Telemann: Concerti, Quartets & Trios in the French and Italian Manner - Aulos Ensemble

Telemann Aulos Ensemble Liner Notes

History has not dealt kindly with Georg Philipp Telemann, who was born exactly 300 years ago in Magdeburg, Germany, and died 86 years later in Hamburg. Far and away the leading German composer of his time, his modern-day reputation has been tarnished by the very attributes of style and character that brought him his original success. Recognized by no less an authority than the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific composer who ever lived, Telemann's legacy boggles the mind in its pro fusion. We will never have a full picture of it: before World War II, no comprehensive list was attempted, and during the war, stacks and heaps of Telemann manuscripts were destroyed. But what is left numbers some 2,000 works, including over 25 operas and 46 settings of the Passion. This mountain of music was written strictly on demand, in the course of a whirlwind career that took the composer from city to city all over Germany and involved him in every kind of activity in which a musician could find employment in early 18th-century Germany. In his time, he fiddled in opera theaters, played the organ in churches, led a student collegium musicum, served princes Sorau (now Zary in Poland) and Eisenach as court composer, and served the city of Frankfurt as Director musices. The last 46 years of his life were spent. in Hamburg, where he was simultaneously cantor for an important school, director of music for five churches, and manager of Germany's most important public opera house. And what placed his services and his music in such demand was his style: catchy, effervescent, and galant. He had no use for the kind of musician who, in his own words, "seeks to imitate the old ones who write frilly counterpoints well enough, but who are either naked of any invention, or else add 15 or 20 obbligato voices, so that Diogenes himself could hardly find a droplet of melody with his lantern." In the eyes of his contemporaries, J.S. Bach fell into this latter category, which is why in 1722 the town of Leipzig went to great lengths to lure Telemann to the recently vacated cantor's post, and only settled on Bach as third choice.