According to the famous music historian Dr.
Charles Burney, Francesco Maria Veracini was
“the greatest violinist in Europe”. The facts of his
life are known only in part and some of them are in
dispute. Some historians give the date of his birth
in Florence as 1685 and others give it as February
1, 1690. Veracini’s uncle, Antonio, was a celebrated
violinist and composer and his first teacher. He
also studied with Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei. His
first success was at Venice and in 1711, he created
a stir when he played at Frankfurt during the
festivities attendant upon the coronation of
Charles VI, the Holy Roman Emperor. From this
time, he became internationally famous as “II
Fiorentino”. In 1714, he made his first trip to
London, where the public was at the height of its
craze for Italian music, brought about by Handel's
first success with his opera Rinaldo in 1711. Vera-
cini’s first appearance was on January 23rd at the
King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, when he per-
formed between the acts of an opera, playing what
contemporary records refer to as “symphonies”.
He continued to perform in this manner for a year
and also played in Handel's orchestra on occasion
during opera performances when, it was said, his
powerful and unique tone clearly was audible
above the other instruments. He also performed
several times at concerts in Hickford’s Room in
James Street, sometimes with the brilliant and
mysterious singer known only as The Baroness.
Subsequent historians have made much of the
episode that occurred in 1716 and involved
Giuseppe Tartini, the future great master of the
violin. Tartini, some years younger than Veracini,
had begun to make his reputation as a player and
was invited to engage in a contest with Veracini
during a fete to be given at Venice in honor of the
visiting Elector of Saxony. However, before the
event, Tartini went tb Cremona to hear one of
Veracini’s concerts and was so intimidated by the
brilliance of his playing that he failed to appear in
Venice for the competition. Instead, he went into
seclusion at Ancona for a period of intense study,
from which he emerged with some of the technical
and acoustical discoveries with which he was to
revolutionize the violinist’s art. Veracini later
became violinist to the Elector of Saxony, who
was also King of Poland, and resided at the court
in Dresden from 1720 to 1723. On August 13, 1722,
Veracini attempted suicide by jumping from a
high window and was left lamed for life. Johann
Mattheson, a contemporary historian, says that
this was done in a fit of insanity brought on by
overwork. The historian Francois-Jean Fétis, writ-
ing a century later, tells a different story. Accord-
ing to him, Veracini, who apparently was a vain
and tempestuous man, had offended the Elector’s
Kapellmeister, Johann Pisandel, who arranged
to humiliate him by challenging him to play at
sight a difficult concerto which another player,
who competed with Veracini, had been practising
for weeks. The Elector gave the palm not to Vera-
cini but the other man, which supposedly supplied
the motive for his desperate act.
After leaving Dresden in 1723, Veracini was for
a time in the service of Count Kinsky at Prague.
Tartini was one of the Count’s court musicians
during the same period.
LYRICHORD DISCS INC., 141 Perry Street, New York 14, N. Y.
‘Though Veracinis set of remarkable violin
sonatas was published at Dresden and Amsterdam
in 1721, he did not gain much of a reputation as a
composer until November 25, 1735 when his opera
Adriano had its triumphant premiere at the King’s
Theatre, London. It was repeated 17 times, which
was unusual at that time. The brilliant cast in-
cluded the two famous castrati Farinelli and Sene-
sino and the great soprano Francesca Cuzzoni. She
it was who participated in the notorious hair-
pulling encounter with her equally famous rival,
Faustina Hasse, on stage during a London per-
formance in 1726. Veracini later produced other
operas, but with diminishing success. The fickle
London public had found a new hero, the Italian
composer-violinist Francesco Geminiani. Veracini
went back to Italy and did not return to London
until 1745, which is when Dr. Burney heard him
perform at Hickford’s Room in Brewer Street.
Some historians say that Veracini died in London
in 1750, but others claim that it was at Pisa. Some
accounts tell the colorful story that after his last
London appearances, Veracini went back to Italy
and was shipwrecked on the way, losing all he
possessed, including his two Stainer violins, which
he referred to always as Peter and Paul.
Very little of Veracinis music was published in
his lifetime. Many manuscripts. were discovered
after his death. His total output includes five
operas, several concertos, two cantatas, sonatas
for violin and flute, and symphonies for two violins,
viola, cello, and doublebass with continuo. Of those
works published in his lifetime, the violin sonatas
are counted as opus | and another set of violin
sonatas that he called Sonate Academiche are
opus 2, though composed twenty years later than
the first set.
This recording of the Twelve Sonatas, opus 1,
employs the Peters edition edited by Walter
Kolneder. The musicologist H.J. Moser called
these sonatas “some of the most remarkable and
beautiful ones of their kind in the 18th century.”
It is interesting to realize that if Veracini actually
was born in 1685, he was exactly contemporary
with Bach and Handel, those two giants who for
centuries to come put their most worthy contem-
poraries in the shade. Though violinists always
have been partial to Veracini’s sonatas, the con-
cert-going public has listened to them dutifully
rather than knowingly while waiting for the ac-
rather than knowingly while waiting for the
accepted profundities of Bach or the expected
fireworks of later composers for the violin. Pres-
ently, however, there is a new interest in and
sympathy for the underrated Italian composers
who worked in the great tradition of Corelli and
Vivaldi.
Edmund Van Der Straeten, a musicologist
specializing in the violin literature, has written of
Veracini. “As a composer he was too far in advance
of his time to be understood by his contemporaries,
who looked upon his work as capricious and bizarre.
His bold modulations, the wealth of his delicately
worked-out harmonies, his originality in express-
ing his conceptions, differed too widely from any-
thing that had been heard before, with the result
that for over a century his compositions were
entirely neglected.” Of these twelve violin sonatas
Van Der Straeten writes: “In form they show a
progress over his predecessors, but it is especially
in his thematic material, its bold harmonic treat-
ment, and the characteristic chromatic passages,
that he appears quite modern. Some of his slow
movements are truly enchanting, while his allegros
often fascinate by their brightness and natural
flowing form...In the first movements of his sona-
tas he makes an important step forward towards
the final sonata form.”
‘The twelve violin sonatas best can be described
by listing the markings of the separate movements.
It can be seen that Veracini began with the con-
ventional dance-derived forms and progressed into
the newly evolved forms that today remain the
accepted ones.
Victor Chapin
Sonata 1
Overture - Aria - Paesana - Minuet - Gigue
Sonata 2
Preludio - Allemande - Siciliana - Grave - Aria
Sonata 3
Preludio - Allemande - Largo - Rondo
Sonata 4
Preludio - Allegro - Sarabande - Allegro
Sonata 5
Preludio - Courante - Aria - Gigue
Sonata 6
Fantasia - Allemande - Pastorale - Gigue
Sonata 7
Cantabile - Larghetto - Allegro - Largo- Allegro
Sonata 8
Largo - Allegro - Allegro - Grave - Allegro
Sonata 9
Largo e staccato - Allegro - Vivace - Largo -
Allegro
Sonata 10
Largo - Allegro - Allegro - Largo - Brillante
Sonata 11
Cantabile - Allegro - Allegro - Largo - Allegro
Sonata 12
Cantabile - Larghetto - Intermedio (Aria) -
Aria - Capriccio
HYMAN BRESS was born in Capetown, South
Africa, where he began to play the violin at the
age of five. He made his debut with the Capetown
Municipal Orchestra when he was nine years old,
and six years later won a scholarship to the Curtis
Institute in Philadelphia, and was graduated in
1951.
In 1956, Mr. Bress won the Concert Artists Guild
Award, and in 1957 the Jascha Heifetz Award at
Tanglewood. A Canadian by citizenship, he ap-
peared in radio, television, recital and orchestral
appearances throughout Canada and was invited
to make his debut in London with the Royal Phil-
harmonic under Sir Adrian Boult.
Bress has toured Europe and Scandinavia, draw-
ing ‘rave’ notices from the critics. He has played
with such internationally famed orchestras as the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, l'Orchestre Na-
tional de la Radiodiffusion Frangaise, and the
Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also broadcast and
appeared on television in many leading cities.
He possesses one of the finest violins in the
world, a Guarnerius del Jesu, made in 1739.
Made in U.S.A.
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