The sound of water in classical music

In this episode, we take you to the western German city of Herne, which hosts the "Tage Alter Musik" (German for "days of early music") in November every year.

This year's festival opened with the sinfonia from Antonio Vivaldi's serenata "La Senna Festeggiante," which roughly means "festival on the Seine," referring to the river in Paris.

A "serenata," or serenade, usually honors a person or event. Vivaldi's composition was part of celebrations by the French diplomatic corps in Venice to honor King Louis XV on his name day in 1726. The piece was performed outside and at night, with lights illuminating Venice's royal palaces. Some of the musicians even performed from boats on the canals.

This episode also features the Prague-based Collegium Marianum, one of the Czech Republic's top ensembles for historically-informed performance practice. It appears both as a small chamber orchestra and as a full-fledged orchestra. 

The music of Georg Philipp Telemann

Water has always played a prominent role in music — its roaring, babbling and trickling has inspired many composers to create impressive evocative works.

Georg Philipp Telemann seems to have had a particularly special relationship to all things watery, as many of his works feature water sounds. Telemann was from the eastern German city of Magdeburg, but he spent nearly his entire adult life, 46 years, in the sophisticated port city of Hamburg.

Almost all the movements of the suite Telemann composed for this celebration have to do with mythological water figures. These include Tethys, the Greek goddess of the sea, Neptune, the Roman god of the sea and ocean, water nymphs and naiads.

For the Herne early music festival, the Collegium Marianum chose to perform Telemann's Overture in A major. The work's second movement is called "Les Flots," or the waves.

Another work featured in this recording is Telemann's Violin Concerto in A major for solo violin and orchestra. It's dedicated to an animal that feels at home in a watery environment: the common water frog. The concerto is even nicknamed "Die Relinge," or "The Frogs."

Telemann often composed works for special occasions, and his "Hamburg Ebb and Flow" overture was written to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Hamburg admiralty in 1723. The admiralty was an organization tasked with defending and overseeing Hamburg's harbor.

Baroque water music

You will also hear a piece by the French composer Michel-Richard Delalande, who had quite the career. He spent more than 40 years working for French kings, 30 of which were in the service of Louis XIV, the "Sun King."

Delalande's big breakthrough at the royal court came in 1683 with a "divertissement," or a sort of short opera. The piece was "Les Fontaines de Versailles," or "the fountains of Versailles."

The ensemble performed another selection from French Baroque opera at the festival, from Marin Marais' "Alcione," which is about a couple whose wedding is beset by tragedy. The groom has to flee and dies at sea, and the bride kills herself. In the end, the sea god Neptune rises out of the water and turns the couple into two birds, so they can be together again.

Marais' opera features a host of instrumental pieces. Shortly after he wrote it, he gathered these instrumental works into a single suite that can be performed separately from the opera.

At Herne, the Collegium Marianum presented a selection of the suite's numbers, including "Marche pour les Matelots," or "March of the sailors," and two "Airs des Matelots," or "sailor songs."

'Water music'

We're now coming up on a very fitting, very well-known classic: Georg Friedrich Händel's "Water Music." Händel didn't come up with the name himself; it was his publisher, John Walsh, who published part of the work in 1733 under the title "The Celebrated Water Music."

Händel had written the suite way back in 1717 for British King George I. Born as Duke Georg Ludwig von Braunschweig-Lüneburg, George became the first king from the House of Hannover.

At the time of Händel's composition, George had ruled for only three years, so he had to make public appearances among his subjects. During the summer months, he would regularly sail down the Thames in an open barge, followed by boats ferrying London's high society and members of the royal court. One boat even held an orchestra that performed for the king's entertainment. And what did they play? Händel's "Water Music."

That's all for this episode of DW Festival Concert with Cristina Burack. Do drop us a line at music@dw.com if you have something you'd like to share.

 

This article was originally written in German.