Program Notes - December 4th
String Quartet in C major. Op. 74 no. 1
Haydn
This is one of a set of six quartets that Haydn wrote in 1793 on a commission from Count Anton Apponyi, a nobleman, amateur musician and friend of the composer. He was also a relative of Count Esterhazy for whom Haydn had worked for many years as a salaried staff composer.
Haydn, of course, did not invent the string quartet, but he wrote so many of them and in such a wide variety of styles and formats, that he can rightly be deemed the composer who established the string quartet as a major genre for later composers to follow.
The present piece is graceful and genial in temperament throughout its four movements; scarcely a cloud disturbs its sunny surface. The opening movement is for all practical purposes built around a single theme, heard after two prefatory chords. The theme, with its distinctive opening contour of four closely-related pitches in notes of equal value, may remind some listeners of the opening subject of the finale in Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony, though the two themes are no more than distant cousins and their treatment by the two masters is totally dissimilar. The slow movement is a gentle extended song, and the brief minuet movement has a certain robust sturdiness as well as the courtly grace that its title suggests. The finale is brilliant and high-spirited with lots of sparkling decorative detail in its accompaniment figures.
String Quartet no. 5
Bartók
One of Bela Bartók’s favorite ways of formally organizing his music was an “arch form,” in which similar movements are grouped symmetrically around a central movement which gives formal structural unity to the whole work.
This principal is carried out carefully in Bartók’s fifth quartet, written in 1934 on a commission from the great chamber music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and premiered in Washington in April of that year. There are five movements, with the first and fifth sharing mood and thematic material, the second and fourth comprising a pair of slow movements, and in the middle a central scherzo “in Bulgarian style.” Carrying the arch idea even further, Bartók organized his first movement in the same way, even reversing the order in which its themes are presented in the recapitulation section. An arch within an arch!
This quartet also demonstrates Bartók’s method of stretching the bounds of conventional tonality. Scholars tell us that this work is more or less “on” B flat, rather than firmly “in” that key. There are places in it where major and minor modes seem to be employed at the same time.
The first movement opens abruptly with an important motive that hammers home the note B flat, which is indeed the tonal center of the whole work. It unfolds with Bartók’s characteristic sudden shifts of mood, meter and dynamic level. Brief lyrical episodes are pushed aside by explosive, driving rhythms or scurrying scherzo-like effects.
The second movement begins as a hushed slow dialogue of the instruments in Bartók’s famous “night music” vein which seems to conjure up the mysterious rustlings and chirpings one might hear in a forest at night. In the middle there is a strange episode of short questioning upward scales as though the music did not quite know how to proceed. The movement ends as it began, with mysterious whispers and trills.
The central scherzo is gentle, almost dance-like. It grows more animated as it proceeds but never gets really loud. Some may detect in it the influence of Hungarian folksong.
The fourth movement brings a return of the “night music” mood, leading to a very quiet close. The last movement is full of peasant-dance vigor tinged with Bartók’s trademark rhythmic vigor and peppery use of dissonance. There is a very short but curious moment near the end where a lyrical tune marked to be played “with indifference” is introduced over pizzicato accompaniment. But it passes away quickly and the movement ends brilliantly.
String Quartet in C minor, op. 51 no. 1
Brahms
Brahms was a famously self-critical composer. The story of how long he waited before releasing his first symphony to the world is well known.
The same is true of his work in the quartet medium. He is said to have started some twenty quartets and destroyed them all as unworthy before writing the present work. Even so, he tinkered with this piece and its sister in A minor, op. 51 no. 2, for about twenty years before allowing them to be published in 1873. It is said too that near the end of his life, when he knew his days were numbered, he spent a lot of time and energy tearing up and burning the scores of early works that he had kept in his possession but did not want to leave behind. Thus it is fair to say that we do not know even now exactly how much chamber music Brahms really wrote!
Brahms also once made a much-quoted remark about being intimidated by the tread of Beethoven’s giant steps behind him. Many listeners have heard Beethoven’s influence in the C minor quartet, a work of large span, immense power, thick-textured quartet writing and singular concentration.
These qualities are evident in the opening allegro, a movement full of nervous energy fueled by its aggressive rising opening theme and a persistent repeated-note accompaniment pattern that seems to drive the music along. Only toward the movement’s end is there a major episode of slackened tension, and the conclusion is quiet. The slow movement is a kind of prayerful song marked by the rising dotted-rhythm pattern of its main theme. The middle section has a more hesitant rhythmic profile, and the close, after the return of the opening material, is again quiet.
The third movement begins in a mood that might be described as quiet unease. There is, however, a lovely lyrical contrasting theme soon introduced and the middle section further lightens both texture and mood. The finale begins with vigorous, stormy, perhaps even oratorical gestures. It is a serious, agitated piece that again suggests that Brahms thought of the string quartet as a kind of miniature orchestra. The close is energetic; the music stays in the minor mode right to the end.
Program Notes by Robert Finn