Anna BON [Di Venezia] (1738/1740-1767)
Six Flute Sonatas, Op. 1
Sonata No. 1 in C Major [12:21]
Sonata No. 2 in F Major [11:46]
Sonata No. 3 in Bb Major [9:53]
Sonata No. 4 in D Major [13:18]
Sonata No. 5 in G Minor [7:35]
Sonata No. 6 in G Major [19:11]
Vladimir Soares (recorders), Fabian Grosch (harpsichord)
rec. 2018, Holy Trinity Church, Weston, UK
DRAMA MUSICA DRAMA007 [74:02]
Anna Bon is a somewhat tantalising figure, about whom at least as much is unknown as is known. The facts known (or at least plausibly deduced) about her are not extensive. Three collections by her were published in her lifetime. Opus 1 was the Sei Sonate da Camera per il Flauto Traversiere e Violencello o Cembalo of 1756 (recorded on this album). Opus 2, published in the very next year was her Sei Sonate Per il Cembalo; 1759 saw the publication of her Sei Divertimenti a due Flauti e Basso (opus 3.)
From the prefatory materials of the first two of these publications it can reasonably be deduced that the composer was born in 1640. (Some scholarship, however, gives her date of birth as 1638). Whichever of these dates is correct, these publications were the work of a very young woman. Both her parents were active in the world of opera. Her mother, Rosa Ruvinetti (originally from Bologna) was a soprano. In 1735 she married the Venetian Girolamo Bon, who was a writer of libretti, a stage designer and also an architect (in 1765 he held the post of professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bayreuth). Between 1735 and 1746 the couple spent much of their time in St. Petersburg, working at the court opera, most often in connection with performances of Italian comic operas. It is known that between 1740 and 1742, they spent some time back in Italy – during which time their daughter Anna may have been born – probably either in Venice or Bologna. (Her later adoption, in her publications, of the name Anna Bon Di Venezia might have been an acknowledgement of her place of birth, or perhaps a kind of ‘marketing’ strategy, a way of seeking to benefit from the international reputation of Italian music). In March of 1743 Anna Bon was admitted – as a fee-paying student and presumably a boarder – of the coro (or music school) of the Ospedale Pietà in Venice. There she would have attended classes in sight-singing, vocal technique and counterpoint. She would also have received training on at least one instrument. She presumably also took part in the performances given by the ‘students’ of the Ospedale. After leaving the Ospedale – perhaps early in the 1650s – she found employment in 1756 as a court musician (specifically as a harpsichordist) to Friedrich Viscount of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (who was a competent amateur flautist) and whose wife Wilhelmine was the sister of Frederick the Great; she played the harpsichord and composed. Anna’s parents were employed at Bayreuth at the same time. Wilhelmine seems to have been the major patron of music at the court, so much so that upon her death in 1757 most of the musicians had to seek employment elsewhere.
We know that Anna was working in Weimar between 1757 and 1758; from 1762 she was hired – again alongside her parents, at the court of Prince Nikolaus von Esterhazy where, Haydn had been appointed vice-Kappelmeister one year earlier. Anna seems to have worked at Esterhazy until April 1765 (primarily as a singer); by 1767 she was married to an Italian tenor, [Federico?] Mongeri and the two were settled at Hildburghausen, a town in Thuringia. There seems to be no record of Anna Bon in the years immediately before this marriage, or in the years following. She might have died young (perhaps in childbirth?), or perhaps her husband did not wish her to be a public performer. Given the quality of the music she wrote in her teenage years it is unfortunate that, for whatever reason, we have no compositions from her maturity.
The virtues of these six flute sonatas have been succinctly characterised by the American harpsichordist and musicologist Barbara Harbach, in the booklet note to her own recording of Bon’s six harpsichord sonatas (MSR Classics MS 1241 review). Harbach writes that the sonatas of Bon’s Opus 1 constitute “a delightful addition to the flutist’ s early classical repertoire … they are galant in style, refined, elegant and graceful, and exhibit nimble idiomatic writing for the flute. The keyboard provides rich harmonic support”. Certainly anyone who has enjoyed the flute sonatas of C.P. Bach or Quantz, will surely get a good deal of pleasure from Bon’s youthful set of six sonatas. Bon’s sonatas are all in three movements and largely follow the pattern of slow-fast-fast. The slow movements feature some attractively ornamented melodies. The faster movements have lyrical charm, though they are not especially distinctive either harmonically or rhythmically.
The initial publication of these sonatas specifies, as noted above, the use of the transverse flute, but the German-based, Brazilian-born flautist Vladimir Soares choose to use a variety of recorders (something which would have been wholly acceptable in Bon’s day) and brings out the music’s affinities both with the baroque idiom (as in the second sonata) and the more ‘modern’ idiom of, say C.P.E. Bach (e.g. in sonata six). The young Bon found, one might say, a way of reconciling the Venetian musical language in which she had grown up with what she had later heard in the Germanic world.
Soares and harpsichordist Fabian Grosch complement one another perfectly throughout. There have, by my reckoning, been three previous recordings of this set of six sonatas and this new one is, at the very least, on a par with any of its predecessors; indeed I would make it my first choice, for its range of colours and its vitality, which effectively communicate the inherent joy of this music – the sound of a young composer enjoying her own ability.
These sonatas, without being startlingly innovative have, at one and the same time, a sense of youthful innocence and an air of technical sophistication. The unsolved puzzles of this tantalising figure – did she write more, did it fulfil her evident promise, if so, where are such works now, when did she die? – make Anna Bon seem like a figure awaiting either further scholarly discoveries or, perhaps, a suitable writer to come along and make her the subject of a historical novel.
Glyn Pursglove
