“Marin Marais: Pièces de viole des Cinq Livres” by Jordi Savall , can someone explain what it is? I gather it is some kind of thing where the bass viol is the star and plays and the other instruments (I can’t figure out how many) accompany, but how is this different than a string quartet or quintet? And is Jordi Savall the conductor? Is a conductor needed for an ensemble?
They’re five suites (sets of pieces based on dance rhythms) for two instruments: a viola da gamba (played by Savall), which does the main melodies, and a “continuo,” which can be a harpsichord, or a plucked low-register stringed instrument like a theorbo, plus sometimes a bowed instrument like a bass viol (so, could be three or even more players on that particular recording – the composer rarely specified the continuo parts).
The viola da gamba was a little smaller than a typical modern cello.
For an ensemble that small, Savall “conducted” in the sense that he wrote out the continuo parts, and the continuo player(s) followed his lead as to tempo, etc.
Clarification: Bass viole IS viola da gamba. So for these pieces, you probably wouldn’t have the second continuo instrument (if any) be another one. Probably just a simple plucked continuo part in the background, maybe played on a theorbo (large lute).
That makes me think, how come there are 10000x more ´symphonies´than this? Why do I never see stuff like this put on in real life, only big operas and symphonies? Do Classical Music fans only (overwhelmingly) like the Mozart/Beethoven thing?
There is a vast amount of early music recorded, but remember that this stuff tends to be quiet and obscure, which limits the commercial feasibility of live performances. Plus the demand is narrower in general - people like loud pieces with hummable tunes, which orchestras are good at. You generally need to be in a large city with a significant early music demographic to find these concerts.
If you like Savall and Marais, I recommend the soundtrack to Tous les matins du monde (and indeed the film itself, which is a fictionalised story about Marais) - lots of excellent music on there and you get to see it performed (sort of).
While in theory string quartets and quintets could refer to any combination of 4 or 5 string instruments, in practice, these terms are used to describe a very specific combination : a string quartet for instance is 2 violins + 1 viola + 1 cello*. By extension, the term also refers to the whole genre, that is the corpus of pieces written for that specific combination. Haydn, who was active decades after Marin Marais, is generally credited as the inventor of the genre so, even if there may be pieces (I don’t know) that fit the description and predate Haydn, they probably wouldn’t be described as “string quartets”.
*For string quintets, the definition is a bit murkier : it’s usually 2 violins + 2 violas + 1 cello but the one that’s arguably the best known, Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, D. 956 is actually written for 2 violins + 1 viola + 2 cellos.
Not at all. If you read classical music forums, you’ll quickly realize that there are dozens of “clans” : fans of Medieval sacred music, Italian Renaissance madrigals, Baroque wind concertos, 18th-century French comic opera, post-Romantic chamber music, Soviet symphonies or atonal, computer-assisted compositions. Discussions can sometimes get heated, actually.
And some classical music lovers don’t like Beethoven or Mozart. I don’t care much for the latter for instance.
This is a good point - when considering how popular classical music (or a subset of it) is, it depends whether you’re talking about the pop classical crowd - the sort of people who like the showier side of classical music, who buy those classical compilations that always include the Albinoni Adagio* and who go to the big classical laser light show concerts that always include “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana - or the serious aficionados who can argue for hours about whether Telemann’s Pimpinone is better than Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona. The former group is much bigger but prefers a smaller and more familiar group of works, while the latter will favor the esoteric and want to hear the ‘warhorses’ of the canon less frequently.
Needless to say there are markets for both, although the smaller the market served the more likely the first group will be targeted. Luckily in the UK each side of the fence is served by its own radio station, with Classic FM for the people who want The Four Seasons on heavy rotation and BBC Radio 3 for the type of people who write in to demand more Frescobaldi. And the two worlds come together at the Proms. But I digress.
Once upon a time I was heavily involved in the early music scene, but these days I’m more likely to be performing 19th- and 20th-century fare. Still, my classical tastes are fairly eclectic although I am indifferent to Mahler and find Bruckner positively soporific. Chacun a son gout, as they say (usually with added diacriticals).
Anyway, if you are interested in early music performances, the recommendation to seek out your nearly Collegium Musicum is an excellent one. Most colleges with a music department will have one, even if it’s small and amateurish. On the plus side, tickets will likely be cheap (or free).
Which is not actually by Albinoni, I feel obliged to point out, but was actually written in 1945 by Remo Giazotto based on a tiny and possibly fictitious fragment of music by Albinoni. Still a pretty piece, mind you, but not 18th century.