Sonata Sopra "La Monica" - Bassoon and Basso continuo

Sonata sopra "La Monica" is part of the official competition repertoire for the final round of the International Double Reed Society's 2022 Fernand Gillet-Hugo Fox Competition.

Contains one full score, one part for solo bassoon, and one part for basso continuo. (No violin part is provided, instead it is condensed into the accompaniment part).

Philipp Friedrich Boddecker, born in 1607, started his career as "fagottist" at the court of Darmstadt, where he worked until 1634; after successive posts as organist at Frankfurt and Strasbourg he was in 1651 appointed choir-master in Stuttgart, where he remained until his death in 1683. His Sonata sopra la Monica. Fagotto solo, the first solo for the instrument to be published outside Italy, appeared together with a sonata for violin at the end of a collection of religious choral works entitled Sacra Partitura published in Strasbourg in 1651.

Set with figured bass continuo, it is in the form of a theme and variations on "La Monica" (the nun), a popular song of the time in which a girl pleads with her mother not to make her a nun. The theme itself is notated in the treble clef, while the four variations consist of progressively florid embellishments of its bass-part. In a note the composer directs that "if desired, this Aria may be played throughout by violin".

An earlier edition (by Max Seiffert for Kistner & Seigel in 1934) supplies such a violin part, thus presenting the work as a piece of chamber music. For this edition the part of optional violin is omitted; instead the theme has been transposed for bassoon and appears in the subsequent variations as accompaniment.