The Program
JOHANN
SEBASTIAN BACH
Three-Part Inventions, BWV 787–801
About the
Composer
From
1717 to 1723, while Kapellmeister for music aficionado Prince Leopold in
Cöthen, Bach had few obligations to the church and was afforded time to compose
a great deal of secular music. In addition to tackling other genres, he avidly
developed several collections of instructional works for his family members and
other students. These include the Clavier-Büchlein
(Little Keyboard Book) for his wife
Anna Magdalena, the celebrated Well-Tempered
Clavier, and an earlier Clavier-Büchlein
for his nine-year-old son Wilhelm Friedemann, out of which he would soon draw
the two- and three-part inventions.
About the Work
Bach inscribed the title page of these didactic inventions in 1723, explaining
that they were “a clear method not only (1) of learning to play cleanly in two
parts, but also with further practice (2) to proceed correctly and well to three
obbligato parts, and also to acquire at the same time not only good inventions, but also the ability to
develop them well, and above all to cultivate a cantabile style of playing and
to gain from the beginning a strong foretaste of composition.”
Bach thus intended for these short works to
not only enlighten his students’ keyboard instruction, but also their compositional skill, showing them how to
turn good inventiones—or “ideas”—into
exemplary music. Likely borrowing the moniker from Francesco Antonio
Bonporti’s 1712 Invenzioni for violin
and continuo, Bach had never described any of his music in these terms before,
and never would again.
A Closer Listen
Whereas The Well-Tempered Clavier dares to progress through
all 24 major and minor keys, the inventions only cover 15, omitting those with
the most flats and sharps; due to tuning conventions at the time, these keys
were not playable on most keyboards. The Three-Part
Inventions—or “sinfonias,” as Bach called them—have much in common with
the fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier,
especially in their clear subjects and skillful imitative counterpoint. Unlike
the fugues, however, they rarely begin with a single voice in isolation. Though
quite concise (usually between two and three dozen measures each), they express
a tremendous range of emotion—a range most obviously felt when the cheery,
lilting G-major sinfonia (No. 10) follows the heart-wrenchingly chromatic
F-minor sinfonia.
—Jacob Cooper
© 2011 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
BÉLA BARTÓK
Piano Sonata
About the
Composer
Although Béla Bartók is principally known today for his
composition, he was also a virtuosic pianist and avid ethnomusicologist,
collecting folk songs from Hungarian peasants and incorporating them into his
own music. Bartók dismissed others’ fixation with “artistic originality,” and
candidly acknowledged the influences of other composers in his work, including
Liszt, Strauss, Debussy, and Stravinsky. He also recognized the importance of the two other composers presented on tonight’s program, often remarking that his early works were guided by Beethoven’s focus on
harmony, and his later works by Bach’s contrapuntal mastery. Despite these
myriad influences, Bartók created highly distinctive music that ranged from
percussive to atmospheric, angular to meandering, mathematically rigid to
formally unchained.
About the Work
In the three years before composing his sonata for piano, Bartók was rather
unproductive compositionally. But after a series of visits to Italy that
exposed him to Baroque keyboard repertoire by Frescobaldi and Domenico Zipoli,
Bartók was inspired to compose a wealth of piano music, making 1926 his “piano
year.” Within the next several months, he composed the sonata on today’s
program and his first piano concerto, as well as two collections of short piano
pieces and the first installments of Mikrokosmos.
The Piano Sonata is infrequently performed, but it stands as Bartók’s only
large-scale solo piano work. Along with the other works of 1926, it also
represents the point at which Bartók’s compositional outlook shifted away from
the profundity of Beethoven and towards the craftsmanship of Bach.
A Closer Listen
The Piano Sonata follows Classical construction: Two
energetic movements bookend a slower, more reflective one. Strategically placed
accents and grace notes create an appealing sense of imbalance throughout the
initial Allegro; Bartók also takes advantage of the extreme registers of the
piano. The ensuing movement in ternary (A-B-A) form provides sustained chords
as a respite from the energy just released; however, its chromatic dissonances
obscure any clear understanding of one grounded key. The Allegro molto is a
rondo, constantly returning to a single theme in the home key of E. It begins
at a clipped pace and never lets up, ingeniously varying its theme and
incorporating folk styles of peasant chanting, peasant flute, and village
fiddlers.
—Jacob Cooper
© 2011 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
LUDWIG VAN
BEETHOVEN
Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120
About the
Composer
Between 1822 and 1824, after completing his last piano
sonata and before delving into his final string quartets, Beethoven
finished three massive, transcendent works: the Missa solemnis, Symphony No. 9, and the Thirty-Three Variations on
a Waltz by Diabelli. Emblematic of his late period, the monumental piece
lavishly employs Bach-inspired counterpoint, profound lyricism, and
untraditional forms.
About the Work
In 1819, publisher Anton Diabelli asked several Austro-Hungarian composers to
pen one or two variations on a waltz that he had written. The goal was to print
a patriotic compendium that would raise money for families devastated by the
recent Napoleonic wars; several composers—among them Schubert and
Czerny—graciously obliged. As biographer Anton Schindler would later report, Beethoven
boorishly declined, commenting that the waltz
was nothing more than Schusterfleck
(“cobbler’s patchwork”)—a simplistic stringing-together of clichés. Yet he must have recognized its
potential for adaptation when he
returned to the waltz three years later, planning to write a handful of
variations but ending up with no fewer than 33. The flabbergasted Diabelli
decided to publish the set on its own, declaring it “a great and important
masterpiece worthy to be ranked with the imperishable creations of the
Classics.”
A Closer Listen
Throughout
the collection, Beethoven takes every aspect of the waltz to task, highlighting
in turn its chordal repetition, playful grace notes, shifting modulations,
melodic outlining of the fourth and fifth intervals, and rhythmic gait. In
order to delineate the form and guide the
listener, he includes a few distinctive and large-scale “pillar”
variations. Of the first 28, the ninth variation is the only one in C minor
rather than C major; it obsessively repeats the
waltz’s opening motive, morphing its lighthearted grace notes into
abrasive gestures. Variation 14, bound by two up-tempo numbers, stands out in
its measured, grave e maestoso
character.
The Andante fughetta of Variation 24 tips its hat to the counterpoint of Bach,
but it is in Variation 31—an expressive Largo strikingly similar to the 25th
Goldberg Variation—that most clearly announces Beethoven’s debt to the German
forefather. An elaborate fugue follows that is punctuated with prototypical
Beethovenian sforzando accents and
ultimately arrives on a loud diminished chord. A slower passage segues into the
final variation: a minuet that, despite its modesty and serenity, manages to
encompass so many of the theme’s elements that have been highlighted throughout
the previous hour of music.
—Jacob Cooper
© 2011 The Carnegie Hall Corporation