Rationalist opera seria eliminated comic aspects
• Comedic intermezzi performed between acts
– plots adopted from popular commedia dell’arte — street theater
– stock characters: clever, young woman (soprano) bests older,
dominating man (bass) in “carnivalesque” social inversion
• Two acts, corresponding to intermissions in opera seria
• Simple recitatives, affective da capo arias and ensemble
numbers
• Accompaniment provided by reduced orchestra
• Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736) La serva
padrona (1733) best known and most influential in music
history
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
and the opera
• Born in Halle, Germany, went to Hamburg to study music,
played in opera under Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739)
• At 21, went to Italy to develop his skills
• Returned to Germany in 1710 as music director at the Elector’s
court in Hanover
• 1710–1711 season in London — Italian operas brought great
success
• Returned to Hanover but almost immediately went back to
London, where he spent the rest of his career
• 1714 Elector of Hanover became King George I of England
• 1720–28 — Handel’s operas produced in honor of the king at
the Royal Academy of Music
• Altogether, Handel wrote forty operas
Decline of Italian opera in England
• Growing urban, commercial class disliked
– unfamiliar mythological and classical plots
– foreign language
– castrati
• Royal Academy of Music closed
• Handel founded New Royal Academy, but it also failed
– competed rival company Opera of the Nobility
– drove both companies to the verge of bankruptcy
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764)
• Early career
– keyboard pieces
– established himself as a theorist — Traite de l’harmonie
(1722)
• At first unsuccessful in opera
• Patronage of Alexandre-Jean-Joseph Le Riche de la
Pouplinière — enabled success in opera
– Hippolyte et Aricie (1733)
– Les Indes galantes (1735) — opera-ballet
• Guerre des Lullistes et des Ramistes — journalistic battle
in 1730s
– Lullistes claimed Rameau’s works abandoned true French
style of Lully
– Ramistes insisted that his music maintained Lullian ideals
Handel and the oratorio
• Reach to London’s urban audience
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English language
familiar biblical subjects
English choral tradition
avoided artificialities of Italian opera, including castrati
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Saul, Israel in Egypt 1739 — established genre
Messiah 1742 — biblical prose, not dramatic
Judas Maccabeus 1746
Solomon 1749
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three acts
narrative recitatives and affective/rhetorical arias
overtures in French style or sinfonias in Italian style
more emphasis on chorus than in opera
• English oratorios — twenty-six
• Like opera in general musical resources
Choruses in Handel’s oratorios
• Chorus becomes hallmark of genre
• Magnificent choral anthem style
• More varied uses than opera (which hardly used
chorus by this time)
• commentary — expression of affect through musical
rhetoric
• action
• narration
• pictorialism — replaces visual aspects of opera staging
• singability — from English anthem
Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685–1750) — earliest years
• Musician family
– born 21 March 1685 in Eisenach
– parents died 1695, Bach lived with older brother in
Ohrdruf
• Chorister in Lüneburg — interest in the organ
– met Georg Böhm (1661–1733)
– visited Hamburg to hear Johann Adam Reinken (1623–
1722)
Bach in his late teens and twenties
• Arnstadt 1703–1707 and Mühlhausen 1707–1708 —
church organist
– toccatas, fugues, chorale-based works
– earliest vocal sacred concertos (so-called church
cantatas)
• Weimar Duke’s chapel 1708–1717
– violinist — transcriptions of Italian instrumental works
for organ
– choral director — sacred concertos
Bach in Cöthen 1717–1723
• Kapellmeister to Prince — mostly secular music
– orchestral and chamber works — including
Brandenburg concertos
– some secular cantatas
• Teacher for his sons — clavier music, including
– Two-part Inventions and Three-part Sinfonias
– Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (compiled 1722)
Bach in Leipzig 1723–1750
• Leipzig, St. Thomas church (and other churches) and
school — church music director and teacher
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sacred concertos
motets
Masses
Passions — several annual cycles
• Collegium Musicum, connected with university —
instrumental music
• Late, paradigmatic works
Bach’s plan for the Lutheran sacred
concerto (church cantata)
Before the sermon
• Large chorus, usually based on a chorale proper to the day
• Recitative and aria or duet
After the sermon
• Recitative and aria or duet
• Homorhythmic setting of the chorale
Questions for discussion
• In what ways did different balances of influence among
social classes affect music in England, France,
Germany, and Italy in the early eighteenth century?
• How were Bach’s and Handel’s responses to the public’s
changing musical tastes different?
• In what ways might it be possible to consider some
music of the early eighteenth century mannerist? Does
the term seem as appropriate for this period as for the
late fourteenth or late sixteenth century? Why or why
not?