Progamme notes – Haydn, Ravel, Schumann

Progamme notes – Haydn, Ravel, Schumann

String Quartet in E flat Op.76 No 6  –  Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809)

i. Allegretto – Allegro; ii. Fantasia (adagio); iii. Menuetto (presto); iv. Finale (allegro spiritoso)

Haydn is regarded as the 'Father' both of the symphony and the string quartet (and arguably of sonata-form as well). This combination of 4 string instruments, regarded by some as the apex of western music if not of western culture itself, apparently arose by the mere coincidence of the 18 year old Haydn being invited to compose something and having exactly these players to hand. He wrote such an engaging piece that he was encouraged to write more works for this combination; eventually he was to write 83. Ours is the 80^th, written in 1797, after which Haydn turned to oratorios. The first movement is in strophic variation form (verse, or verse and chorus), the second is a slow and harmonically wandering fantasy in the semi-remote key of B. The minuet is unusually fast (more Scherzo than minuet?), while the last movement (in 3/4 time, as are 3 of the 4 movements) is in sonata-form with its characteristic, and indeed defining, modulation into the dominant and return to the tonic.

String Quartet in F, Opus — Joseph-Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937)        

i. Allegro moderato, Très doux; ii. Assez vif, Très rythmé; iii. Très lent; iv. Vif et agité

Ravel tried 4 times for the Prix de Rome (awarded annually since 1663 for painters and sculptors, but extended to musicians in 1803), but failed each time to names now long forgotten (André Caplet, Aymé Kunc, Raoul Laparra, Victor Gallois). This piece, composed 1903, was his final attempt (in 1905) and was eliminated in a preliminary round, the ensuing controversy leading to the resignation of the director of the Conservatoire. Ravel admitted its imperfections but insisted that it embodied his aims. It has become a staple of the repertoire, and will be familiar to the many viewers of BBC's 'Chamomile Lawn'. Innovative and exploratory rather than revolutionary, Ravel's quartet, while dedicated to Fauré, is clearly influenced by Debussy's earlier Quartet, and like that work adopts César Franck’s ‘cyclic form’, in which each movement is a fresh transformation of a germinal theme. Its first movement is in a sort of quasi-sonata-form, for, instead of developing from F major towards C major (the dominant), Ravel favours the more distantly related keys of D minor and A minor. (He extends this idea in the second and fourth movements where the note A acts as a pivot between the major and minor modes.) The second movement achieves its effect by flying pizzicato figures and a strong rhythmic conflict between 6/8 and 3/4 meters.  In the slow third movement the key sequence is even more advanced as A shifts to A sharp, then enharmonically to B flat, to G flat minor, and to G flat major (as remote from F as you can get). The rhythmically complex finale (largely 5/8 time) returns to A, before eventually descending to F major for its exhilarating conclusion.

String Quartet in A, Op.41 No. 3  ———  Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856)

i. Andante espressivo - Allegro molto moderato; ii. Assai agitato; iii. Adagio molto; iv. Finale Allegro molto vivace - Quasi Trio

Before his marriage to Clara Wieck in 1840, Schumann composed only for the piano; thereafter he composed also songs (1840), symphonies (1841), chamber music (1842), and choral works (1843). Today's quartet, and its two preceding quartets, all written in 1842, have been regarded as overly pianistic. It is true that they differ from the standard quartets of the period, in timbre particularly. Though there is plenty contrapuntal writing, there is also writing that would look like chords on a piano score, all 4 instruments in phase and with the same rhythm. But these works should not be overlooked on that account alone, for they are deeply serious contributions by an outstanding composer, and contain unique qualities of melody and mood. No. 3 is by far the most often played. One of the persistent motifs is a drop (or a rise) of a 5^th; quite a jump. It is first heard at the very beginning of the first movement; and again at the very end of that movement, where it seems we are to end on the dominant, and only on the last beat of the last bar do we fall back to A (the tonic, or 'home note' for this movement). Another feature is the frequent use of unsettling rhythms; off beat notes for 16 bars at a stretch, or notes starting at the end of one bar and tied over to the next. The Agitato 2^nd movement is particularly varied in terms of rhythm; it contains a risoluto section that sounds almost like a separate movement. The finale is a sort of Rondo, but with a section marked Quasi Trio in Clara Schumann's edition of 1881, of slower tempo and different mood as is characteristic of Minuet and Scherzo movements, but unusual in Rondo finales.

Programme Notes: Mozart - Mendelssohn - Bartok

Programme Notes: Mozart - Mendelssohn - Bartok

String Quartet in D, K. 575   —— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 — 1791) 

i. Allegretto;   ii. Andante;   iii. Menuetto (Allegretto);  iv Allegretto

In April we heard Mozart's Quartet No. 22 in B flat major (K589, Prussian No. 2); today its predecessor, No. 21, the first of the so-called 'Prussian Quartets'. In April 1789, Mozart's wife claiming illness and needing a spa cure (where however she flirted to Mozart's distress), left Mozart desperate for money. Hope came when Prince Lichnowsky, an aristocratic pupil, offered to take him to Berlin and present him to King Friedrich Wilhelm II (himself an amateur cellist). He came back to Vienna intending to write 6 quartets for the King and 6 'easy' piano sonatas for his daughter Princess Frederike. Of the latter, only one was written — Mozart's last piano sonata. Of the quartets, Mozart wrote only 3. Somewhat neglected, these quartets are overshadowed by his earlier 'Haydn' quartets and the later quintets. Some of his contemporaries got the impression that Mozart wrote with a facility bordering on flippancy for he would write out the score without errors while talking to friends, but others insisted that he spent much of the night at the piano, and it was only his extraordinary memory that enabled him to write the fair copy at speed. A distinctive feature of all 3 'Prussian' quartets is the prominent and interesting cello part, intended for the king himself to play. In this, the first of the set, 3 of the 4 movements are marked allegretto ('mildly cheerful' ?). The outer movements are in D major; the andante second movement is in A, the minuet (in D) has a trio section that swithers between D and G.

String Quartet No. 2, (Op. 17)   —— Béla Bartók (1881 – 1945)

i. Moderato;   ii. Allegro molto capriccioso;   iii. Lento

At the age of 21 Bartók, travelling abroad as a virtuoso pianist, was stimulated by Strauss's Zarathustra to try his hand at composition (Kossuth in 1903). In 1904, hearing a nanny sing a folk song he was stimulated to take up the collecting and study of Folk Music as his main preoccupation and life's work, with only occasional diversion into composition: the 1^st quartet (1909), an opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911), 2nd quartet (1917), the ballets Wooden Prince (1916), and Miraculous Mandarin (1919). In 1909 the 28 yr old Bartók married 16 yr old Marta. By then, he was living in Budapest as professor of pianoforte at the Royal Academy of Music (where one of his pupils was Sir Georg Solti). The First World War was a relatively peaceful time in Hungary. For Bartók and his colleague, great friend and fellow collector Kodály, it meant that they had to give up their travelling abroad collecting folk songs onto wax cylinders and return to Hungary; turmoil came with Hungary's Soviet revolution after the war. So Bartók spent most of the war simultaneously writing the Wooden Prince and his 2nd quartet; both showing the influence of Debussy. Bartók apparently described the first movement as being in sonata form, the second as "a kind of rondo" and the third as "difficult to define" but possibly a sort of ternary form (Wikipedia). It is not in his 'mature' style, which developed only in the twenties and thirties.

String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, (Op. 13)   —   Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847)

1. Adagio/allegro vivace, 2. Adagio non lento, 3. Intermezzo (allegretto con moto/allegro di molto), 4. Presto

This quartet, composed in 1827 when Mendelssohn was 18 years old, is actually his first, as Opus 12 (though called Quartet No. 1) was written two years later. It astonishes the listener with its assured mastery of the medium, and its bold originality; but then we remember that he wrote his superb String Octet (1825) two years before that. Many musicologists have compared Mendelssohn's opus 13 with Beethoven's late quartets, the last of which, though not performed in public till 1828 was published in September 1827 (Beethoven died March 1827). (See e.g.: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/mendelssohn-quartet-in-a-minor-op-13.)  While most contemporaries regarded these late Beethoven quartets as flawed, and even 'horrible', the young Mendelssohn must have obtained and studied the score in the weeks before writing his opus 13. An easily conceded but trivial similarity between older and younger master is that the final movement of Beethoven's last quartet (Op. 135) opens with a musical motif under which Beethoven wrote "Muß es sein?" ("Must it be?"), while in the last 5 bars of the opening adagio, adolescent Mendelssohn quoted the "Ist es wahr?" motif from a song he had previously written (of which the words run "Is it true, is it true that you are always waiting for me in the arboured walk?"). But the one utterance is a disturbed, existential question, while the other expresses the uncertainty and excitement of a youthful romantic yearning. So differ also the works.

Programme Notes: Schubert piano works

Four Impromptus, (Op. 90), D. 899  ―  Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)

These 4 impromptus were composed in 1827 (a year before Schubert's untimely death), and published the same year; the first half of a set of 8. In that year Schubert composed, besides these exquisite short piano pieces, yet another failed opera (The Count of Gleichen), a superb German Mass, the E flat piano trio and the sombre song cycle "A Winter Journey". A year of great happiness and sadness; a torch bearer at Beethoven's funeral, letters from 3 publishers asking to publish his compositions, a holiday in Upper Austria (said by Hutchings to be "perhaps the most happy time Schubert had ever known outside Vienna, or in it"). The first Impromptu, in C minor, is a set of variations on two themes; both slow. It ends peacefully in the major. The second, in E flat major, is in ternary form, but with a B-like coda (ABAB'). The A section is a moto-perpetuo of running triplets for the right hand; the contrasting B section drops into a minor key and, approaching the return, it intriguingly combines hints of the running triplet figure. The third, a peaceful, lyrical, reassuring piece in G flat major (6 flats), was reissued 30 years later by the same publisher in G major (1 sharp; for amateur players?)  The fourth Impromptu, in A-flat major, is perhaps the most famous of all Schubert's piano compositions. Its opening consists of cascading arpeggios in the right hand, nowadays usually trivialized by being played too fast in an attempt to bring out the left hand melody. It begins transiently in A-flat minor, though this is written as A-flat major with accidentals. It is in ternary form (ABA) with a calmer middle section. Was this set a sonata taken apart? Probably not, as Schubert numbered his next 4 impromptus 5,6,7,8. However, these 4 impromptus played in this order fit nicely together in mood and key.

Three Piano Pieces, (Op. 90), D. 946   ――   Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)

Schubert died on 19^th November 1828. Between March and the beginning of November he wrote: the C major String Quintet, 3 piano sonatas, 2 piano duets (includning the profound Fantasie dedicated to the young countess Caroline Esterhazy), these 3 Klavierstücke, The Shepherd on the Rock, the Schwannengesang songs, and 3 pieces of church music. It was doubtless the fugal writing of the latter that prompted Schubert to turn up on 4^th Nov with friend Lanz on the doorstep of Simon Sechter's house for lessons in counterpoint. He missed the second lesson on 10^th, and took to his bed 4 days later, fiddling still with the unsuccessful opera The Count of Gleichen. So, a year that saw written much of his sublimest music. These 3 Klavierstücke, written in May, were published (by Brahms) in 1868. It seems likely that there were to be 4, but it is not clear whether they were to be Impromptus or Moments Musicaux, nor even that they were conceived as a set. They are more complex in structure than the preceding set of impromptus (e.g. the 1^st is in what could be called compound ternary form: A,B,A',C, D,E,A,B,A',C), they favour remote keys (e.g. 6 and 7 flats), continuous triplets and repeated semiquavers or tremolo effects; all typical of late Schubert. The first is in E♭ minor and marked Allegro Assai. The second, in E♭ major is Allegretto. The third is an Allegro in C major, in which it sounds as though the left hand is behind the beat, but it is really the right hand that is before the beat.

Sonata in D major, (Op. 53), D. 850   ――   Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)

1. Allegro (vivace), 2. Andante (con moto), 3. Scherzo & Trio, 4. Rondo  (Allegro moderato)

After Schubert's despair in 1824, 1825 was a relatively happy year. He was solvent with Esterhazy guilders, and becoming known to publishers and the musical world of Vienna. He spent from May till September in the ravishing countryside of upper Austria with the retired opera singer Vogl who was a native of that area, moving from place to place, singing and charming as they went, welcomed and dined by the local big-wigs, and charmed in their turn by the young ladies. But it was not all sight-seeing and letter-writing, for Schubert composed his Great C major (9th) Symphony, the Walter Scott songs (which include his Ave Maria), and this D major sonata. For the last 3 weeks, paid for by a well-wisher, he and Vogl stayed at the famous health spa of Bad Gastein (therapeutically investigated by Paracelsus 300 years earlier); so this is called the Gasteiner Sonata. Schubert's composer brother Ferdinand, when offering to sell it to Diabelli after Schubert's death, distinguished it as a Grand Sonata; perhaps on account of its length. It is, however, relatively light hearted, and in many passages has an improvisatory feel. The 1st movement is vigorous; the long andante (in A major), dreamy rather than sombre or painful; the scherzo, rousing, with a sharply contrasted sweet trio section; the rondo almost cheeky in the nursery-like simplicity of its recurring theme.