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The year 1733 witnessed the appearance in print from Hamburg of Georg Philipp Telemann's (1681-1767) famous Musique de Table or Banquet Music. Nowadays, most people have long forgotten that in the Baroque Era, people of means had musicians at their disposal to play for any occasion, and daily meals were no exception.

Telemann supplied a great deal of repertory in his Musique de Table. In fact, there are three productions, each containing an ouverture coupled with a partita of several dances, a sonata à quattro, a concerto, a trio sonata, and a solo sonata, all capped off by concluding music. The entirety of Musique de Table can be found in full score in volumes 61 and 62 of Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst.

The present work before us is one of the sonatas à quattro.  The first movement, a Pastorale, is interrupted midway through by an extremely imitative section. The second movement is laid out in Da capo Aria fashion with the oboe as soloist. It even includes a motto start for the oboe, and its B section is set in a different meter and tempo than the movement proper.

The third movement is quite short, functioning as a place where the flute, oboe, and violin should play cadenzas, extensive ones if they so desire. I have supplied modest examples for the first three measures. For the finale, Telemann supplies a rather striaght-forward binary form.

Some of the details in this work are worth noting: a plethora of trills are utilized by Telemann, not as simple cadential formulas, but as integral thematic material. In addition, dynamics and articulation are meticulously supplied by the composer. Although cello is specified by the composer for the continuo group, bassoon is just as suitable.