RESURRECTING A BAROQUE MAVERICK

When Gerald Elias unearthed music by the little-known London-based 18th-century composer and virtuoso violinist Pietro Castrucci, he discovered a unique and independent musical voice

The Enraged Musician (1741) by William Hogarth, thought to depict Pietro Castrucci

How many recordings are there of the Brahms Violin Concerto? Dozens, at least. As a devoted Brahms lover, I humbly ask: does the world truly need another recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto? I ask those questions rhetorically as a lead-in to the next: how many recordings are there of the complete Sonate a violino e violone o cembalo op.1 by Pietro Castrucci? Answer: zero.

Under the auspices of Centaur Records, and in collaboration with my Salt Lake City colleagues harpsichordist Pamela Palmer Jones and cellist Noriko Kishi, that unfortunate omission has now been happily rectified. In my opinion it was long overdue; but in the interests of fair play, one might ask: does the world need even one recording of Castrucci’s op.1?

I hope the reader will share my view that the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.

I had never heard of Pietro Castrucci (1679–1752) until a few years ago when I was researching new repertoire for the annual Vivaldi by Candlelight concert in Salt Lake City, Utah, of which I’ve been the music director since 2004. In 2017, I put together a diverse programme that included lesser-known Baroque composers. I called it A Kaleidoscope of the Baroque, and it was to feature music by two composers most people have heard of, Bach and Vivaldi, plus works by the lesser-known Biber and the even lesser-known luminaries Alessandro Stradella and Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello. As my exploration took me deeper and deeper into the vast recesses of the Baroque cavern, I was overjoyed to discover a set of a dozen dramatic concerti grossi by a composer I’d never heard of. It was Castrucci, and he seemed to have a uniquely independent voice that separated him from his contemporaries. I immediately added his Concerto Grosso in G minor from his op.3 to the programme.

For decades, Castrucci was one of London’s prominent virtuoso violinists. Both Pietro and his younger brother Prospero had been students of Corelli, Roman god of the Italian Baroque. The brothers arrived in London in 1715, thanks to Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington, who recruited them at a time when the pan-European tide for all things Italian was at full flood. That tide only ebbed at the end of the 18th century, when even geniuses like Mozart were still having to vie for a place at the table among the more popular Italian opera composers such as Salieri, Paisiello and Piccinni, who were the heavy favourites among the European aristocracy.

Boyle was one of a group of aristocrats who were founding benefactors of the Royal Academy of Music, a company established primarily for the production of opera seria and not to be confused with the conservatoire of the same name. Handel was its chosen music director. Castrucci was appointed the orchestra’s concertmaster (a distinction he held for 20 years), his brother principal second violinist.

When he embarked upon his compositional career, what better role models could Pietro have had than Corelli and Handel? Yet one can immediately discern from the first notes that Castrucci’s musical style is distinct from that of his Roman mentor or London contemporaries such as Handel, Avison or the recently departed Purcell.

Intrigued by Castrucci’s concerti grossi, I continued to delve into his oeuvre and was delighted to discover that he had composed twelve violin sonatas as his op.1. I rushed straight to YouTube to listen to as many performances as possible. Something seemed to be amiss, though, as I was unable to find a single recording. Maybe I was spelling his name wrong. As that didn’t solve the problem, I began searching further afield, only to discover that, though there have been scattered recordings of a sonata or two (some of them transcribed for recorder), there was no recording of his complete op.1! I would have to learn them on my own, without aural guidance from illustrious Baroque violinists.

I RUSHED STR AIGHT TO YOUTUBE TO LISTEN TO AS MANY PERFORMANCES AS POSSIBLE, BUT I WAS UNABLE TO FIND A SINGLE RECORDING

I then searched for a good recent edition, and made another deflating discovery: there was none that I was able to find. The only edition I came across was the original Roger, Amsterdam, one from 1718 on IMSLP. I took a deep breath, downloaded the sonatas, printed them out and tuned up the fiddle.

As in the case of many Baroque scores, whether printed or in manuscript form, there are fistfuls of errors and omissions, and, of course, composers delegated much of the ornamentation to the creativity of the performer. Castrucci’s ornaments are most often indicated generically, as a + sign, a letter t. or a letter m., all of which suggest speculative interpretation. Only occasionally did he write actual notes for embellishments.

With these challenges in mind, I began to untangle the score with increasingly fine-toothed combs, gradually gaining an understanding of the music. I made occasional corrections in the parts, determined dynamics and tempos, and decided upon and added articulations and ornaments. I felt that little by little I was scouring off the tarnish of three centuries from these neglected sonatas, revealing the gleaming silver that lay beneath. And I’m happy to report that harpsichordist Pamela Palmer Jones is in the process of preparing an updated, corrected edition, complete with her own continuo realisation – which will give this music’s next interpreters a head start on preparing future performances.

A portrait of Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington c.1718, by Jonathan Richardson

BOYLE IMAGE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

The King’s Theatre, home to the Royal Academy of Music, by William Capon

One might describe the violin sonatas of Corelli and Handel as the epitome of lyrical refinement, good taste, contrapuntal perfection and overall elegant craftsmanship, and although there is an abundance of those qualities in Castrucci’s sonatas, he is much more of a risk-taker. His tendency is towards the dark and dramatic – theatrical and confrontational, at times; he was an envelope pusher whose vision was more forward-looking than historically consolidating. Charles Burney opined in his General History of Music (vol.4, 1789), ‘[Castrucci] was long thought insane; […] his compositions were too mad for his own age.’ Extravagantly brazen chromaticism in the second movement of Sonata no.7, for example, would likely have incurred the wrath of his mentor Corelli. In that regard, his aesthetic was closer to that of his younger London colleague Geminiani. He might even have taken his cue directly from Geminiani, who in 1751 wrote in his Art of Playing on the Violin: ‘The intention of music is not only to please the ear, but to express sentiments, strike the imagination, affect the mind, and command the passions.’ Or perhaps it was the other way around, with Geminiani being inspired to write these words after listening to Castrucci perform his sonatas.

Even though they are non-programmatic, the op.1 sonatas have a characteristic storytelling quality, each one telling a unified tale and distinct from the others. No fewer than eight of the twelve sonatas are in an often turbulent minor key, and the number of movements varies from two to five. Harmonic changes are often unexpected and severe. Intensifying motivic repetitions foreshadow Beethoven by almost a century. Virtuoso flourishes abound but do not detract from the narrative. I don’t believe it’s stretching the point too far to suggest that the pieces exhibit a sense of Weltschmerz less associated with Baroque music and more with composers like Elgar, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. Some movements have a Brahmsian autumnal sadness. Other relevant adjectives would be restless, wistful, resigned and haunting; and for those sonatas at the other end of the spectrum, in the major key, such as the delightful no.4 in C: charming, jaunty, jovial, whimsical and full of good humour.

EXAMPLE 1, from Sonata no.12 in A minor

As mentioned earlier, it’s not uncommon to find errors in first editions or manuscripts, Baroque or otherwise. On the other hand, there were times in the Roger edition when it was a challenge to determine whether I was confronted with an editorial mistake or with Castrucci’s ‘insanity’. Here is just one example of each, and why I ended up with different conclusions.

Sonata no.12 in A minor is written for scordatura violin, with the strings tuned (from bottom to top) a–e’–a’–e”. In bars 36–38 of the second-movement fugue, the copyist seems to have become disorientated and lost his bearings with the scordatura, because several notes in the violin part (which should sound a whole tone above the printed notes that fall below the open a’ string) do not accord in any acceptable way with the figured bass. What made things particularly confusing was that even though the notes on the first and third beats of bar 36 are, in fact, correct, the perplexing fourth-finger indication creates an unnecessarily cumbersome fingering. Then, to play bars 37 and 38 as written sounds more dissonantly Ivesian than can reasonably be expected in even the most extended Baroque tonality. The pencilled-in notes in example 1 (below) are what I believe to be correct, but I’m willing to haggle.

On the other hand, in Sonata no.7 in D minor there is a passage in the second-movement Allegro (bars 11–13) which no amount of experimental note-changing (based upon my understanding of how accidentals were indicated at that time) could make sound more ‘normal’. And since that passage is repeated in bars 15–17 in a similar manner, I concluded that, in reality, this might be an example of the very ‘mad composition’ that Burney was referring to. My recourse as a performer, in order to make the phrase musically plausible and compelling, was to expand my own imagination and provide the kind of intensity and drama that Castrucci might have been aiming for. Hence my pencilled-in hairpins and sforzandos in example 2 (opposite page).

Now that I had the Castrucci bit firmly between my teeth, I became determined that the world needed to hear this amazing, idiosyncratic music. I contacted Victor Sachse, the founder and head of Centaur Records, with whom I had recorded alongside various ensembles in past years, and proposed recording it. Victor responded with a prompt thumbs-up, and the enthusiastic backing I received from a lightning-fast GoFundMe campaign made the project financially viable. I was equally delighted and terrified.

THERE WERE TIMES WHEN IT WAS A CHALLENGE TO DETERMINE WHETHER I WAS CONFRONTED WITH AN EDITORIAL MISTAKE OR WITH CASTRUCCI’S ‘INSANITY’

EXAMPLE 2, from Sonata no.7 in D minor

Why terrified? First, the disclaimer: I am not a musicologist, a historian or a Baroque expert. For most of my life, Brahms and Bruch have been my bread and butter. In an effort to recreate the sound I enjoy and admire so much among today’s great Baroque artists such as Fabio Biondi, Rachel Podger, Enrico Onofri and Andrew Manze (to name just a few), for the Castrucci recording I played on a modern violin made for me by my son Jacob, but switched to gut strings tuned to A=415Hz, and played with a Baroque bow.

An additional challenge, and a novel one for me, was having the harpsichord tuned to Vallotti temperament with the goal of enhancing that instrument’s expressive potential. After 60 years of playing alongside equal-tempered keyboards (whether harpsichord or piano) and compatible stringed instruments, I had become fairly confident about where I was supposed to place my fingers on the violin fingerboard. With Vallotti, which changed the placement of some 5ths and 3rds, everything initially sounded quite foreign to my ear and it became much more of an adventure.

Gerald Elias (centre) with harpsichordist Pamela Palmer Jones and cellist Noriko Kishi

GERALD ELIAS

In the ongoing, often heated debate about Baroque vibrato I was guided by the work of those luminaries mentioned above and also by Geminiani, for whom there couldn’t be too much vibrato, more than by Leopold Mozart, for whom there couldn’t be too little. Geminiani’s approach made sense to me, not only because that’s the natural inclination of my own musical taste and training, but also because Geminiani and Castrucci were fellow countrymen and colleagues living in the same musical neighbourhood in London. As Geminiani wrote regarding vibrato: ‘When it is long [wide] it may express majesty, dignity, etc. But making it shorter [narrower], lower and softer, it may denote affliction, fear, etc. and when it is made on short notes, it only contributes to make their sound more agreeable and for this reason it should be made use of as often as possible.’ That last clause, ‘as often as possible’, is certainly open to interpretation. I take it to mean ‘when tasteful and effective’, and I use it as one more device in the extensive Baroque expressive arsenal.

Another major issue is ornamentation. As is fairly standard in Baroque instrumental music, many movements are divided into two parts, with each part repeated. This is the case with Castrucci’s sonatas as well. The first time through, I generally restricted myself to the ornaments that Castrucci himself provided. Upon the repeat and in some of the transitional adagios, I added some of my own embellishments and cadenzas, as tastefully and judiciously as possible, with Geminiani again whispering in my ear: ‘Playing in good taste does not consist of frequent passages [of improvisations], but in expressing with strength and delicacy the intention of the composer […] it may be easily obtained by any person, who is not too fond of his own opinion.’

Four recording sessions took place in May 2021 at the Libby Gardner Concert Hall at the University of Utah School of Music in Salt Lake City, as the pandemic swirled around us. The three of us, though recently vaccinated, sat further apart than we normally would and wore our masks for the duration of 16 hours of intense, gruelling, joyful recording. Our recording engineer and editor, Mike Cottle, worked diligently to balance the sound and make sure that my mistakes were expunged for eternity.

As 2022 will see my 70th birthday, this recording represents both my debut and probable swansong as a solo recording artist. I was born a tidy 200 years after Castrucci died, a meaningless but touching bit of trivia. It is hoped that by my opening the door to this excellent musician, who died penniless and who has been unreasonably neglected for so long, others will walk over the threshold and make Castrucci’s op.1 part of the standard sonata repertoire alongside Bach, Vivaldi, Handel and Corelli. A place it richly deserves.

The first complete recording of Castrucci’s op.1 violin sonatas is on Centaur CRC 3932/3933