New Millennium Strings
Concerts | Musicians | Rehearsals | Supporters | Board | Contact Us
Johann Baptist Georg Neruda
Concerto for Trumpet in E-Flat Major
Many details of the Czech composer Johann Baptist Georg Neruda's life are not known. As a child he studied the violin in Prague. Later he was employed in a theater orchestra. In 1705 he became a member of the Electoral Orchestra in Dresden and retired from that position in 1772. Neruda was a chamber musician and he earned additional income by writing church music.
Neruda wrote 18 symphonies, an opera entitled Les Troqueurs, several sacred works including a Salve Regina, and many violin concerti. In 1764, his collection of Six Sonatas for Two Violins was published in Leipzig by Breitkopf and Hartel. The Concerto in E-Flat Major was written in Dresden around 1750. It was originally composed for natural horn and exhibits an unusually high range. The composition is very well suited to the modern valve trumpet, and it is on this instrument the concerto is most often performed. Classical era composers offered very little contribution to the trumpet repertoire. Perhaps the best known concerti of the era were composed by Hummel and Haydn, of which the Neruda concerto shares the same rangee.
In the first movement, the use of unison passages in the violins and doubling the viola and bass lines in octaves are two effective techniques. The use of unison passages in this way is a technique found in Vivaldi's concerto form. The coupling of instruments and the use of unison violin parts creates homophony with extreme harmonic sparsity and transparency of tone color. Neruda often uses incomplete chords, which allows the basso continuo player some freedom for interpretation. In the mid-18th century, as continuo-homophony slowly developed toward homophony, the use of the basso continuo was becoming outmoded. However, in Neruda's lifetime, the keyboard was most likely used in this concerto. The slow movement of the Neruda concerto makes use of ornate solo melodic lines. The florid lines are first heard in the violins and then by the solo trumpet. This writing is illustrative of the style galant. The third movement is a lively dance movement and is like a da capa aria form readily seen in 18th century opera.
-- program notes by Laurien Jones