| HAYDN | String Quartet in C Major, Op. 33, No. 3,
"The Bird" |
| MOZART | String Quartet in C Major, K. 465, "Dissonance" |
| BEETHOVEN | String Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3,
"Razumovsky" |
Our series begins with three works in C. To anyone familiar
with a keyboard, C major would seem to be the most straightforward key, a
neutral canvas upon which to construct the scaffolding of sonata form—a
zone of diatonic clarity poised between the brighter and darker regions of
sharps and flats. Haydn’s Op. 33, No. 3, part of the set of six that inspired
Mozart to dedicate his own set of six to Haydn, revels in the crystalline
triads that form the building blocks of C major and its related keys. How
different is the Introduction to Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet.
Its unsettled harmonic landscape and jarring
juxtapositions raised hackles in critics for years, and led some of the
earliest performers of this work to make ill-advised “corrections” of presumed
wrong notes. When the Allegro begins and C major is finally established,
it’s as if the clouds have
dispersed, and we are back in the cheerful, rational world of the
Enlightenment.
The Introduction to Beethoven’s Op. 59, No. 3, takes the
uncertainty principle a step or two further: Instead of building up his
dissonances quietly and gradually, Beethoven assaults us with a loud
diminished-seventh chord. This chord is followed by silence, as is the next; harmonic
insecurity is intensified by no fewer than four suspenseful pauses in the
course of the brief Introduction. (Haydn was also fond of throwing his
listeners off balance with unexpected silences, but his tended to be witty
rather than dramatic.) C major is not firmly established until we are well into
the Allegro vivace, where Beethoven’s
characteristic motivic work is prevalent: the short upbeat and long downbeat we
hear at the beginning of the Allegro form a narrative basis for much of the piece, and articulate the structure at
every key moment.
ALL-BEETHOVEN PROGRAM
Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3
Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1
Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4
Quartet in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2
Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5
Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6
Throughout the six quartets of Op. 18, standing at the
border between Classical and Romantic music with their tremendous variety of
mood and thematic material, the related principles of motivic development and
structural cohesion remain paramount. The first two notes of Beethoven’s first
quartet, Op. 18, No. 3, tentatively yet subversively carve out new territory:
the first violin plays A, then G, outlining a dominant-seventh chord before the
other instruments join to provide the context of D major. With this unorthodox
opening gambit, Beethoven not only spotlights the two-note motive as a building
block of the theme; he marks it clearly as a unit of experience in the music we
are about to hear, an element of suspense, a harbinger of things to come.
We know from his sketchbooks that Beethoven struggled with
about a dozen variants before he came up with the final version of the simple
opening motive of Op. 18, No. 1. The Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato, a stirring depiction of the tomb scene from Romeo
and Juliet, stands in marked contrast to
the cheerful bustle of the first, third, and fourth movements, all based on
compact motivic units. The pulsing ostinato and long lines of the Adagio conjure up a scene of grief; the remarkable
expressive power of this slow movement heralds the dawn of Romanticism.
Op. 18, No. 2, harks back to the Classical style, in
thematic material and in the soundscape it creates. One might almost call this
the first neo-Classical quartet, because the florid, isolated motivic gestures
of the first movement, and the written-out cadenzas of the second,
self-consciously evoke a bygone era of ornamentation.
Op. 18, No. 4, reveals the volatile side of Beethoven’s
temperament; when he wrote in C minor, his mood was alternately brooding and
stormy. The breathless first theme spans three octaves and builds quickly to a
climax, a dramatic chordal confrontation between the first violin and the three
lower instruments. Even the Minuet is dark and driven, as is the
Hungarian-style Rondo finale. For
contrast, Beethoven eschews a slow movement and opts for a light-hearted fugal Andante
scherzoso in C major.
Op. 18, No. 5, is modeled after Mozart’s Quartet K. 464 in
the same key, A major. Beethoven admired the theme and variations of Mozart’s
quartet so much that he copied them out in order to study them. This quartet,
like Op. 18, No. 2, tends more toward the Classical than toward the Romantic,
and its finale is a showpiece of mercurial counterpoint.
In Op. 18, No. 6, Beethoven begins to expand the overall
four-movement structure, shifting the weight toward the finale. The slow
introduction to the last movement, entitled “La Malinconia,” is a bittersweet
depiction of melancholy, followed by a jolly, driven Allegretto, alternating with snippets of the introductory
material. Some have suggested that Beethoven suffered from bipolar disorder,
and such shifts in mood as are heard in this quartet remind us why.
| MENDELSSOHN | Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13, "Ist es wahr?" |
| BEETHOVEN | Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1, "Razumovsky" |
| SCHUBERT | Quartet in D Minor, D. 810, "Death and the
Maiden" |
Mendelssohn’s Op. 13 is an intense and passionate work of
astonishing maturity. There are unmistakable references to Beethoven’s Opp. 95
and 132, revealing an uncanny absorption and understanding of the late
Beethoven quartets, which had been published only a couple of years before the
18-year-old Mendelssohn wrote this work. (A slow introduction, based on his
song “Frage,” links this quartet to Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, in
which a song also sets the tone for a full-length work. Schubert’s work,
composed in 1824, was contemporaneous with the first of Beethoven’s late
quartets.) Mendelssohn’s introductory material returns at the end of his
quartet, establishing the young composer’s mastery of what was to become a
quintessentially Romantic approach to overall structure—cyclical form.
In Op. 59, No.1, Beethoven applied the lessons of his
symphonic work to the genre of chamber music. Compared with the early quartets,
everything here feels expanded—in length, sonic scope, and significance. All
four movements are in sonata form, all committed to the idea of motivic and
thematic development—indeed, the development section of the first
movement encompasses four distinct areas, including a double fugue.
The opening motive of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden”
Quartet consists of a unison D and a descending triplet that lands forcefully
on the next downbeat. The motive is hammered into the listener’s consciousness
with two fortissimo statements followed by a shuddering, groping pianissimo in
the first violin. Schubert the long-lined melodist, evident in the lyrical
second theme, shows a Beethovenian determination to extract every ounce of
expressive potential from the ubiquitous triplet motive, which reappears in the
finale—a diabolical tarantella, a dance of death. The second movement is
a set of variations on a somber chorale, taken from a song Schubert had written
several years earlier about a chilling confrontation between a young girl and
an allegorical death figure.
| BRAHMS | String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1 |
| IVES | String Quartet No. 2 |
| BEETHOVEN | String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2,
"Razumovsky" |
The first and last movements of Brahms’s Op. 51, No.1, begin
with similar motivic material: a rising dotted figure followed by a falling
seventh. In the first movement, the idea of this asymmetrical arch is extended,
reaching ever higher over a hushed, driven accompaniment until it erupts in the
first forte of the piece. In the finale the motive is played in a terse defiant
unison—the idea from the first movement pared down to its unstable
essence. Even the lyrical, soulful Romanze
is dominated by a rising dotted figure in the accompaniment, immediately
answered by a descending dotted rhythm in the melody. With Beethoven as his
inspiration, Brahms—like Schubert—had mastered the art of motivic
cohesion and urgency.
One thing that Ives had in common with Beethoven was the
impulse to rebel against convention. Ives resisted the widespread tendency in
American cultural life to imitate European models of high art. His quirky
individualism is present in every phrase of the Second Quartet, even in his
quotations from famous symphonies (including Beethoven’s Ninth) in the Arguments movement. Ives loved the chaos that results from
various strands of musical material being played out simultaneously. After the
often jagged Discussions movement
culminates in the mocking, violent Arguments, the Call of the Mountains begins quietly, rising toward lofty contemplation and
eventually working itself into other-worldly ecstasy. The mystical quality of
this movement provides another link to Beethoven, a link that becomes apparent
when this music is juxtaposed with the luminous slow movement of Op. 59, No. 2.
Two brusque chords—tonic and dominant—then
silence. A hushed legato arpeggio, outlining the same chords, landing back on
the tonic. More silence. Such are the building blocks of the first movement of
Beethoven’s Op. 59, No. 2. The movement carries heft and weight, but it lacks
the expansive quality of its counterpart in Op. 59, No. 1. Uncompromising
emphasis is placed on motivic development; harmonic and rhythmic instability
keep the listener on edge.
| WEBERN | Langsamer Satz |
| WEBERN | Five Pieces, Op. 5 |
| BEETHOVEN | Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74, "Harp" |
| BEETHOVEN | String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, "Serioso" |
| BARTÓK | String Quartet No. 3 |
This program illustrates the tension between two competing
principles of composition: the impulse toward fluidity and expansion and the
quest for concision. Webern’s Langsamer Satz is full of long lines and lush chromatic harmonies; his Op. 5, written
only four years later, sounds as if it came from another world—key
relationships have been shattered in the new language of free atonality, and
melodies are concentrated into expressionistic gestures with disjunct
intervallic leaps. Almost everything in Bartók’s Third Quartet—14 minutes
of densely woven counterpoint based on folk music of the Balkans—is
derived from a single three-note motive that outlines an asymmetrical arch,
rising a fourth, falling a third.
After the mellifluous outpouring of the slow movement of
Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet, Op. 74, the theme of the finale is built from a
sequence of three-note descending figures separated by rests—hardly a
melody—but in two of the variations the composer spins beautiful long
lines from this fragmentary material. Not long afterward, Beethoven wrote his “Serioso”
Quartet, Op. 95, a piece that he intended at first for a small circle of
connoisseurs, thinking it too experimental for public hearing. The first
movement is like a tightly coiled spring. Its terse opening motive, played in
unison by all four instruments, is harmonically unstable; it slips without
transition from F minor to G-flat, then finally up to G-natural, where it is
extended into a fiery scale. The briefest of transitions brings us to a second
theme, less precipitous, lyrical, but never far removed from the prevailing
atmosphere of uncompromising, bare-bones concision. This movement doesn’t
unfold; it flashes by, exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda, all
possibilities fully explored, within a mere four minutes.
| BEETHOVEN | Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127 |
| WOLFGANG RIHM | Quartet No. 4 |
| BEETHOVEN | Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 |