The first season concert by Orquesta Barroca de Tenerife at the Auditorio de Tenerife. 

In the mid-17th century there were more than 200 printers in Amsterdam. So, we can safely say that Baroque music was printed in the city over the Amstel River, with its sandy reclaimed land, which was to become the land of tulips forever. 

The publishing industry of the Low Countries, which since 1579 comprised Friesland, Groningen, Gelderland, Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht and Zealand, was fuelled by the thriving Dutch progress that was based on agriculture, fishing and trade- especially supported on the Dutch East India Company- exports, technology and finances, yielding benefits that brought the admiration of the whole of Europe. The financial crisis of 1637, due to a decline in the gusto for tulips and their bulbs -introduced by Carolus Clusius in 1593 during his period as teaching botanist in Leiden-, plus the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia (1648),  in favour of France and England after the Treaty of Utrecht (1715), caused printing in Amsterdam to collapse, having specialised in printing music, first by  Estienne Roger (ca. 1664–1722), and then by Michel-Charles Le Cène (1684-1743).

Once Petrucci and Attaignan’s movable types printing was overtaken, Roger encouraged music and its distribution by means of the engraving technique of printing on copper sheets imported from France (he was actually a French Huguenot who had sought shelter in Amsterdam in 1697). This technique was emulated by John Walsh in London. The cost, the high quality of prints, the durability and legibility of Estienne’s scores were quickly recognised by Vivaldi, Albinoni, Corelli, A. Scarlatti, Lully, Lebègue and Marin Marais, among many others. His vision not only improved printing but it also changed the role of the publisher who also acted as distributor, authorising agents to sell his editions in Rotterdam, Liege, Brussels, London, Cologne, Hamburg, Halle, Berlin and Leipzig, thus spreading music, particularly Italian music, across Northern Europe like never before. 

Upon his death in 1722, the company passed on to his son-in-law Le Cène, who with the careful and elegant design of his prints, which were much appreciated in Europe, continued the business vigorously, adding to the company’s catalogue editions of Geminiani, Locatelli, Dall’Abaco, Handel, Quantz, Telemann, Tartini and other contemporaries.

The first programme of Orquesta Barroca de Tenerife’s third season pays tribute to Dutch good taste, inherited from Baroque times, especially the delight of their tulips and the excellent music they printed.

Thus, the colour of Grave -first movement of the Concerto Armonico n° 1 by Unico Wilhelm Graaf van Wassenaer- seems to introduce us into the Dutch delight in waiting for the slow shooting of the bulb, after the winter lethargy, to offer us the most beautiful flowering of the Semper Augustus with their Italian-style contrast and progress in the second movement Allegro; contemplation in Poco andante, and hope for the next harvest in the last Allegro.

We could go on with the idea of the Anemoi -winds of Ancient Greece- on the Dutch farmlands, which appear to be tamed by the flute in Concerto op. X n° 7, by Willem de Fesch. The Vivace fluttering that makes the stems grow weak in the exhausting dance of the young tulips, filling with movement the colourful lands, faces the calm and rest granted by Larghetto, without forgetting in Alla breve, of the ephemeral passing of time against the withered flower of the Tulipa gesneriana. To close the first part, Vivaldi’s Concerto F. XII n° 5  could very well be telling us -with the allegories of his nocturne flute- the ups and downs of the Tulipa clusiana, as their bulb keep the energy for the Largo period of 53 weeks, to let its flower explode, for just eight days, and find ourselves in quasi in Fantasmi: Presto – Largo – Andante, while Presto gets ready to show us with Sonno, the languishing of the frail, sharp and white tepals full of trust in the next season, in the final Allegro.

The second part of the evening starts with the concerto by Locatelli, who emigrated to Amsterdam around 1730, and maestro de Leclair since 1736- which suggests the image of the Tulipa purissima, hybrids of eventful life, from the cultivation of the bulb to the blooming and cutting of the flower with the Andante, Allegro, Adagio, Andante, Allegro, the journey to the city on their Largo way to the Dutch ports to reach a flower vase and decorate a table, in Largo-Andante, and admire the colourful final Grave.

Leclair could very well concentrate in his Concerto in C Major op. VII n° 3, the descriptive essence of the Tulipa tarda.  Elegant fluorescence of 6 tepals in the Allegro, geometrical -pre-Classic- proportions in his Adagio and charming profusion in his Allegro like the whitish rim that brightens its yellow corolla.

Conrado Álvarez