Baroque Notes: Flowers and Duets

Frowning. "They are not guilty; but even if they had merit, it would be of no avail"...Dante's verses echoed in his mind again.How can this be? !Does his meritorious deeds still need to be investigated?This is simply nonsense!

After allaying his anger, in late 1867 Handel managed to get in touch with old friends in Limber, hoping to calm him down.Flowers and letters, through the hands of messengers, are delivered as they were two centuries ago.The old friend is still calm and elegant in his letters, but he cherishes words like gold every time.Often he only thanked the flowers and greeted his friends in the association, but never mentioned his own situation.For Christmas that year, Handel sent a basket of flowers as usual, which was exactly the same as the basket in 1750.Telemann received the reply from Limbo very quickly, and it was still just a few words of courtesy, but the crumpled letter paper and blurred handwriting seemed to imply that the facts were not what was written in the letter. everything is fine.

Mattson was not wrong when he remarked in 1740 that "Lully is famous, Corelli deserves praise, but Telemann alone stands above them all"; Nineteenth-century scholars did not think so:

"(Telemann) poured out countless works by his indefatigable scribbles; they were nothing more than factory stuff and no art at all." (HermannMendel, 1878)

"Telemann's composition is terribly free, powerless, connotative and original; he rattles off song after song." (Robert Eitner, 1884)

"He (Telemann) was unable to capture and sustain the audience's attention, because he never knew how to compose a painting. Therefore, despite his great success during his lifetime, he could not have been revived." (Hugo Riemann, 1899)

"For example, Telemann, Bach's lucky rival at the time, probably wrote five or six times as many notes as Bach. But, as the proverb goes, 'he smears the paper like shoe polish', and eventually He himself does not know how badly he writes." (PhilippWolfrum, 5)

…………

At Lin Bo's saddest moment, such comments came one after another, and the impact can be imagined.If this is the evaluation of his old friend by future generations and history, how can he return to heaven with him alone.Year after year, they still correspond.Even an optimist like Handel, however, was beginning to feel that his friend's mental state was getting worse every day on Limber Island beyond the sea.Everything seems to return to the original point in 1701. His old friend is nothing, deprived of the enthusiasm of life, desperate and dull, walking alone and sadly on the road arranged by fate.Handel knew that he could no longer personally retain him like he did in 1701, because what they were facing at this moment was not the arrangement of their respective family elders, but the arrangement of history.As time passed, Lin Bo’s 100-year deadline was quietly approaching. At the dawn of the 20th century, Handel excerpted a short poem from his letter and sent it to his long-lost friend.The author of the poem is none other than Telemann himself, who wrote it in his first autobiography in 1718 when his career had just started:

"Ambition and deeds will find their footsteps

Even if it is covered by the deep and thick snow,

Rational and deliberate planning of the overall situation

conquer hardships.

Friends, can you see the mountain ahead?

Take courage!You'll have them all in no time!

They are but worthless dwarves,

And you are the invincible giant. "

In addition, Handel, who never gave up and was even a little stubborn, made an agreement in the letter: that is, he would put a bottle of hyacinth on the window sill facing the street on the first floor of his residence in the British Pavilion. One of my favorite flowers.If one day Teleman can set foot on the land of the association, he must take this bunch of hyacinths to inform his friends of his arrival.The letter was delivered, and Telemann agreed with his usual reserved, reserved tone.Later, Handel placed a bottle of hyacinth on the window sill as agreed, and changed it frequently, checking it every day.Hyacinths withered and flourished with the passage of time, and batches of hyacinths came and went, but there was never one missing.

One day, the association was hit by a storm, and Handel, who was rehearsing, rushed back to his residence before the end of the rehearsal, and rearranged the hyacinth vase that had been blown down by the rainstorm.He didn't want to miss an opportunity, but his caution didn't pay off.Day after day, the vases full of hyacinths are only visited by bees and butterflies, and the sea facing Limbo in the port of the association is calm.

"—but when we come back, late, from the garden of hyacinths,

Your arms are full, your hair is wet, I can't tell

Words, the eyes do not see, I am neither

Living and never dead, I know nothing,

When I looked at the center of the light, there was silence.

Desolate and empty is the sea. "

— TS Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

On the afternoon after reading Romain Rolland's works in the early 20th century, Handel was still pacing restlessly in the association.The old floorboards creaked.Another day passed and nothing happened.

It is very interesting that people in modern times pay attention to Telemann and his music again. At the beginning of the 20th century, with the popularization of music (instrumental music and vocal music) education in Germany, people needed a lot of music materials as teaching materials.Telemann's works, especially his clarinet works, are very popular in the music courses of primary and secondary schools in Germany.Various vocal societies organized by amateurs also used Telemann's compositions, although little is known about the story behind the composer's name.The familiarity and intelligibility of Telemann's music has been welcomed by a wide range of non-professional musicians.Combined with the avant-garde movement of contemporary composers in the early 20th century that made mass audiences uncomfortable, this wave of rediscovering early music became even more common.Telemann's chamber music has also gradually become popular, but contemporary grand concert halls are not suitable for rehearsing his slightly smaller works.In the face of the crisis, an opportunity appeared, that is, the popularization of broadcasting and recording.Small chamber music rehearsals were cheap, and the style was popular with audiences troubled by the complex and obscure arrangements of classical music at the time. Many of Telemann's small works were broadcast on the radio.

However, the last kick that brought Telemann back to the public eye is probably thanks to his two good friends during his lifetime, Bach and Handel. In 1920, the University of Göttingen in Germany began to revive Handel's operas. In 1952, Halle re-hosted the annual Handel Music Festival. During these processes, Telemann, who is also an opera composer, inevitably got involved a little light.Especially considering that Bach did not compose any operas, there is even more interest in Telemann's operas.First, "Pygmalion" was compared with Pergolesi's famous "The Maid as My Lady". Later, the Stadtopera in Telemann's hometown of Magdeburg rehearsed his opera works. Since 1963, Magdeburg has hosted the biennial Telemanns Festival.

People talk about the constant comparison between Telemann and Handel, and a vocal work that led to Telemann's religious nature began to be known.The people of Magdeburg were already very familiar with several of the composer's major Passions by the middle of the 20th century.Although Telemann, who was in charge at the time, can only start the introduction with the attributive "good friends of Bach and Handel", or silently shine beside the fame of his two friends, but everything is better than that in the mid-19th century. The disavowal he received at the beginning of the 20th century was much better.

At the end of the 20s, the shadow of World War I had not yet dissipated, and the dark clouds of World War II gathered again.It was the end of April and the beginning of May, when all things began to germinate. Handel returned from the usual annual recuperation in Bath, England, and returned to the residence of the association.Sweeping the ashes accumulated in front of the door for more than a month, putting down his luggage, he prepared to go around the back of the house to look at the hyacinths on the windowsill as usual.The lawn was wet and fluffy just after it rained, and Handel's huge weight caused him to step on the mud immediately.With one kick and one shallow kick, he came to the window cursing, only to find that the vase was empty.Handel was furious.He remembered that before he left he asked his neighbor Sir Newton to help take care of the flowers, but how could he believe that a scientist who often couldn’t even remember whether he had eaten or not would remember to take care of the flowers for him (an anecdote in history During the incident, Newton baked food for his friends, but after finishing the dishes, he went to work because he thought of scientific research. After work, he couldn’t remember whether he had eaten or not, author’s note)?Hey!Handel was so angry that he hammered the window sill hard, thinking that one day Mr. Jazz would find out that he was negligent on duty and simply throw the flowers away.

"Fred? Georg Friedrich Handel, is that you?"

Suddenly a strange voice came from behind, and Handel turned around to look at it.He saw a figure standing vaguely among the wildflowers on the grass, and the purple color in his arms seemed to be his hyacinth.Damn it!Handel complained that his eyesight had not fully recovered shortly after his death, and he could not see the face of the flower thief clearly.While walking, he took out his glasses from his pocket and put them on, and Handel walked in that direction.

He saw a man, holding tightly to a bouquet of slightly withered hyacinths, standing among the spreading wildflowers.The visitor has been waiting for a long time, and his white stockings are