Babell: Sonata in F major

Description

For soprano recorder and continuo. This is an attractive, relatively easy work by a musician with a gift for melody.

William Babell was born around 1690 and had a promising career as an organist, only to meet an early death in 1723.  However, he must have had a considerable reputation, as several collections of his music were issued by John Walsh posthumously, including the six concertos, and two sets of twelve sonatas for violin or oboe.

The second movement of this sonata contains a number of rather unorthodox moments, chief among them the dissonant cadence progression found in bars 8, 12 and 15.  If this had appeared only once, there would be a case for regarding it as a misprint, and correcting it to conform with bar 6, but the appearance of this progression at three separate places would suggest that it is intended.  For the faint-heated, I would suggest altering the bass on the lines of bar 6, but as Babell’s writing is frequently eccentric, we probably have to take him (or Mr. Walsh) seriously.

(Bernard Thomas)