T is for Telemann

Ah Telemann. His music is good, not amazing. What is incredible about the man is his output. He lived to be 86 and was writing music the whole time. His lifespan started 4 years before Bach was born and ended right around Beethoven's birth. A long time for a person in the 18th century. He is also reported as having very few health problems so he was free to compose, compose, compose. At one point in time he was writing 3 cantatas a week for a year. The sheer volume is staggering.

For the actual music, he's kind of like a commercial version of Bach. Maybe not as “good” but easy to listen to and agreeable to everyone that heard it. They lived at the same time, but Telemann was definitely the more popular of the two. That probably also has to do with location, but we won't start with that. Another great thing about Telemann's music is that it was written with the public in mind. It is a bit more accessible difficulty-wise and it much of his instructions are actually written in German instead of Italian. It may seem like a small thing now, but it was a relatively novel thing to do back then.

By the numbers I've read that Telemann wrote over 3000 pieces of which 1700 are cantatas, 125 concertos for just about any instrument you can name (alright, he didn't write an accordion concerto), 125 other orchestral pieces, 50 operas or so, and on and on.

Speaking as a trumpet player, we got pretty lucky. Telemann must have had several good trumpet players around him because he wrote many pieces that included trumpet and even a handful of concertos that featured one or more trumpets. Here is a decent performance of one of the standards of the trumpet rep.

Telemann was gifted at writing for voice and I think some of his best music are his sacred cantatas. My favorite that I've heard (I admit, I haven't listened to all 1700) is The Resurrection. Couldn't find a recording just now, but if you ask nicely I'll let you borrow the CD or something. Instead here are two amateur recordings in a pretty standard vocal style. I chose them almost because of this amateur quality. Not that they are in any way bad, but they are somehow at least ordinary. Regular people playing them in what look like regular churches. To me, this is completely right and natural. Much moreso than seeing people with guitars, amplifiers, and sound systems. But hey, that's just me.