The Musique de Table stands out from Telemann’s other publications in a number of ways. Most of Telemann’s published music was for chamber music forces, whether solo keyboard music, duets, trio sonatas, or quartets. In general the publications were not dedicated to wealthy patrons, but to performers like those who might expect to buy them, for example, the early Kleine Cammer-Music of 1716, dedicated to three well-known professional oboists, François le Riche, Peter Glösch, and Michael Böhmen, or the duets of 1727, dedicated to two flutists, George Behrmann and Pierre Diteric Toennies. Telemann produced hundreds of orchestral suites, most of them early in his career, when he was employed at the court of Count Erdmann II of Promnitz at Sorau (now in Poland), but of these the only ones to be published were those included in the Musique de Table and the Six Ouvertures à 4 ou 6, published in 1736, and now lost. The ambitious orchestral works included in the Musique de Table meant that this was an especially splendid production—perhaps Telemann already had in mind his triumphal visit to Paris in 1737/8.

The subscription list printed in the music included, in addition to the wealthy merchants and amateur musicians of Hamburg, an impressive roster of nobility from all over Europe, full of Princes, Margraves, Comtes Regnants, Dukes, Marquises, Barons and so forth. The civil service is also represented with Chevaliers, Intendants, and Conseillers. As far as the musical nobility of the time was concerned, one finds the names of Hendel, Docteur en Musique, Londres; Quantz, Dresden; Pisendel, Dresden, six copies; and Blavet, no fewer than twelve copies. No Bachs are represented; perhaps the price was too high? Included among the subscribers are a substantial number of women. Geographically, the subscribers hailed from as far afield as Copenhaben, Odense, Christiania in the North, London to the West, Cadiz to the south, and Riga to the East.

The work is divided into three productions, each containing an orchestral suite in seven parts opening the production; next a quartet for three treble instruments and continuo; then a concerto, again in seven parts; a trio sonata; a solo sonata; and finally a conclusion, for the same forces as the suite which opened the production. The three productions appeared in installments, the first being issued at Ascension (late spring), followed by Michaelmas (early fall), and Christmas.

Production 1

This production is perhaps the closest to Telemann’s chamber music in its instrumentation. The opening suite is scored for two flutes (Telemann’s favorite among the winds) and strings. The flutes are generally written in unison with the first violin during the tuttis, and in parts during the solo episodes, often paired against two solo violins. The Quartet is scored for flute, oboe, violin and continuo, and is quite modern in its design. The opening movement begins in a slow pastoral vein, which is interrupted by a fugal allegro, only to return to the pace of the introduction. The second movement mirrors this with a quick movement, almost like a concerto for the oboe; a contrasting moderato; and then the Vivace da capo. A connecting grave introduces a more traditional concluding gigue.

The concerto in this production is certainly one of my favorites among all of Telemann’s works. In A major, it is scored for flute and violin solo, strings and continuo, but the cello has a particularly prominent solo role to play as well. One might think of it as Telemann’s reimagining of the texture of his Paris quartets in an orchestral context. The musical idiom is Telemann at his most modern, combining the best of the French and Italian styles, and making use of the sort of expressive use of Lombard rhythms familiar from such late works as the flute duets TWV 40: 130-135. Also similar is the almost kaleidoscopic spinning out and combining of contrasting motives, something alien to the typically Baroque method of constructing music based upon multiple reiterations of simple and easily recognizable melodic gestures, and perhaps developing out of the improvised practice of elaborate ornamentation of the adagio.

The trio sonata for two violins in E-flat which follows (a jarring tritone away) is not far in style from the empfindsamer Stil of C.P.E Bach and his associates at the court of Frederick the Great, with ornate lines spun out over harmonically static bass lines in clearly divided phrases, and a definite proclivity for parallel thirds in among the structural counterpoint. The solo for flute which follows, in contrast, is perhaps more similar in style to the music of J.S. Bach, the opening cantabile beginning with a solo ritornello for the continuo part, something scarcely to be found in the composer’s other solo sonatas. The passagework of the allegro which follows is reminiscent of that from Bach’s flute sonata in E minor. There is an occasional lombard, but overall the tone is conservative. The return of the full band for the allegro conclusion brings the production to an exhilarating conclusion.

Production 2

The second production begins with a suite which could scarcely be more different in character from that which opened the first production. If the lamenting sound of the flute recalls the French style (the instrument was perfected in the late seventeenth century by the French, who contributed the bulk of its early repertoire) and soft-spoken chamber music, the brassy sound of the trumpet and oboe in D here connotes the pomp of royal courts, and to my ear at least, the idiom which Telemann has chosen recalls that of Handel. It is not by accident that the numbers which follow the ouverture are none of them dances, but labeled airs instead with the first and third partaking of a military, martial character.

The quartet in this production is the one most frequently heard in concert, due to its unusual scoring for solo recorder, a pair of transverse flutes and continuo. The recorder part is given in the French violin clef (G on the bottom line of the staff), so that the part may also be taken by a bassoon reading bass clef (a procedure found elsewhere in Telemann’s oeuvre, for example the sonata in F minor from the Getreue Musikmeister). Militating against this choice is Telemann’s part-writing, which often pairs either the two flutes, or a flute and recorder. The recorder only has a truly concertato part in the second movement, with the two flutes playing at being an orchestra for a day. Worthy of note is the contrasting episode in the major, pastoral in character, in the conluding rondeau.

In this production the solo group for the concerto is made up of three violins (somewhat unusual for the period), and since Telemann has limited himself to seven parts and seven partbooks, this means that the concerto grosso has only one violin, not the usual two. Generally the work is conservative in style, perhaps recalling Vivaldi’s earlier works with multiple solo violins. The trio for flute and oboe in E minor is also rather conservative, with no galant rhythms, and a thoroughly Italianate style, recalling the early trio sonatas of Telemann published in Paris at about this time (the Six sonates en trio dans le goust italien issued by Boivin). The solo violin sonata in A is rather more modern, in the same vein as the Methodical Sonatas (1728-1732), the opening Andante already ornamented (though more could certainly be added).

Production 3

With the suite in B-flat which opens the third production, we return to the French style, though with some distinctly modern aspects. The opening Lentement almost entirely rejects the characteristic pomposity typical of the overture. The affect is pastoral—instead of the typical sharply dotted rhythms the listener hears a harmonically static opening, with Lombardic snaps leading to a leisurely cascade of triplets, figures usually associated with the shepherd’s piping. Telemann leads the music through several different topics—a brief appearance of the characteristic martial rhythms, then sighing syncopations in the strings, two measures of thirty-second note runs, but subsiding once more into four measures (the longest phrase so far) of oboe sighs over a bagpipe drone in the strings. Here, indeed, we have an anti-overture. The emphasis on the pastoral was very characteristic of Parisian culture at the time (compare almost any Rameau opera), and indeed the first dance is a Bergerie. The key to this might rather be found, however, by recalling the fact that this concluding installment of the Musique de Table was published at Christmas-time, a time at which the shepherds abiding in the fields would have been recalled by every European Christian. The subsequent movements, all quite French in character (only one explicitly a dance, the minuet) continue in some sense the pastoral vein, with patches of static harmony, and a pictorial movement presenting the hurrying of the post through the countryside.

The quartet which follows (in E minor, a tritone removed from the Suite) is scored for flute, violin, cello and continuo, similar to the sets of Paris quartets which preceded it and followed it in Telemann’s production (1730 and 1737/38), but unlike those where the gamba seems to have been preferred, with the cello an alternative, here the musical idiom as well as the source says explicitly, cello, as the style is distinctly Italian. The emphasis is on counterpoint, and there is no whit of dance character, but rather an emphasis on the modern, with passages of drumming repeated sixteenths in the cello, and parallel passagework in the flute and violin.

Included among the subscribers are a substantial number of women. Geographically, the subscribers hailed from as far afield as Copenhaben, Odense, Christiania in the North, London to the West, Cadiz to the south, and Riga to the East.

With the concerto we return to the countryside. Telemann’s original calls for trombe selvatici. The most common meaning for selvatico is wild, untamed, rude, but here the sense is more likely to be belonging to the selva, i.e. forest trumpets (compare the German formulation Waldhorn). Dieter Gutknecht suggests that these would be coiled trumpets in which the player could stop the bell with the hand as is customarily done with the horn. The Bärenreiter edition, however, calls for horns, and this recommendation is followed by all of the recordings, to my knowledge. The affect is not that of hunting, however, as one might expect, at least not until the closing movement. The Grave in C minor produces the somber effect of night music, perhaps once more pointing to the nativity.