Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/144

132 intermezzi wihchwhich [sic] were then in their first novelty. Comic French ballets were mingled with these. At the carnival of 1724 some passages from Campra's L'Europe galante were performed in Hamburg, and some from Lully's Pourceaugnac. Telemann wrote some comic dances in the French manner, and in the following year he produced an intermezzo in the Italian manner: Pimpinone oder die ungleiche Heirat (Pimpinone, or the Ill-assorted Marriage), whose subject is precisely the same as that of La Serva padrona, which was written four years later. The style of the music also is closely akin to that of Pergolesi. Who is the common model? Surely an Italian; perhaps Leonardo Vinci, whose first comic operas date from 1720. In any case, we have here a curious example of the rapidity with which subjects and styles migrated from one end of Europe to the other, and of Telemann's skill in assimulating foreign genius.

The German text of this prophetic counterpart of La Serva padrona is by Praetorius. There are two characters: Pimpinone and Vespetta. There are three scenes. There is no orchestral prelude. At the rise of the curtain Vespetta sings a delightful little aria in which she enumerates her qualities as chambermaid. The music, full of humour, is of a purely Neapolitan style; Pergolesian before Pergolesi. It has all the nervous vivacity of Neapolitan music, the little broken movements, the sudden halts, the fits and starts, the bantering responses of the orchestra, which emphasises or contradicts the list of Vespetta's virtues: