Three String Trios by John Antes

Description

No examination of the music of early America can be complete without taking the Moravians into account. J. F. Peter’s six string quintets are the earliest known chamber music written in this country, according to current research. John Antes crafted one of the earliest violins made in America, and is Three Trios, though they were written abroad, are the earliest known chamber music composed by an American.

This edition is the real thing, edited from the first edition published in London in last decade of the 18th century!

John Antes (1740-1811) was born and raised in Pennsylvania. After working for a few years as an instrument maker in Bethlehem, PA, he was invited to come to Europe, where he undertook several kinds of business with little success. Called to serve the church as a missionary in Egypt beginning in 1769, he survived many adventures both in travel and in his work there. He was tortured and nearly killed by followers of Osman Bey, a local official of the Ottoman Empire. After undergoing the bastinado (beating of the soles of the feet), he was finally released.

It was sometime during this Egyptian period of his life that Antes wrote the trios (identified as Opus 3) and a set of string quartets (which are missing); in fact, a letter to Benjamin Franklin with which he sent a copy of the quartets is dated some four months before his torture. The trios may have been written earlier as well, or they may have been written during his convalescence. As C. Daniel Crews notes in his biography of Antes, “The global sweep of this little episode is amazing: here we have an American-born missionary in Egypt sending copies of his quartets to an American diplomat in France, quartets which he had written for an English nobleman and his associates in India! This makes his dedication of the Three Trios to the Swedish ambassador in Constantinople almost an anti-climax.” (Moravian Music Foundation, 1997, p,13)

This same letter to Franklin also illuminates another side of Antes: in this letter he interceded for the American Moravians in their hardships during the American Revolution. Antes was recalled to Germany in 1782, and beginning in 1785, served as a business manager in Fulneck, England. His composition of sacred concerted vocal works (some three dozen in all) began during the 1780’s, and he retired to Bristol, England, in 1808, and died there on December 17, 1811.

The trios were published in London by John Bland in the early 1790’s, with the following notations on the title page:

Tre Trii, per due Violini mid Violoncello, Obligato Dedicati a Sm Excellenza il Sigre G. J. de Heidenstam, Ambassatore de Sa Maj il Ri de Suede a Constantinople, Composti a Grand Cairo da/ Sigre Giovanni A-T-S. Dillettante Americano. Op. 3. London, Printed & Sold by J. Bland at his Music Warehouse No. 45 Holborn

They found their way to America, with a nearly complete copy (lacking the first page of the cello part) surviving in the collection of the Salem (NC) Collegium Musicum. One other partial copy (lacking the first violin part) was purchased in 1941 by the Eastman School of Music. No other copies are known to exist.

Each of the trios (No. l in Eb major, No. 2 in D minor, and No. 3 in C major) has three movements. Formal structures are marked by classical balance, with sections delineated not by sharp thematic contrast but rather by key area; most of the movements are in a rounded binary or sonata-like structure, but quite often in his recapitulation Antes omits the opening melodic material entirely, or just alludes to it, rather than making a literal restatement. Later themes, stated in the first half of the movement in the dominant (or, in the case of the D minor trio, in the relative major) are clearly restated in the tonic in the recapitulation. At least in Antes” practice, then, the form is based upon harmonic balance and articulated by the fact that all of the primary themes are eventually stated in the tonic key, be it in the exposition or in the recapitulation.

Antes writes for three instruments of equal importance in the texture, which remains consistently dense; rarely does anyone have a full measure of rest. Antes also shows careful control of register, for instance in the development section of the Adagio of Trio I, where he places the three instruments in very close proximity and then moves first violin up and cello down, before closing the section in dramatic octaves.

Antes’ string quartets may yet be rediscovered. Given the beauty and grace of the Antes Trios, and the majesty and expressiveness of his vocal works, the very possibility of finding more music by this gifted composer is intriguing and exhilarating.