(ca. 1720 - ?)
Versailles - this symbol, expressed in stone, of the addiction to power and pomp at the zenith of the French monarchy - is so indelibly associated with the stellar figure of Louis XIV that the two subsequent monarchs, who were to guide the destiny of the nation with little fortune until the great revolution, hardly emerge today from his shadow. In September 1715, Louis XV, the great-grandson of the almighty Roi Soleil, ascended to the throne at the tender age of five. After officially assuming the duties of government, which initially had been tended to by Duke Philippe of Orleans, he very quickly fell into despair in view of the country's difficulties in the areas of both domestic and foreign affairs. Criticism of his planless regency - which was actually determined more by the suggestions of his mistresses, Mesdames de Pompadour and du Barry, than by his own ideas - became ignited in those progressive minds that were ultimately to bring about the dissolution of power and the downfall of the moribund absolutism in France. If, in terms of his political talent, Louis XV was hardly more than a poor imitation of his great-grandfather, he was certainly nearly his equal in terms of his pleasure-loving and dissolute life style. Although more interested in architecture and science than in the fine arts, he nevertheless guaranteed the preservation and cultivation of the three cornerstones upon which the royal music traditionally rested: the Musique de la Chapelle Royale, which was responsible for the spiritual needs; the large ceremonial army of the Musique de la Grand Ecu-rie with its trumpets, oboes, bagpipes, and drums; and, finally, the not very small group of the Musique de la Chambre, which was committed to the king's private edification, and for whose direction such famous artists as Lully, Lalande, and Destouches were engaged.
Only recently has musical research focused its inexhaustible interest on a man who was found in the services of the royal court starting in 1763: Antoine Dard. It can no longer be determined exactly when the oboist and bassoonist - whose family background as well as his exact dates of birth (ca. 1720) and death are unknown - arrived at the court of Versailles, initially as bassoniste ordinaire in the royal chapel and a member of the famous Academie royale de musique. What is certain is that with his appointment as Grand hautbois de la Chambre et Ecurie du Roy, Monsieur Dard had reached the pinnacle of his career. Of course, this alone would only have been of marginal interest to posterity had the accomplished instrumentalist not discovered within himself two additional talents that lastingly underscore his historical importance for French music of the eighteenth century: his talent as a theorist, and that as a composer. As the former, he published two works that deserve attention: the Nouveaux Principes de musique (Paris, 1769), a synoptic treatise on elementary musical theory that is based on solfege, and the Origine et progression de la musique (Paris, 1769), a survey of musical history with a summary of the stage productions in the sphere of the French metropolis in the period between 1671 and his own day. To be sure, the composer Antoine Dard is undoubtedly of greater interest than the theorist. Although the majority are lost, his vocal works - predominantly intimate ariettes, barcarolles, and cantatilles for the entertainment of the king - display a fine instinct for the sensitive balance between poetry and music, and show their composer to have been an astonishingly accomplished rhetorician. Even more important than these vocal gems are his two preserved sonata collections, each a group of six thorough-bass compositions, the first for bassoon or violoncello, the second - published in 1767 by Francoise Berault in Paris with some pride as Opus 1 - for transverse flute or violin.
The first collection, which is recorded here, was composed in 1759, i.e., eight years before the flute sonatas, but initially remained unpublished until it, too, was engraved in the publishing house of Madame Berault - misleadingly labeled Opus 2, undated, but provided with an obsequious, exceed-ingly flowery dedication to Dard's most influential patron at the court, Louis-Francois Duvaucel, who was a chevalier on royal mission, personal advisor to his Majesty, and Grand Maitre of the waters and forests in the Departement Paris and lie de France. It had not been his intention, so Dard in the preface of the first edition, to present this work - the fruit of sleepless nights, as he emphasized - to the general public. On the contrary, it was intended to give acknowledged experts in the art of bassoon playing something with which they could perfect their skills. He incorporated difficulties in the pieces that would also challenge masters of the instrument, and sin-cerely hoped that he would not be reprimanded too severely for this, as generally happens in the case of music that requires a bit more effort.
After these introductory words by the composer, whoever believes that the present volume of sonatas from the end of the thorough-bass epoch is merely a prosaic instrumental method in the narrow sense of the word, written for the training of virtuoso skills on the bassoon - an instrument that until then had been rather neglected in the chamber music literature (not to mention the almost nearly as neglected violoncello) - would be profoundly mistaken. For it is not without good reason that Dard emphasized that his pieces are to be played expressively, with a feeling for the phrasing. That is to say, the technical difficulties are not an end in themselves, but rather serve a superordinate idea. In particular, this combination of virtuosity and musical substance elevates Dard's works above most of the innumerable sonatas written during this period. The six works - dating from the juncture of the Baroque and Classical eras, a point of time that, strictly speaking, never truly existed, neither in France, nor elsewhere in Europe - possess an almost excessive expressiveness that is probably to be experienced more intensely in the alternative rendition by the violoncello than in the originally intended bassoon version.
The opening Adagio of the first sonata already leads to the core of the artistic intention. It shows Dard to be an early master of the endless melody, a singing line that appears to move freely over a harmonically straightforward and rather uneventful continuo bass. And it is precisely this tension between the conservative foundations of the formal as well as harmonic conceptions and their highly idiosyncratic superstructures that carries the whole cycle. Even when here and there a whiff of rococo perfume reaches one's nostrils, namely in the minuet movements, this music has nothing to do with the world of stiff formal language and decadent, towering periwigs. In nearly every measure of the solo part is to be heard how Dard shakes off the courtly fetters: vanished is the hypertrophic opu-lence of long since meaningless, cliche-like ornamentations that at times threatened to suffocate the character of French melodic structure, having given way to an exuberant, at times wild and highly concertante figuration that hardly seems to know any rules. Wide ranges, large leaps, an astonishing repertoire of rhetorical ideas packed into a very compact space, and an almost missionary narrative fervor distinguish a soloistic artistry in which even the virtuoso arabesques are more than colorful ornaments, always communicating character and passion. Dard's instrumental vocabulary gives a wide berth to the spiritless sphere of familiar motivic cliches and brings forth new idioms that do not yet have names in the music of the time. Thus, in the fourth and fifth sonatas, the most progressive of the collection, there are, for example, a number of strange breaks in the melodic line, almost as if the soloist is confronted at the zenith of his emphatic exuberance with the dangers of his stormy temperament. Is a well-behaved subject himself possibly putting forward for discussion here the boundaries of his own individual creative flights of fancy?
Only recently has musical research focused its inexhaustible interest on a man who was found in the services of the royal court starting in 1763: Antoine Dard. It can no longer be determined exactly when the oboist and bassoonist - whose family background as well as his exact dates of birth (ca. 1720) and death are unknown - arrived at the court of Versailles, initially as bassoniste ordinaire in the royal chapel and a member of the famous Academie royale de musique. What is certain is that with his appointment as Grand hautbois de la Chambre et Ecurie du Roy, Monsieur Dard had reached the pinnacle of his career. Of course, this alone would only have been of marginal interest to posterity had the accomplished instrumentalist not discovered within himself two additional talents that lastingly underscore his historical importance for French music of the eighteenth century: his talent as a theorist, and that as a composer. As the former, he published two works that deserve attention: the Nouveaux Principes de musique (Paris, 1769), a synoptic treatise on elementary musical theory that is based on solfege, and the Origine et progression de la musique (Paris, 1769), a survey of musical history with a summary of the stage productions in the sphere of the French metropolis in the period between 1671 and his own day. To be sure, the composer Antoine Dard is undoubtedly of greater interest than the theorist. Although the majority are lost, his vocal works - predominantly intimate ariettes, barcarolles, and cantatilles for the entertainment of the king - display a fine instinct for the sensitive balance between poetry and music, and show their composer to have been an astonishingly accomplished rhetorician. Even more important than these vocal gems are his two preserved sonata collections, each a group of six thorough-bass compositions, the first for bassoon or violoncello, the second - published in 1767 by Francoise Berault in Paris with some pride as Opus 1 - for transverse flute or violin.
The first collection, which is recorded here, was composed in 1759, i.e., eight years before the flute sonatas, but initially remained unpublished until it, too, was engraved in the publishing house of Madame Berault - misleadingly labeled Opus 2, undated, but provided with an obsequious, exceed-ingly flowery dedication to Dard's most influential patron at the court, Louis-Francois Duvaucel, who was a chevalier on royal mission, personal advisor to his Majesty, and Grand Maitre of the waters and forests in the Departement Paris and lie de France. It had not been his intention, so Dard in the preface of the first edition, to present this work - the fruit of sleepless nights, as he emphasized - to the general public. On the contrary, it was intended to give acknowledged experts in the art of bassoon playing something with which they could perfect their skills. He incorporated difficulties in the pieces that would also challenge masters of the instrument, and sin-cerely hoped that he would not be reprimanded too severely for this, as generally happens in the case of music that requires a bit more effort.
After these introductory words by the composer, whoever believes that the present volume of sonatas from the end of the thorough-bass epoch is merely a prosaic instrumental method in the narrow sense of the word, written for the training of virtuoso skills on the bassoon - an instrument that until then had been rather neglected in the chamber music literature (not to mention the almost nearly as neglected violoncello) - would be profoundly mistaken. For it is not without good reason that Dard emphasized that his pieces are to be played expressively, with a feeling for the phrasing. That is to say, the technical difficulties are not an end in themselves, but rather serve a superordinate idea. In particular, this combination of virtuosity and musical substance elevates Dard's works above most of the innumerable sonatas written during this period. The six works - dating from the juncture of the Baroque and Classical eras, a point of time that, strictly speaking, never truly existed, neither in France, nor elsewhere in Europe - possess an almost excessive expressiveness that is probably to be experienced more intensely in the alternative rendition by the violoncello than in the originally intended bassoon version.
The opening Adagio of the first sonata already leads to the core of the artistic intention. It shows Dard to be an early master of the endless melody, a singing line that appears to move freely over a harmonically straightforward and rather uneventful continuo bass. And it is precisely this tension between the conservative foundations of the formal as well as harmonic conceptions and their highly idiosyncratic superstructures that carries the whole cycle. Even when here and there a whiff of rococo perfume reaches one's nostrils, namely in the minuet movements, this music has nothing to do with the world of stiff formal language and decadent, towering periwigs. In nearly every measure of the solo part is to be heard how Dard shakes off the courtly fetters: vanished is the hypertrophic opu-lence of long since meaningless, cliche-like ornamentations that at times threatened to suffocate the character of French melodic structure, having given way to an exuberant, at times wild and highly concertante figuration that hardly seems to know any rules. Wide ranges, large leaps, an astonishing repertoire of rhetorical ideas packed into a very compact space, and an almost missionary narrative fervor distinguish a soloistic artistry in which even the virtuoso arabesques are more than colorful ornaments, always communicating character and passion. Dard's instrumental vocabulary gives a wide berth to the spiritless sphere of familiar motivic cliches and brings forth new idioms that do not yet have names in the music of the time. Thus, in the fourth and fifth sonatas, the most progressive of the collection, there are, for example, a number of strange breaks in the melodic line, almost as if the soloist is confronted at the zenith of his emphatic exuberance with the dangers of his stormy temperament. Is a well-behaved subject himself possibly putting forward for discussion here the boundaries of his own individual creative flights of fancy?
Roman Hinke
Source:
CD Booklet
Antoine Dard: 6 sonates pour le violoncello avec la basse continue (1759)
Kirsten von der Goltz (cello),
Hille Perl (viola de gambe) &
Christine Schornsheim (harpsichord)
Sonata I (C-Dur)
01. Adagio 3:04
02. Allegro 4:01
03. Minuetto di tempo 2:43
Sonata VI (a-Moll)
04. Andante 1:57
05. Allegro 2:37
06. Aria gratioso 2:58
07. Minuetto di tempo 1:41
Sonata II (G-Dur)
08. Allegro 2:43
09. Andante 2:45
10. Allegro Gratioso 2:02
11. Allegro tempo di molto 1:33
Sonata III (c-Moll)
12. Adagio 2:32
13. Allegro ma non tropo 2:32
14. Andante 2:27
15. Allegro 2:58
Sonata IV (F-Dur)
16. Ciciliano Andante 1:29
17. Allegro ma non tropo 2:37
18. Gavota 1 & 2 2:05
19. Allegretto 1:59
Sonata V (d-Moll)
20. Adagio 2:00
21. Allegro 2:48
22. Arietta 3:35
23. Allegro 2:34
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http://www.raumklang.de/
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