As Bugs Bunny quipped during one of his sea-going adventures with Yosemite Sam, "if it's the Captain's mess, let him clean it up." It was Georg Philipp Telemann's own mess that he was seeking to clean up when he took on the chore of composing Kapitänsmusik, or "Captain's Music," as Telemann's wife was an avid gambler with expensive tastes; at one point, his financial picture was so bleak the citizens of Hamburg took up a collection to help the couple out. Telemann was productive enough in terms of Captain's music -- short ...
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As Bugs Bunny quipped during one of his sea-going adventures with Yosemite Sam, "if it's the Captain's mess, let him clean it up." It was Georg Philipp Telemann's own mess that he was seeking to clean up when he took on the chore of composing Kapitänsmusik, or "Captain's Music," as Telemann's wife was an avid gambler with expensive tastes; at one point, his financial picture was so bleak the citizens of Hamburg took up a collection to help the couple out. Telemann was productive enough in terms of Captain's music -- short entertainments, usually on an allegorical theme, consisting of an oratorio and serenata pair and performed at an annual fête held in honor of Hamburg's military captains -- that it commands a separate number in the TWV index of his works. However, very few of these creations -- designed for one performance only, registered and then forgotten -- survive, and CPO's Georg Philipp Telemann: Kapitänsmusik 1724 appears to represent a relatively rare instance in which something from the...
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