Infor­ma­tion about the life of Bar­tolomeo de Selma y Salaverde is spotty at best. He was born around the turn of the sev­en­teenth cen­tury, most likely in Cuenca, Spain, to a fam­ily of musi­cians and wind-instrument mak­ers. The first actual record of his life is of his pro­fes­sion as a mem­ber of the Augus­tin­ian order in Madrid in 1613. He next sur­faces in 1628 at Inns­bruck, where he was employed as a vir­tu­oso fagot­tist at the court of Arch­duke Leopold. Selma y Salaverde’s music sur­vives in a sin­gle five-volume col­lec­tion enti­tled CANZONI / FANTASIE ET CORRENTI / Da suonar ad una 2. 3. 4. Con Basso Con­tinuo. This work was pub­lished in Venice in 1638 by Bar­tolomeo Magni and is ded­i­cated to the Bishop of Vratislava (modern-day Wro­claw). While this sug­gests ties to two other Euro­pean cities, the full extent of Selma y Salaverde’s activ­i­ties in either place is unknown.

Bar­tolomeo de Selma y Salaverde’s Fan­ta­sia per fagotto solo is the old­est known work to spec­ify fagotto as the solo instru­ment. It is also the first to call for a BBb — the low­est note on the mod­ern bas­soon. These two facts are often cited in his­to­ries of the bas­soon and the few short biogra­phies of Selma y Salaverde, but are rarely expanded upon. The instru­ment for which this piece was intended is uncer­tain. While the term fagotto can refer either to a single-piece dul­cian or to a multi-jointed bas­soon, the lat­ter does not appear in the his­tor­i­cal record until the sec­ond half of the sev­en­teenth cen­tury. All known exam­ples of dul­cians, how­ever, descend only to C — a full step above the low­est note in this work. It is likely that Selma y Salaverde, as a fagotto vir­tu­oso and mem­ber of an instrument-making fam­ily, had access to some sort of expanded dul­cian or proto-bassoon that has not sur­vived to the present day. The Fan­ta­sia was there­fore prob­a­bly writ­ten for the composer’s own use, intended to show off not only his vir­tu­os­ity, but also the expanded range of his instrument.

Despite its his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance within the bas­soon reper­toire, there exists no mod­ern pub­lished edi­tion of Selma y Salaverde’s Fan­ta­sia. A num­ber of other works from the col­lec­tion have been issued, but this par­tic­u­lar work exists only in a pub­lished fac­sim­ile. For today’s per­for­mance, we are using a crit­i­cal edi­tion I pre­pared as part of Pro­fes­sor David Crook’s course on his­tor­i­cal per­for­mance practices.

Although known as a French com­poser and pianist, Alexan­dre Tans­man was born in Poland and con­ducted his musi­cal stud­ies at the Lódz Con­ser­va­tory and in War­saw. He was unable to attain the recog­ni­tion he desired, how­ever, and moved to Paris in 1920. He gave a suc­cess­ful debut recital shortly after his arrival, and soon befriended Stravin­sky (about whose music he would later write a mono­graph) and Ravel. Fol­low­ing his move to France, Tans­man quickly attained the inter­na­tional renown he sought; he toured Europe, Asia, and the Unites States exten­sively in the 1920s and 30s. He became a French cit­i­zen in 1938, but shortly there­after fled to Los Ange­les in the face of impend­ing war. There, he joined a num­ber of fel­low émi­grés, includ­ing Stravin­sky, Ravel, and Schoen­berg. Tans­man returned in 1946 to Paris, and main­tained a pro­lific out­put until shortly before his death in 1986.

Sonatine was writ­ten for the Paris Con­ser­va­toire con­cours of 1952. Stu­dents who attend the Con­ser­va­toire do not do so for a set length of time; the period of study is deter­mined for each stu­dent by his or her teacher. When the teacher decides that a stu­dent is ready, the stu­dent is directed to enter the annual con­cours, or con­test, for his or her par­tic­u­lar instru­ment. Stu­dents receive the music for the con­cours one month prior to the June con­test. This month is spent in inten­sive prepa­ra­tion and mem­o­riza­tion. The con­cours are pop­u­lar pub­lic events because their out­come largely deter­mines the futures of the par­tic­i­pants. Musi­cians are also drawn to the con­tests to hear the new pieces being per­formed. Win­ning a pre­mier prix or first prize (which is a rat­ing, rather than an actual rank­ing) in the con­cours vir­tu­ally guar­an­tees the per­former a choice orches­tra posi­tion. Each year a uni­form reper­toire is selected for the con­tests; begin­ning in 1898, a new work was com­mis­sioned each year for each instru­ment. This prac­tice was dis­con­tin­ued in 1985, with now only a few instru­ments selected each year to receive new works.

In Sonatine, Tans­man quotes his own music as well as that of his friend and men­tor Igor Stravin­sky. The final move­ment (Scherzo) makes exten­sive use of motives from the sec­ond move­ment (Scherzino) of Tansman’s 1949 Suite pour Trio D’Anches for oboe, clar­inet, and bas­soon. Mate­r­ial from Stravinsky’s Fire­bird appears twice: near the begin­ning of the Alle­gro con moto and near the end of the Scherzo. In each case, the mate­r­ial is taken from the short oboe solo in the Berceuse from the ballet.

Philippe Her­sant was born in Rome to French par­ents. He stud­ied com­po­si­tion at the Paris Con­ser­va­toire, where he was a stu­dent of André Jolivet. Her­sant attained a pre­miere prix in com­po­si­tion from the Con­ser­va­toire in 1971, and sub­se­quently was awarded grants to work at the Casa Velazquez in Madrid and the Villa Médici in Rome. In 1973, he became a pro­ducer at Radio France, an orga­ni­za­tion that has also com­mis­sioned works from him. Her­sant con­sid­ers his first mature work to be Stances, an orches­tral work from 1978, and does not acknowl­edge his pre­vi­ous com­po­si­tions. Her­sant has been the recip­i­ent of numer­ous awards, includ­ing the Prix Arthur Honeg­ger in 1994, the Prix Mau­rice Ravel in 1996, and the Grand Prix de la Musique Sym­phonique in 1998.

Hopi was writ­ten for French bas­soon­ist Alexan­dre Ouzounoff in 1985. Her­sant revised the work in 1994 for per­for­mance on the Ger­man bas­soon, at the request of bas­soon­ist Pas­cal Gal­lois. The com­poser describes the piece as a trib­ute to the Hopi Indi­ans, who today live pri­mar­ily on a reser­va­tion in north­east­ern Ari­zona. The piece’s main motive is based on Hersant’s rec­ol­lec­tion of a tra­di­tional Hopi melody that he heard at some time in the past — a rec­ol­lec­tion that he freely admits was likely dis­torted by the pas­sage of time. The motive is repeated — obses­sively, says Her­sant — with slight vari­a­tions, but always in the upper reg­is­ters of the bas­soon. This cyclic pat­tern is inter­rupted sev­eral times by “dis­cor­dant and slightly ter­ri­fy­ing” inter­jec­tions in the instrument’s low reg­is­ter. The numer­ous vari­a­tions and inter­rup­tions call for a host of extended tech­niques, includ­ing flut­ter tongu­ing, mul­ti­phon­ics, ghost notes, quarter-tones, and extreme dynamic changes.

Jorge Mock­ert is an Argen­tinean com­poser, pianist, and per­cus­sion­ist. He stud­ied orches­tra­tion at the Insti­tuto Supe­rior de Musica de la Uni­ver­si­dad Nacional del Litoral in Santa Fe, Argentina, and com­puter music at the Cen­tro para la Difusión de la Música Con­tem­poránea in Madrid. He has writ­ten music for orches­tras, choirs, and cham­ber groups, as well as for bal­let, the­ater, tele­vi­sion, and films. Mock­ert wrote Suite Argentina para jugar con Andrea for Andrea Meren­zon, con­tra­bas­soon­ist of the Buenos Aires Phil­har­monic and bas­soon­ist of the Numen Wind Quintet.

The piece draws on a num­ber of types of tra­di­tional Argen­tinean music. Can­dombe (first move­ment: Con­dombe de la solapa) is a genre rooted in the cul­ture of African slaves brought to South Amer­ica in the eigh­teenth cen­tury. Mod­ern can­dombe includes ele­ments of African drum­ming, Argen­tine tango, and Afro-Cuban dance music. Chamamé (third move­ment: Chamameren­zon) is a prod­uct of the mix­ing of the musi­cal cul­ture of the native Guaraní peo­ples of north­east Argentina with those of Pol­ish, Ger­man, and Span­ish immi­grants in the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury. Instru­ments used in chamamé typ­i­cally include vio­lin, Span­ish gui­tar, and accor­dion. The Chacar­era (fourth move­ment: Cha­can­drea) is a dance form that usu­ally involves a melody in 6/8 meter with accom­pa­ny­ing per­cus­sion in 3/4. Its instru­men­ta­tion is sim­i­lar to that of the chamamé, with the addi­tion of a rope-tensioned military-style drum called a bombo legüero. Each of these styles has been adapted to the com­bi­na­tion of bas­soon and piano, with the addi­tion of impro­vised per­cus­sion in three of the five movements.

Carl Maria von Weber was born in Eutin (in what is now the Ger­man state of Schleswig-Holstein) in 1786. His father, Franz Anton Weber, served as both Stadt­mu­si­cus and Kapellmeis­ter of Eutin. The younger Weber stud­ied with a num­ber of teach­ers dur­ing his youth, includ­ing a stint with Michale Haydn in Salzburg. Weber began his pub­lish­ing career early, with a set of small pieces for piano being issued when he was twelve. This was quickly fol­lowed by the pro­duc­tion of his first opera, Das Wald­mäd­chen, at the age of four­teen. Weber was employed for most of his adult life as an opera direc­tor, work­ing in Bres­lau (modern-day Wro­claw) from 1804 to 1806, Prague from 1813 to 1816, and Dres­den from 1817 until shortly before his death in 1826.

Although Weber is prob­a­bly best known for his con­tri­bu­tions to the world of opera, espe­cially his highly suc­cess­ful 1821 work Der Freis­chütz, he also pro­duced a large body of instru­men­tal works. Most of these are for piano (his own pri­mary instru­ment), but he com­posed solo works for flute, clar­inet, bas­soon, horn, viola, and cello, as well as cham­ber works for var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of winds and strings.

The Andante e Rondo Ungarese was writ­ten in 1809, and scored for viola and orches­tra. This ini­tial ver­sion of the piece, ded­i­cated to Weber’s brother Fritz, was never pub­lished in Weber’s life­time. Weber scholar F.W. Jähns redis­cov­ered the auto­graph in the 1860s, but the first pub­lished edi­tion was not issued until 1938. The work did not how­ever lan­guish in obscu­rity for the cen­tury and a quar­ter sep­a­rat­ing its com­po­si­tion from its first pub­lished edi­tion; Weber reworked the piece in 1813 with bas­soon as the solo instru­ment. Georg Friedrich Brandt, for whom Weber had pre­vi­ously writ­ten his bas­soon con­certo, gave the pre­miere of the revised ver­sion on Feb­ru­ary 13^th of that year. The piece was first pub­lished in its new form in 1816, and has remained in print in one form or another to the present day. The ver­sion being per­formed today was arranged by Mordechai Recht­man, prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist of the Israel Phil­har­monic Orches­tra from 1946 to 1991.