Text of the booklet "Jacob Klein. Scordatura Sonatas"

Most composers in Western music history were professional musicians. This “most” seems to imply that there were also composers who were not professional musicians, and that is indeed the case. In various countries and at various periods amateur composers have played an important role. Tommaso Albinoni, Francesco Antonio Bonporti and Benedetto Marcello, for example, were all well-known amateur composers active in Italy at the beginning of the eighteenth century. They proudly called themselves “amatore” or “dilettante” on the title pages of their published works. The German-speaking countries and the Netherlands also had their share of amateur composers in the first half of the eighteenth century. Among Dutch amateur composers Jacob Klein the Younger, who lived from 1688 to 1748, is perhaps not the best known – this prerogative certainly goes to Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, composer of the famous VI Concerti armonici, anonymously published in the Hague in 1740 and later incorrectly attributed to their editor Carlo Ricciotti detto Bacciccia or even to Pergolesi – but his music certainly merits performance and is well worth listening to and recording.
Jacob Klein “the Younger” (in Dutch: “de Jonge”, on the title pages of his publication “le Jeune” or “il giovane”) was indeed not a professional musician himself, but by birth and kinship he was related to several musicians and dancers of his time, as well as painters. Klein was named “the Younger” to distinguish him from his father Jacob Klein “the Elder” (born 1661, died around 1715–1720), who was dancing master at the City Theatre of Amsterdam for many years, at least from 1690 to 1714 and perhaps before and after that time. Dance played such an important role in the drama of this period that the position of dancing master at an official theatre staging some 150 productions per year was undoubtedly prestigious. The Amsterdam music publisher Estienne Roger dedicated his reprint of the famous Violin Sonatas Opus 5 by Arcangelo Corelli, published in 1702, to Jacob Klein the Elder. Jacob Herman Klein was born in Amsterdam on October 14, 1688 and baptised two days later, October 16, at the Catholic church of De Ster. He was the first child of Jacob Klein the Elder and Johanna van Geleijn (1661–1701), who had married the year before (registered on December 5, 1687). His father was a Catholic, like many musicians of this period in the officially Calvinist Dutch Republic; his mother a Mennonite. (After the first wife’s death Jacob Klein married Anna Maria Roest in 1705).
An older sister of Jacob Klein the Elder was Lidwina Klein (born 1656), who in 1674 married Philippus Hacquart, from Bruges in Flanders but living in Amsterdam from the 1670s onwards. Philippus was employed by the Amsterdam City Theatre as a dancer and musician (we can assume he was primarily a viola da gamba player), but also wrote several pieces for the viola da gamba. His brother was Carolus Hacquart, who worked as a musician and composer in Amsterdam and The Hague and composed several sets of vocal and instrumental music published in Amsterdam between 1674 and 1686.
No details about the musical training of Jacob Klein the Younger are known, but because of his family connections it could not have been difficult to find him a music teacher among the musicians and composers active in Amsterdam around 1700. His instrument would have been the cello, judging from the musical compositions he wrote later in his life. Perhaps he was instructed by his uncle Philippus Hacquart, but if so he must have substituted the new and modern violoncello for the viola da gamba (then already becoming old-fashioned).
Jacob Klein the Younger did not take up music as a profession. He became a merchant, although we know very little about his exact occupation. In 1710 he married Susanna Spieringh (born 1688, baptised May 5) and a few years later he and his father-in-law Willem Spieringh established a company for trading gum arabic. His marriage brought him another interesting relative. His mother-in-law was Isabella de Hondecoeter, daughter of the well-known Dutch painter Melchior de Hondecoeter (1636–1695). Jacob Klein seems to have had only one child, Geertrui, born in 1711. Klein died in 1748 and was buried on March 8 at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam.
Nearly nothing is known of Jacob Klein’s professional career, but we know at least some of his musical compositions. Between 1717 and 1746 he published a total of 36 sonatas, of which six are for oboe and figured bass, six for violin and figured bass, eighteen for violoncello and figured bass, and six for two violoncellos. The recurring number six suggests they were published in groups of six, and that is indeed the case. His Opus 1, published in 1716 when he was 28 years old, consists of eighteen sonatas divided in three groups of six entitled Livre premier, Livre second and Livre troisieme respectively. Nos. 1 to 6 are for oboe and figured bass, nos. 7 to 12 for violin and figured bass, and nos. 13 to 18 for violoncello and figured bass. On the title page the publisher is credited as Jeanne Roger. In 1716 she had succeeded her father Estienne Roger as nominal owner of his music publishing business. However, since Jeanne was under twenty at the time we may assume the business was still managed by her father. Jacob Klein’s Opus 2, a collection of six duets for two violoncellos, followed just two years later in 1719, also published under the name of Jeanne Roger. Opus 3 and 4 are, again, sets of six sonatas for violoncello and figured bass. These were published much later, around 1740 and 1746 respectively. Both Estienne and Jeanne Roger had died in the meantime, Estienne in 1721 and Jeanne in 1722. Klein’s Opus 3, printed around 1740 by Michel-Charles le Cene, son-in-law and business successor of Estienne Roge, was one of the last publications produced by the firm of Roger-Le Cene. Le Cene died in 1743 and Jacob Klein had to look for another publisher when his Opus 4 was ready for printing. He chose Gerhard Fredrik Witvogel, who had been active as a music publisher in Amsterdam from 1731 onwards. It would be one of Witvogel’s last editions. Jacob Klein was almost sixty years old by then.
Fate has not been generous to the music of Jacob Klein the Younger. Of the 36 sonatas published in Amsterdam in the first half of the eighteenth century just half, three sets of six, have been preserved. These three sets are all for the violoncello: the Sonatas Opus 1, Livre 3 (with the title VI Sonates a une Basse de Violon et Basse Continue), the Duets Opus 2 (VI Duetti a due Violoncelli, Preludii, Allemande, Correnti, Gighe, Sarabande, Gavotte, Minuetti, Fuga, e Ciaccone) and the Sonatas Opus 4 (VI Sonate a Violoncello solo e Basso Continuo). Another set of Violoncello Sonatas (Opus 3) and the Oboe and Violin Sonatas of Opus 1 are lost. Our knowledge of these lost works comes from the catalogues issued at various times by their publishers. Consequently all the surviving works of Jacob Klein are for the violoncello: the Six Sonatas Opus 1, Livre 3, the Six Duets Opus 2 and the Six Sonatas Opus 4.
Although Klein’s sonatas for violoncello are not the first specimens of the genre, they certainly belong to the earlier examples. Whereas violin sonatas were published in vast quantities from the beginning of the seventeenth century, sonatas for violoncello and figured bass were not published before the end of that century and still rare in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, only increasing in number later in the century, especially after 1750. In the Netherlands there was a tradition of composing and publishing sonatas (or rather, suites) for viola da gamba and figured bass by composers such as Carolus and Philippus Hacquart, Johan Schenck, Johan Snep and Jacob Riehman, roughly covering the years from 1680 to 1710. (Of course works for viola da gamba and figured bass were also published in other countries during these years, especially in France and Germany.) Whether or not this was an inspiration for Jacob Klein to compose for the violoncello is difficult to say. In any case he was the first Dutch composer to compose specifically for the violoncello.

Rudolf Rasch, Associate Professor of Musicology at the Institute of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University (Utrecht, Netherlands)

In the second part of his treatise Der vollkommene Kapellmeister, Johann Mattheson explains the essence of a good melody to beginning composers. He says that a good melody is “light”; it is perceived naturally and easily, nothing about it seems contrived or scholarly. He goes on to quote a French author: musical levity “might be compared with artificial gardens, where our sight delights in lawns and shrubs without realising how much is invested in such a composition; it looks like a coincidence, a play of nature, while actually it was bought with millions” (Chapter 5, para.70).
Klein’s lively, natural and flexible music is perceived so easily as if his adagios and allegros combined into tidy two- and three-part compositions of their own accord, already filled with visible, theatrical images; as the fanciful interweaving of bristling dotted rhythms, tense sequences and slow cadences came to the author in a flick of a second. This is hardly the case: looking at his music from the technical viewpoint, one finds a meticulous design and a clear temporal, metrical and tonal plan, beside lively imagination. Sonatas 13 through 18 from the third book of Opus 1 are in four movements; the first four correspond to the slow-fast-slow-fast design (Nos. 17 and 18 will be discussed separately). Every work has two movements in even metre and two in triple metre.
All sonatas are written in different keys: C major – D major – E major – F sharp minor – A minor – B minor. The composer’s logic when selecting this tonal plan seems to be quite unorthodox: we see six keys, sharp or with no key signature; first three are major ones, next three are minor; six tonics create a Dorian hexachord from A. It is not quite clear what this plan entails: perhaps it covered all three books of Opus 1, and, knowing only one third of it, we cannot draw conclusions. In any case, it is clear that Klein composed “with a twist”; looking carefully at his pieces, we see “twists” in harmony, form, texture; even the tuning of the solo cello is unusual: Klein instructs to tune the instrument one tone higher than customary, D-A-E-B instead of C-G-D-A (an alternative tuning is called scordatura, which literally means “mistuning” in Italian). The strings are tighter, there is less vibration and the sound becomes more “focused.”
Among harmonic surprises one could mention the tonal plan of the slow third movement of Sonata No.14: it starts in D major and ends in D minor. Within baroque harmony, it’s an “emergency”: nobody wrote like that, it just was not done. Inside a major movement the author could give in to his melancholy and compose in parallel minor, but he had to finish in major: major was considered a more stable and perfect mode (minor pieces often end with a major chord, but not vice versa). It is unlikely that Klein was pursuing a philosophical goal: perhaps he just found this conclusion fitting and beautiful, and went with the bold harmonic means.
The last two sonatas, in A minor and B minor, are especially rich in musical inventions. Klein must have conceived them as the finale of the whole Opus 1, not just the third book. In the A minor sonata the fast movements are the first and the last; between them are an Adagio and an Andante, the only one in the whole collection. The “twist” of the first movement is in its texture: a fast ostinato with latent two-part writing.
This peculiar and felicitous texture reflects in a vivid image in the finale of the B minor sonata: booming fourths and octaves in the bass are interlaced with fast figurations which quickly change the direction. As if a bulky chariot, after it took much effort to get it moving, were released in the open. The composer is evidently attracted to the changes in both texture and tempo in the first movement: after a few bars, the Adagio is swept away by a gust of Vivace – Presto, so that the initial motion is only remembered in the cadence.
Opus 2 has completely different sonatas: cello duets which consist of dances like suites. Their rhythm is more bouncy, they have more often “square,” eight-measure structure. In Sonata No.6 (on this album), both cellos are equally active, both parts have lots of movement, and Klein demands the retuning of both instruments (he uses the same scordatura as Bach in his Fifth suite for solo cello, BWV 1011: C-G-D-G).
The wish to give parts of equal importance to the soloists led Klein to an interesting solution. In the middle of Sonata No.6 there is a Chaconne, surrounded by two Gavottes. It is a major-key dance with a minor-key middle section, written in a typical Chaconne variation form; the theme is repeated many times, joining first one melody, then another, then yet another, and so on (these melodies are called counterpoints). The “twist” is that every variation – that is, every combination of theme and counterpoint – is repeated twice in a row: first the first cellist plays the contrapuntal line and the second the theme, then their roles are reversed.
Duets Opus 2 are just as technically taxing as Sonatas Opus 1, and cello techniques used are even more diverse. For example, we see a pizzicato (including a left-hand one). This technique emphasizes the openings of the Chaconne theme.
Looking through Klein’s pieces, one appreciates the respectful praise of baroque scholars regarding a concetto, “a witty design”: they saw it in works which combined daring with variety and love for order. If the implementation lacked logic and clarity, the brilliance of the author’s fantasy could seem superfluous. Such pieces were likened to “a peacock’s tail spread out in the sun, which dazzles with the variety of colours but impedes movement” (Daniello Bartoli). Klein’s Sonatas demonstrate both the richness of his ideas and the clarity of his logic: we see an ingenious composer, who knows his instrument very well, uses its capacities sparingly and efficiently, and creates music full of inspiration and warmth.

Anna Andrushkevich, translation by Viktor Sonkin

Text of the booklet "Jacob Klein. Scordatura Sonatas"