Frederic Palmer has appeared as baroque oboe soloist in a concert series in which he performed all of the twenty-four sonatas for oboe and basso continuo by William Babell (c.1690-1723). The series consisted of sixteen concerts presented by The Vintage Cellar in Hayward, California and took place between January, 1980 and July, 1981. Each concert also featured solo works for oboe and recorder by various baroque composers. Two modern reproductions of eighteenth-century oboes were used during these performances: a copy by Friedrich von Huene of an oboe made in Brussels around 1700 by Jean Hyacinth Rottenburgh (1672-1765) and a copy by Sand Dalton of an oboe made in Basel around 1725 by Christian Schlegel Sr. The accompaniment was provided by Grover Devine and Ronald McKean, harpsichord, Don Horner, bassoon and Lawrence Granger, cello. The concerts were played at baroque pitch (A=415), and the harpsichord was tuned according to Silberman with fifths lowered by 1/6 of a syntonic comma.
Frederic Palmer has been heard as a soloist on the baroque oboe and recorder throughout the San Francisco Bay Area for several years. He studied modern oboe at California State University, Hayward where he graduated with a B.A. in music and went on to receive an M.A. from Stanford University where concentrated on early music performance practice. He has studied baroque oboe with Michel Piguet and recorder with Bernard Krainis. In addition to playing shawm in a Renaissance wind band which he has directed for the Northern California Renaissance Faire since 1972, he has edited several musical works from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for modern publication and has written articles on various aspects of baroque music. He is oboe instructor at Music and Arts Institute of San Francisco and has lectured at California State University, Hayward and Dominican College.
The twenty-four sonatas by William Babell were published posthumously by John Walsh around 1725. As such they constitute one of the largest single sets of oboe sonatas by one composer to be printed during the baroque period. Aside from this and the superior quality of the music, these sonatas are of particular importance because the composer has furnished most of the slow movements with the rich and often florid "graces" characteristic of Italian baroque ornamentation. Unfortunately, these works have not received the attention they deserve. Only two have been published in modern editions, and the same number can be heard on phonograph recordings.
Ironically, the reason these sonatas are of particular importance is also the probable cause of their neglect, since the elaborate ornamentation found in the slow movements - often written in clusters of uneven cadenza notes - is sufficient to discourage both performers and editors alike from giving them more than a cursory glance.
![[Excerpt of Babell's Sonata II]](p23.jpg)
If this rare insight into the art of Italian baroque ornamentation is to be of value to us today, then, some method must be used to realize the freely notated graces which Babell provides. The most practical approach to the problem is to group these uneven flourishes into regular metrical patterns using the harmonies of the continuo as a guide. Some may object that this nullifies the implied freedom which the original notation suggests. However, there are other baroque composers notably J.S. Bach, who chose to notate similarly elaborate ornamental figures in a metrically precise way. Realizing Babell's ornaments in this manner should be no more of a hindrance to their interpretation than to those of Bach as long as the performer is aware that he must shape each figure according to its melodic and harmonic logic. Here, experimentation is the key, since many figures will admit to more than one kind of grouping and, even when worked out in strict notation, all must be heard as though they were freely improvised.
The twenty-four Babell sonatas were performed from a transcription of the c.1725 Walsh publication made by Frederic Palmer from a microfilm copy of the original engraved music in the British Museum.