Author: Andrew Appel

  • Jean-Marie Leclair: Seduction and Rococo Art

    In Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ masterful and emblematic 18th-century epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the Marquise de Merteuil tickles, delights and at the same time emasculates both her sparring partner Valmont and the reader with artful, witty virtuosity. A razor-sharp, humorous image here, a play on words there, a slightly confounded expectation, an erotic allusion,…

  • A highly personal note to an international concert program

    Plum Blossoms and Fleurs de Lis: War and Peace in the Forbidden City and Versailles Four Nations Ensemble and Music From China Sunday, April 21st at 6 PM Salon Sanctuary Concerts in New York City Thursday, April 25th at 8 PM Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg Pennsylvania I met Albert Fuller in New York in…

  • Playing the Texan Palace

        We made a final turn off the highway to a country road. We had been driving for an hour, had stopped at a Tex Mex roadside restaurant, and then watched as the highway modulated from urban sprawl to desert austerity but we were not prepared for the romantic vision as we made this…

  • Court and Concert, notes to a program

    Notes for Four Nations concert program for the Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Series (Synod Hall on Saturday, January 12) and at the New Church in New York City (Monday, January 14). Check below blog for details. I prefer that which moves me to that which surprises me. –François Couperin (from the preface of Book One…

  • Francois Couperin: The beginning of a long look.

    Francois Couperin: The beginning of a long look.

    Open Book One of Couperin’s Pieces de Claveçin and look at the first two pages of music. In contrast to the published volumes of d’Anglebert, Rameau, Le Roux and Marchand, Couperin opens not with a prélude, or improvisatory awakening of the instrument but rather with an Allemande Grave. Four of the five suites of Book…

  • Bastille Day

    From the Salon to the Scaffold Notes to a program at Maverick Concerts for July 14th, 2012 Bastille Day I prefer that which touches me to that which surprises me The composer, François Couperin (1668-1733) I prefer the bizarre to the insipid The painter, Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824) Nothing (happened) The King Louis XVI, Journal entry…

  • Lamentations and Ululations: Notes before a program

    Antonio Vivaldi came to prominence on the coat tails of Johann Sebastian Bach. This was a favor returned, as Bach’s own style went through a metamorphosis with his discovery of the Venetian master’s brilliant energy and rational, transparent, and effective form. Everything in Bach evolved, from harpsichord music to extended arias and choral writing. So,…

  • Sans Souci-Notes before a concert

    Sans Souci-Notes before a concert

    A journal of our visit to Sans Souci and notes on a program of the Four Nations Ensemble in New York City on March 7th, 2002 A day at Sans Souci, Frederick the Great’s favorite home, is immersion in a Rococo world. The gardens cascading below the pavilion (it is neither a palace nor chateau…

  • Berlin and the Sing-Akademie

    Berlin and the Sing-Akademie

    The melancholy that pervades French 18th century art springs from an observation that nothing lasts; nothing fine, happy, exquisite, delicious, amorous, luminous, nothing lasts. Leaving Versailles is leaving Eden and leaving Paris is done with regret. Heaven on earth may well be a moment in which our taste buds are being ravished, our eyes delighted,…

  • Leaving Versailles

    Leaving Versailles

          It snowed this morning over Versailles and so, just as during my first visit here in 1969, today there is a rare view of the 17th century classical gardens by Andre Le Notre, one of history’s greatest landscape architects. All white, the grounds are an abstract composition in perfectly cut leafless hedges,…