Margaret Marco & French Baroque Oboe: The Composer, The Performers, The Audience

T    he change in the disposition of sonic objects in the acoustic space may alter the perspective of the listener. Where various sound-objects move in different directions... the listener may reasonably assume himself to be at a point of rest. If, however, a number of sound-objects are spaced at various points of the compass... might suggest to the listener that he himself is spinning whilst the frame of reference remains still... Depending on the type of material used, closeness may imply intimacy, distance a sense of eavesdropping or of detachment, and, at various stages in between, a sense of interpersonal communication or more formalised social communication... and aural ‘magnifying glass’, quite different from our experience of normal acoustic perspective.”
  —  Trevor Wishart, p. 148.

L ike good butler, a good Baroque composer does not ‘eavesdrop’... she/he ‘discreetly overhears’.

N ot in the sense of surveillance or espionage, of course. More in the sense of parent/guardian or journalist. This CD contains recordings of seldom-heard pieces, infrequently-performed composers.

1. Bouin-Cinquième Suitte: I. Le Prudent-La Prudente
   
2. Cinquième Suitte: II. Tambourin
   
3. Cinquième Suitte: III. Musette
   
4. Cinquième Suitte: IV. Les Oiseaux
   
5. Huguenet-Première Sonate, Op. 1: I. Grave
   
6. Première Sonate, Op. 1: II. Gay-Grave
   
7. Première Sonate, Op. 1: III. Sicilienne
   
8. Première Sonate, Op. 1: IV. Gigue
   
9. Chedeville-Sixième Sonate, Op. 3: I. La Rivièr d'hier
   
10. Sixième Sonate, Op. 3: II. La Dificile
    
11. Sixième Sonate, Op. 3: III. Rondeau
    
12. Sixième Sonate, Op. 3: IV. Les Adieux de Brunoy
    
13. Naudot-Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: I. Musette
    
14. Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: II. Gavotte
    
15. Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: III. Allemande
    
16. Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: IV. Menuet
    
17. Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: V. Sarabande
    
18. Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: VI. Gigue
    
19. Naudot-Caprice en Trio, Op. 7: I. Caprice
    
20. Caprice en Trio, Op. 7: II. Tambourin
    
21. Caprice en Trio, Op. 7: III. Menuet
    
22. Caprice en Trio, Op. 7: IV. Chaconne

    [50-sec clip, Margaret Marco, Jacques-Christophe Huguenet, ‘Première Sonate – IV. Gigue’, 1.6MB MP3]


    [50-sec clip, Margaret Marco, Nicolas Chedeville, ‘Sixième Sonate – IV. Les Adieux de Brunoy’, 1.6MB MP3]


    [50-sec clip, Margaret Marco, Jacques-Christophe Naudot, ‘Sixième Sonate – VI. Gigue’, 1.6MB MP3]

• Margaret Marco, oboe
  
• Barbara Bishop, oboe
  
• Matthew Herren, cello
  
• Rebecca Bell, harpsichord

T hese sonatas are not merely ‘evocative’. They report on particular kinds of relationships—between performers and their audience; between composers and performers and patrons. There are hints in these 18^th Century works, about the nature of such relationships that may have been distinctly French, plus elements that were widely-traveled... The rhythms and textures, the binary or rounded binary form with sectional repeats, the predominance of dance-inspired forms such as the courante, rigaudon, menuet, and gigue.

H idden Gems’ brings together works that share natural affinities characteristic of the time. But hearing them together illuminates some of their not-so-obvious ‘hidden’ qualities as well. Not only do the individual pieces seem to provide a [backhanded; unintended] commentary on each other, the pieces taken together embody who it was these composers were writing for. The pieces suggest how the performers conceived of their audiences. And the pieces contain clues about the aristocratic patrons and how they wished to be diverted and perceived by each other: a society that delighted in ‘overhearing’ juicy conversations. Even the music suggests ‘positioning’ in order to surreptitiously overhear things and repeat them to others, a rhetoric of reciprocal pleasure...

L    anger’s [Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 1957, p. 218] philosophy [portrays] ... music-making as a symptom of ... eavesdropping. If music were only a matter of releasing pent-up personal desire, music’s formal excellence would not matter the way it does. In fact, the more ‘self-expressive’ something is, the less musical it is likely to be. Music, Langer is convinced, is not about exposing, discharging, or expressing feeling; and yet, it is clearly related to feeling in some way. How might that be? Simply, music is a presentational symbol; and as such it is neither a stimulus nor a symptom of feeling: it is ‘not the cause or the cure of feelings, but their logical expression’.”
  —  Wayne Bowman, p.210.

V    arious performative strategies that ‘opera buffa’ adopts in the rhetoric of pleasure... [which] cannot exist without the eavesdropping presence of the audience.”
  —  Downing Thomas, p. 228.

W hile Chedeville and Huguenet and Naudot were part of the same tradition, culturally and musically, their backgrounds were very different. Nicolas Chedeville (1705-1782) was a prolific composer and instrument maker, a member of the Douze Grands Hautbois, a group of oboists and bassoonists who performed for state ceremonies during the reigns of Kings Louis XIV and XV. Jacques Christophe Huguenet (1680-1729) was a violinist and composer, appointed an ordinaire of the Royal Chamber in 1710 and a member of the Petits violons. Jacques-Christophe Naudot (1690-1762) was a self-taught Parisian flautist who had many aristocratic pupils and patrons. By contrast, not much is known about Jean-Francois Bouin; even his birth and death dates are not known. But from the title page of his compositions we know that he was a publisher and teacher of the ever-disparaged ‘vielle’ (hurdy-gurdy), about which he wrote a large, erudite, defensive tome. The righteous pique he develops in this book makes it a satisfying, if exotic, read—somewhat like reading transcripts of lawyers’ celebrated pleadings in courts of law, on behalf of hurdy-gurdies in the dock.

T hese works show sophisticated adults who as a salon game pretend to be children, amusing themselves with stylizations of fashionable dances. The differences in the composers’ approaches, and indeed, of their psychological make-up are evident enough. But the similarities of gesture and rhetoric are also evident. Marco’s and her colleagues’ musicianship is excellent, enabling us to hear and imagine these things (stylized ‘eavesdropping’ behaviors, relished and storied) beyond the musical texts themselves.

I  admit I bought this CD with the somewhat ‘detached’ intention of learning something about composers I’d never before heard and woodwind ensemble literature about which I was totally ignorant until now. But I am thrilled to have found not a pallid scholarly account but instead a rich provocation to Baroque dreaming and conjecture, in French. Cool!

M argaret Marco is principal oboe with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra and has appeared with various orchestras including the Orquesta Sinfònica de Maracaibo, the Rome Festival Orchestra, the Dubuque (IA) Symphony and the St. Joseph (MO) Symphony. She is the Associate Professor of Oboe at the University of Kansas and holds degrees from Northwestern University, University of Iowa, and University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. She served as President of the Midwest Double Reed Society and performs frequently on Kansas Public Radio and with the flute, oboe, piano trio Allègresse. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the International Double Reed Society as the coordinator of the Fernand Gillet-Hugo Fox International Oboe Competition.

R ebecca Bell, harpsichordist, studied at the Royal College of Music in London, where she won the prize for clavichord playing while studying with Ruth Dyson and Robert Woolley. She has concertized in the U.S., Canada, England, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria and Germany. She is a founding member of Summerfest Kansas City where she served as the Artistic Director from 1995-1999. She is the harpsichordist for the Kansas City Symphony and the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra.

M atthew Herren has performed at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and The National Gallery in Washington and has recorded orchestral and chamber music for the Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, Atlantic, Helicon and London Decca Labels with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s. His performances have been broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today. Herren performs regularly with The American Composers Orchestra, The New York Oratorio Society, and The New York Concert Singers, Trio Fedele, The Kansas City Symphony, Kansas City Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Music Society.

B arbara Bishop is Associate Principal Oboe with the Kansas City Symphony and co-principal of the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra and Assistant Professor of oboe at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory. She trained at the Eastman School and has a Master of Music degree from the University of Minnesota. She is a regular Guest Principal with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

• Margaret Marco page at KU
  
• Marco et al. Hidden Gems: Oboe sonatas of the French Baroque. (KPR, 2009.)
  
• MargaretMarco.com
  
• Marco M. French Baroque works for oboe in the Bibiotheque Nationale, Paris. The Double Reed (IDRS) 2004; 27: 61-4. [200KB pdf]
  
• Midwest Double-Reed Society
  
• Bowman W. Philosophical Perspectives on Music. Oxford Univ, 1998.
  
• Thomas D. Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647-1785. Cambridge Univ, 2009.
  
• Wishart T. On Sonic Art. Routledge, 1996.
  
• Hurdy-gurdies at luthiers' exhibit, at Rencontres Internationales de Luthiers et Mâitres Sonneurs, 11-15-JUL-2009, Castle of Ars, Saint-Chartier, France.