Symphonies op.10 Nos. 1-6

Abstract

Carl Friedrich Abel (born on 22 December 1723 in Köthen, died on 20 June 1787 in London)has always been assigned a role of secundary importance in music history. He has functioned as a minor character whenever it has been deemed necessary to round off biographies of Bach or Mozart with background information. Quite a few biographers and lexicographer have conjectured that Abel, a pupil at the Thomasschule in Leipzing, studied with Johann Sebastian Bach. We know for certain that Abel was a gambist in the Dresden Court Orchesttra from 1748 to 1758, when Johann Adolf Hasse, another recently rediscovered composer, was the court music director in Dresden. The gamba virtuoso Abel soon began to tour in concert. One of his concert tours took him to London, where he settled permanently in 1759. Abel soon began publishing his compositions and followed the practice of the time by issuing them in sets of six. All his compositions come under the heading of instrumental music; chamber music (trios, solos sonatas, string quartets), symphonies, and instrumental solo concertos for flute, piano, and violoncello.

Our composer, a chamber musician in the employ of Queen Charlotte, devoted a not insignificant amount of his time and energy to the organization of the subscription series he presented with Johann Chtistian Bach in London from 1765 to 1782: the »Bach-Abel ‘s Concerts.«Many, if not all, of Abel´s London compositions of those years were intended for performance and profit in his concert series. Accordingly, Abel would have deemed ir very important to compose works to satisfy the tastes of his listening audience. Since Abel was his own publisher and tus was involved in the financial risks of the publishing bussines, he would have also been concerned to produce works with good sales prospects.

In his A general history of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (book IV, 1789) Charles Burney offered the following sketch of Abel: »His compositions were easy and elegantly simple, for he used to say, ‘I do not choose to be always struggling with difficulties, and playing with all my might. I make my pieces difficult whenever I please, according to my dispositions and that of my audience.’

-Yet in nothing was he so superior to himself and to other musicians, as in writing and playing adagios; in which the most pleasing, yet learned modulation, the richest harmony, and the most elegant and polished melody, were all expressed with such feeling taste, and science that no musical production or performance with which I was then acquainted seemed to approach nearer perfection. The knowledge Abel had acquired in Germany of every part of musical science, rendered him the umpire of all musical controversies, and caused him to be consulted on many difficult points. His concertos and other pieces were frequently played on public occasions. The taste and science of Abel were rather greater than his invention, so that some of his latter productions, compared with those of younger composers, appeared somewhat languid and monotonous; yet he preserved a high reputation in the professions till his death« (cited according to the »Abel« entry in the Dictionary of Musicians, Vol. 1. London, 1824).