Poor Telemann. Every year, if I write anything laudatory about him for his birthday anniversary, following as closely as it does on the heels of the March birthdays of his great colleagues and rivals, Handel (March 5) and Bach (March 21), it seems to bring the invective raining down upon him.
“He’s boring!” will write one.
“He’s a notespinner!” will opine another.
“How many times can you rewrite the same piece?” will grumble a third.
Could it be that he was a casualty of having done his job too well?
After all, Telemann wrote more music than Bach and Handel combined – over 3,000 works – making him one of the most prolific composers of all time. Yet nothing in his oeuvre has captured the public imagination quite like the “Brandenburg Concertos” or the “Water Music.”
Of course, Telemann wrote “Water Music” too. Keep in mind, this was not conceived for a king’s leisurely cruise down the Thames (à la Handel), but rather to celebrate the centennial of the Hamburg Admiralty. That’s a pretty dry commission.
The work opens with an Ouverture in C, perhaps suggestive of the movement of the water itself. Then Telemann begins to gussy it up with music representative of various mythological figures (Thetis asleep and awake, Neptune in love, Naiads at play, Triton the jokester, stormy Aeolus, and pleasant Zephir, comprising movements 2-8). The penultimate movement is a gigue inspired by the tides, and the work concludes with a suggestion of some jolly sailors.
No one is going to argue against the fact that Handel had the more indelible tunes. As a classical music broadcaster, I’ve had more experience with this suite than most, but I still can’t say I could pick it out of a police line-up.
Nevertheless, Telemann was a significant talent, who was recognized in his own lifetime. He was an innovator, assimilating Italian and French influences into his own style, and his contemporaries bought and studied his scores. He was offered the cantorate of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, ahead of Bach. He counted Bach among his friends, as well as Handel. Bach even requested that he be the godfather of his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel.
Telemann lived an unusually long life (86 years), though it was not without its miseries. His first wife died young. His second ran up gambling debts in amounts larger than his annual income. Ultimately, his friends had to bail him out. As he grew older, he suffered further indignities, including failing eyesight.
Celebrated in his own day, by the 19th century he was dismissed as a “polygraph,” someone who had simply composed too much. In a sense, he was a victim of his own success.
Today, he inspires renewed enthusiasm among early music specialists, who have done much to restore his reputation. At the very least, he deserves a little love on his birthday.
Happy Birthday, Georg Philipp Telemann!*
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One of my favorite Telemann moments, the “Air à l’Italien” from the Suite in A Minor for Flute and Orchestra:
Always been partial to this one, too:
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*NOTE: By the Julian calendar, Telemann was born on March 14
