2 - Composing “Freedom” and Freedom of the Composer

Summary

A little known occasional work by Telemann, the Pastorelle en musique of circa 1714, offers evidence that a modern, enlightened understanding of freedom was manifest in the composer’s thinking during his early Frankfurt period (1712–16). It is this understanding that Jean Starobinski examined in his influential book The Invention of Liberty, 1700–1789. Telemann himself described his departure from the Eisenach court for the free imperial city of Frankfurt as a move toward freedom; later, he criticized his Frankfurt wedding serenatas for having gone too far in this direction. Compositional strategies in the Pastorelle en musique document a novel, free, and extraordinarily diverse mingling of literary and musical models together with formal, stylistic, and generic traditions of the most varied provenance – a tendency toward freer composition that also surfaces in the pastorale’s details, such as the setting of the words “freedom shall be the watchword.”