As regular readers of this blog will know, my other hobby besides chamber music is playing board games. And regular readers of this blog will not be at all surprised to learn that I track the games I play, using the wonderful BoardGameGeek website. Top of the list is almost always "Unpublished Prototype", since I have friends who are game designers, and I go to board game conventions where games that are under development get tested. But until now, I've never done the analogous activity in chamber music, to help a composer see how her piece works in real life. I rectified that omission Tuesday evening.
The composer was Pamela Marshall, a friend of a friend of mine, and I got in at the last minute on the first reading of her string quintet "Natural Harmony". The viola part was already taken, so I played second violin. The quintet was for standard string quartet with the addition of a double bass: a very nice combination that unfortunately is under utilized (I can only think of the Dvorak quintet for the same group of players off hand).
I liked "Natural Harmony" pretty well on first hearing, and it definitely grew on me with each subsequent play. I find that's generally true for music written since World War II; each composer has her own language, and it takes a while to figure out the logic of that language, and how everything fits together. That's why I find concerts of new music somewhat frustrating; you get to hear a piece once, and then probably never again.
I don't have a quick enough ear to say that I have any understanding of Marshall's harmonic language. Her rhythmic language is interesting, both in how two parts, playing a temporary duet, will be strikingly rhythmically independent, and in the kinds of rhythms the individual parts contain. It's funny how often you hear dotted-eighth followed by sixteenth in classical and romantic music, and how rarely sixteenth followed by dotted-eighth!
I really enjoyed the experience of being in the first group to bring a piece to life, and I particularly enjoyed talking with Pamela: we bonded over our common experience with Sibelius music layout software. And in discussing page turns, the bane of the existence of anyone who tries to do music layout. If architects cover their mistakes with ivy, and cooks cover their mistakes with sauces, music layout people cover their mistakes with V.S. :-)
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Two long pieces: Beethoven Op. 131, Schubert Cello Quintet
Last week, I had two evening sessions of chamber music. Tuesday evening was the Beethoven late C-sharp minor string quartet, Op. 131, and Thursday evening, the Schubert Cello Quintet in C major, D. 956. Before I write about the pieces and my experience with them, a brief digression about one of the difficulties of being an amateur chamber musician.
The problem is trying to find a suitable time to play music when you have a day job. I know this isn't the most sensitive thing in the world to complain about, when there are so many people who don't have jobs who need them. But still, I find it difficult to play music on a work night. We usually start at 7:30pm, and particularly if we're playing a long piece, like the two from this past week, we don't stop playing until past 9:30pm. And then there's the tradition of a snack and conversation afterwards, which is such a part of the whole experience that I hesitate to give it up. And then there's potentially driving home, if I'm not hosting, and then I'm so "up" from the experience that I find it difficult to get to sleep. And when you're my age, going to bed past midnight and getting up at 6am doesn't make for a wonderful work day.
So that's one of the reasons I've been trying to do more playing on weekends. I think that generally works better for me, but it does limit both the amount of time you have to play, and the people you can play with. Still, until I either retire or cut back my work hours, I think that will have to be the best solution. I am eager to hear any suggestions my readers can give me!
On to the pieces. The Beethoven Op. 131 quartet: an amazing piece, and one I don't really feel qualified to say much about. But since when has that stopped me? :-) It is fiendishly difficult, in so many ways, constant tempo changes, for one, but I'll just concentrate on one aspect, the key. C-sharp minor is a very difficult key for string instruments, particularly the viola and cello, since they lose the use of three of their four open strings. For me, that pushes me either to first position with an extended fourth finger to reach G-sharp on the C string and D-sharp on the G string, or half position. Half position is the only way to play a C-harp on the C string, and in a piece in C-sharp minor, you play a C-sharp a lot. And half position makes my brain hurt. :-)
(I am unable to find a good link describing half position. Although I think I would like to read this book, even though I'm somewhat outside the demographic for it. :-)
I wrote above that I lost three of my four open strings playing in C-sharp minor, but that's not strictly true. In the harmonic and melodic versions of the minor scale, you borrow the leading tone from the parallel major. In this case, you replace a B-natural with a B-sharp. And, since B-sharp is enharmonic to C-natural, in effect, for this piece, we replace the C string of the cello and viola with a B-sharp string. :-) And, seriously, by the end of the piece, I was really thinking of that thick piece of silver wound around sheep gut, at the left side of my fingerboard, as my B-sharp string. Listen to the beginning of this performance of the last movement (the actual last movement starts 17 seconds in). The end of the first phrase has the quartet in octaves on B-sharp, and you can hear the open strings of the viola and cello ring!
Because of the pull of this leading tone, it always struck me that C-sharp minor (or major), or, equivalently, D-flat minor (or major) are excellent keys for a string quartet. Too bad they're so difficult to play, and so seldom used. The second Dohnanyi quartet is in D-flat major; I hope to play that someday!
On to Thursday: a bittersweet occasion, the last session with a violinist I've been playing with a lot in the past year, but who's got a great job in another state and so is moving away. She'd asked specifically for the Schubert Cello Quintet, her favorite piece. There had been lots of obstacles in the way of getting this played, but things finally came together, and it was a marvelous evening.
I had been worried about what to play with the Schubert: there aren't that many cello quintets. Brahms wrote one, but destroyed it when he converted the music to his piano quintet. There are lots by Boccherini and Onslow, and ones by Cherubini and Glazunov. I had gotten the parts to the Borodin Cello Quintet on a mistaken recommendation from the second cellist (he was thinking of the famous Borodin Second String Quartet). But in the end, the question of what to play in the same evening with the Schubert Cello Quintet is: nothing. The piece is so long, and so beautiful, that one neither has time nor inclination to play anything else!
I really don't have that much to say about such a famous piece. Well, okay, I have two things to say. First, as I've mentioned before on this blog, one of the things that I find both fun and amusing about playing quartets are the times when the cello goes up high with a melody, I as the violist am always to be found, growling out the bass on my C-string. So, I think to myself, with two cellos in the room, that won't happen, right? Think again! Listen to the beautiful duet between the two cellos that forms the first statement of the second theme in the first movement of the Schubert, and, if you can tear your ears away from the melody, see if you can pick out the pizzicato bass line from the poor, lone viola. (You can catch it at 1:50 here).
The other thing I finally got while rehearsing for this reading was the very end of the last movement. As so often happens with Schubert, he oscillates between major and minor, but the last three notes of the piece are all five players: C, D-flat grace note, C. D-flat isn't in either C major or C minor, and I've never understood what it's doing there. But in my practice, I noticed that the slow movement starts in E major, moves to F minor for the middle section (a semitone higher), and then back to E major for the recap (with a tiny move back towards F minor again just before the end). And the Scherzo is in C major, while its trio is in D-flat major (again, up a semitone and back). So in a sense, the last three notes of the piece are echoing the entire second and third movements, a kind of Schenkerian analysis in miniature! I don't know how much sense that actually makes, but it's enough to make me completely happy with the ending.
A very successful sendoff for my violinist friend, someone I met "cold-calling" from the ACMP list. So let that be a lesson to all of you: blow the dust off your instrument, join the ACMP, and invite people from the list to play music with you! Don't be afraid! Not everyone will be compatible, but some will be, and then you can have a great deal of fun!
The problem is trying to find a suitable time to play music when you have a day job. I know this isn't the most sensitive thing in the world to complain about, when there are so many people who don't have jobs who need them. But still, I find it difficult to play music on a work night. We usually start at 7:30pm, and particularly if we're playing a long piece, like the two from this past week, we don't stop playing until past 9:30pm. And then there's the tradition of a snack and conversation afterwards, which is such a part of the whole experience that I hesitate to give it up. And then there's potentially driving home, if I'm not hosting, and then I'm so "up" from the experience that I find it difficult to get to sleep. And when you're my age, going to bed past midnight and getting up at 6am doesn't make for a wonderful work day.
So that's one of the reasons I've been trying to do more playing on weekends. I think that generally works better for me, but it does limit both the amount of time you have to play, and the people you can play with. Still, until I either retire or cut back my work hours, I think that will have to be the best solution. I am eager to hear any suggestions my readers can give me!
On to the pieces. The Beethoven Op. 131 quartet: an amazing piece, and one I don't really feel qualified to say much about. But since when has that stopped me? :-) It is fiendishly difficult, in so many ways, constant tempo changes, for one, but I'll just concentrate on one aspect, the key. C-sharp minor is a very difficult key for string instruments, particularly the viola and cello, since they lose the use of three of their four open strings. For me, that pushes me either to first position with an extended fourth finger to reach G-sharp on the C string and D-sharp on the G string, or half position. Half position is the only way to play a C-harp on the C string, and in a piece in C-sharp minor, you play a C-sharp a lot. And half position makes my brain hurt. :-)
(I am unable to find a good link describing half position. Although I think I would like to read this book, even though I'm somewhat outside the demographic for it. :-)
I wrote above that I lost three of my four open strings playing in C-sharp minor, but that's not strictly true. In the harmonic and melodic versions of the minor scale, you borrow the leading tone from the parallel major. In this case, you replace a B-natural with a B-sharp. And, since B-sharp is enharmonic to C-natural, in effect, for this piece, we replace the C string of the cello and viola with a B-sharp string. :-) And, seriously, by the end of the piece, I was really thinking of that thick piece of silver wound around sheep gut, at the left side of my fingerboard, as my B-sharp string. Listen to the beginning of this performance of the last movement (the actual last movement starts 17 seconds in). The end of the first phrase has the quartet in octaves on B-sharp, and you can hear the open strings of the viola and cello ring!
Because of the pull of this leading tone, it always struck me that C-sharp minor (or major), or, equivalently, D-flat minor (or major) are excellent keys for a string quartet. Too bad they're so difficult to play, and so seldom used. The second Dohnanyi quartet is in D-flat major; I hope to play that someday!
On to Thursday: a bittersweet occasion, the last session with a violinist I've been playing with a lot in the past year, but who's got a great job in another state and so is moving away. She'd asked specifically for the Schubert Cello Quintet, her favorite piece. There had been lots of obstacles in the way of getting this played, but things finally came together, and it was a marvelous evening.
I had been worried about what to play with the Schubert: there aren't that many cello quintets. Brahms wrote one, but destroyed it when he converted the music to his piano quintet. There are lots by Boccherini and Onslow, and ones by Cherubini and Glazunov. I had gotten the parts to the Borodin Cello Quintet on a mistaken recommendation from the second cellist (he was thinking of the famous Borodin Second String Quartet). But in the end, the question of what to play in the same evening with the Schubert Cello Quintet is: nothing. The piece is so long, and so beautiful, that one neither has time nor inclination to play anything else!
I really don't have that much to say about such a famous piece. Well, okay, I have two things to say. First, as I've mentioned before on this blog, one of the things that I find both fun and amusing about playing quartets are the times when the cello goes up high with a melody, I as the violist am always to be found, growling out the bass on my C-string. So, I think to myself, with two cellos in the room, that won't happen, right? Think again! Listen to the beautiful duet between the two cellos that forms the first statement of the second theme in the first movement of the Schubert, and, if you can tear your ears away from the melody, see if you can pick out the pizzicato bass line from the poor, lone viola. (You can catch it at 1:50 here).
The other thing I finally got while rehearsing for this reading was the very end of the last movement. As so often happens with Schubert, he oscillates between major and minor, but the last three notes of the piece are all five players: C, D-flat grace note, C. D-flat isn't in either C major or C minor, and I've never understood what it's doing there. But in my practice, I noticed that the slow movement starts in E major, moves to F minor for the middle section (a semitone higher), and then back to E major for the recap (with a tiny move back towards F minor again just before the end). And the Scherzo is in C major, while its trio is in D-flat major (again, up a semitone and back). So in a sense, the last three notes of the piece are echoing the entire second and third movements, a kind of Schenkerian analysis in miniature! I don't know how much sense that actually makes, but it's enough to make me completely happy with the ending.
A very successful sendoff for my violinist friend, someone I met "cold-calling" from the ACMP list. So let that be a lesson to all of you: blow the dust off your instrument, join the ACMP, and invite people from the list to play music with you! Don't be afraid! Not everyone will be compatible, but some will be, and then you can have a great deal of fun!
Monday, July 9, 2012
Eighty-eight years apart: Mozart, Brahms, Riley
Sometimes you have a session of chamber music for which the blog post practically writes itself. That's what happened on Sunday. Purely by chance, I played three pieces spaced almost exactly 88 years apart from each other, and nearly played a fourth with a similar spacing. A wonderful trip through music history!
Now that I've finished the Haydn Project, I'm looking for other pieces to play that I haven't played before. Sometimes I think I should have been a bird-watcher or stamp-collector, rather than a chamber musician, since I'm so focused on checking things off my list. :-) Mozart is an obvious choice, but I've played the ten "famous" quartets, and the thirteen I haven't played he wrote in utero and so people tend not to be too psyched to play them. But we found an alternative this morning: the Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546, written in 1788. This is not strictly a string quartet, but it is in the second volume of the Peters Edition of the Mozart quartets, and I hadn't played it before, so I readily agreed.
I have to say, though, that I wasn't very happy with the fugue the first time we played through it. In part that was because one of the players got lost in the middle, which can be suboptimal for counterpoint. :-) But mainly, I think, because, at least as reproduced in the Peters Edition, Mozart marks a dynamic marking of forte at the beginning, and never changes it. Dynamics have always been embarrassingly low down on my list of things to think about in playing and listening to music, but that's starting to change, particularly as I work on the Beethoven Op. 59 No. 3 quartet; dynamics are so central to Beethoven's music. Anyway, the second time we attempted the fugue, we put in our own group dynamics, by bringing out themes and listening to each other, and it was much more satisfying.
Next, we played the Brahms B-flat major string quartet, Op. 67, written in 1875 and first performed in 1876 (so 88 years or so after the Mozart). I think this is one of my absolute favorite string quartets, for so many reasons. Not only is the third movement practically a viola concerto, and the beginning of the fourth movement almost the same, there's just so much more of interest going on. It feels as if it's quite harmonically adventurous, although my theory chops aren't good enough to be sure (although the last movement has, in the viola part, not only B natural and B flat, but B sharp and B double flat; that must count for something). It's certainly rhythmically adventurous, with the usual Brahms nothing-on-the-downbeat and three-against-two, with addition of lots of three-against-four, and even some 5/4 measures (something which I think is very unusual in Brahms). And it's formally very interesting, with the last movement, a theme and variations, bringing in both the first and second themes of the first movement (who knew those were lurking in there?) Add in a gorgeous slow movement, and you have an absolute masterpiece. I don' t know what Brahms was thinking when he called it a "useless trifle", but I think Brahms often said things about his music that were obviously untrue.
We had an extra violinist showing up in time for a short piece (and the lunch following) which provided a quandary: what to play? The problem with violinists (well, one of the problems with violinists :-) is that while one is good, and two are wonderful, three are a complete disaster. IMSLP gave me almost nothing for the combination of three violins, one viola, and one cello: amazingly, no one has arranged any of the famous viola quintets for that combination. I thought we were going to have to fall back on the Pachelbel Canon, with me improvising a viola part from the continuo part. That would have fit the instrumentation (and the accidental theme, nearly, since it's from 1694), but a chance remark reminded me that I had another piece that would work for this combination.
That piece was Terry Riley's In C, written and first performed in 1964 (and so eighty-eight years after the Brahms quartet!). This is a famous piece of modern classical music (there was even a Radiolab podcast about it). In C was one of the first pieces of minimalist music, and also one of the early examples of aleatoric (i.e. chance) music. The score consists of 53 phrases of varying lengths: the instructions are that each musician plays each phrase in order as many times as he or she feel like. The directions say that the group can be aided by someone playing continuous eighth-note Cs; I took on that job. We didn't do a great job: I'd forgotten to print out the instructions, and we didn't try to stay within a few phrases of each other, as Riley directs. But it was great fun, and people were eager to try it again. I'm hatching a plot to get together a large group of strings to play In C on or near the 50th anniversary of its first performance, which will be on November 4, 2014. But hopefully I'll get to play it again before then!
Now that I've finished the Haydn Project, I'm looking for other pieces to play that I haven't played before. Sometimes I think I should have been a bird-watcher or stamp-collector, rather than a chamber musician, since I'm so focused on checking things off my list. :-) Mozart is an obvious choice, but I've played the ten "famous" quartets, and the thirteen I haven't played he wrote in utero and so people tend not to be too psyched to play them. But we found an alternative this morning: the Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546, written in 1788. This is not strictly a string quartet, but it is in the second volume of the Peters Edition of the Mozart quartets, and I hadn't played it before, so I readily agreed.
I have to say, though, that I wasn't very happy with the fugue the first time we played through it. In part that was because one of the players got lost in the middle, which can be suboptimal for counterpoint. :-) But mainly, I think, because, at least as reproduced in the Peters Edition, Mozart marks a dynamic marking of forte at the beginning, and never changes it. Dynamics have always been embarrassingly low down on my list of things to think about in playing and listening to music, but that's starting to change, particularly as I work on the Beethoven Op. 59 No. 3 quartet; dynamics are so central to Beethoven's music. Anyway, the second time we attempted the fugue, we put in our own group dynamics, by bringing out themes and listening to each other, and it was much more satisfying.
Next, we played the Brahms B-flat major string quartet, Op. 67, written in 1875 and first performed in 1876 (so 88 years or so after the Mozart). I think this is one of my absolute favorite string quartets, for so many reasons. Not only is the third movement practically a viola concerto, and the beginning of the fourth movement almost the same, there's just so much more of interest going on. It feels as if it's quite harmonically adventurous, although my theory chops aren't good enough to be sure (although the last movement has, in the viola part, not only B natural and B flat, but B sharp and B double flat; that must count for something). It's certainly rhythmically adventurous, with the usual Brahms nothing-on-the-downbeat and three-against-two, with addition of lots of three-against-four, and even some 5/4 measures (something which I think is very unusual in Brahms). And it's formally very interesting, with the last movement, a theme and variations, bringing in both the first and second themes of the first movement (who knew those were lurking in there?) Add in a gorgeous slow movement, and you have an absolute masterpiece. I don' t know what Brahms was thinking when he called it a "useless trifle", but I think Brahms often said things about his music that were obviously untrue.
We had an extra violinist showing up in time for a short piece (and the lunch following) which provided a quandary: what to play? The problem with violinists (well, one of the problems with violinists :-) is that while one is good, and two are wonderful, three are a complete disaster. IMSLP gave me almost nothing for the combination of three violins, one viola, and one cello: amazingly, no one has arranged any of the famous viola quintets for that combination. I thought we were going to have to fall back on the Pachelbel Canon, with me improvising a viola part from the continuo part. That would have fit the instrumentation (and the accidental theme, nearly, since it's from 1694), but a chance remark reminded me that I had another piece that would work for this combination.
That piece was Terry Riley's In C, written and first performed in 1964 (and so eighty-eight years after the Brahms quartet!). This is a famous piece of modern classical music (there was even a Radiolab podcast about it). In C was one of the first pieces of minimalist music, and also one of the early examples of aleatoric (i.e. chance) music. The score consists of 53 phrases of varying lengths: the instructions are that each musician plays each phrase in order as many times as he or she feel like. The directions say that the group can be aided by someone playing continuous eighth-note Cs; I took on that job. We didn't do a great job: I'd forgotten to print out the instructions, and we didn't try to stay within a few phrases of each other, as Riley directs. But it was great fun, and people were eager to try it again. I'm hatching a plot to get together a large group of strings to play In C on or near the 50th anniversary of its first performance, which will be on November 4, 2014. But hopefully I'll get to play it again before then!
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Haydn, unfinished quartet in D minor, Op. 103
Last night, I read through the last of Haydn's string quartets, the unfinished Op. 103. Originally, Haydn had been commissioned to write a set of six quartets for Count Lobkowicz, but he completed only two, in G major and F major, and the middle two movements of a quartet in D minor, before becoming too old and ill to be physically able to continue composing. The two complete quartets were published as Op. 77; the incomplete one later as Op. 103.
This was the last quartet in another way: with this reading, I have completed my goal of playing all 68 of Haydn's quartets, a goal I set for myself early in 2011, when I'd played only a couple of them. This has been an incredible musical journey. I can't express how much I've learned, and how much greater an appreciation I now have for Haydn as a composer.
I think the most impressive thing about Haydn is, that as long as he lived, and as much music as he wrote, he never "phoned it in": he was always exploring new ideas, new ways of writing music. His productive life spans most of the classical period, and in some ways it seems to me that it was Haydn's spirit that was pushing forward to Romanticism.
To take just one example of Haydn's development over his career: one of the ways people suggest for telling the music of Haydn from that of Mozart is chromaticism; Mozart's music tends to be more chromatic than that of Haydn. And that's true for most of Haydn's life, but by the end, he incorporates more and more of the spirit of Mozart in this way. Listen to the minuet of Op. 103: it practically slithers!
Another amazing thing about Haydn is just how varied his music is, and in how many ways he was ahead of his contemporaries. Four-bar and eight-bar phrases are pretty standard in Western music, but Haydn's phrase-lengths are much more variable. I doubt you could dance to any of the minuets in his string quartets! And we all learn about sonata form in school: first theme, second theme, exposition, development, recapitulation. And that holds well from Mozart to Mahler. But so many of the Haydn movements that are supposed to be in sonata form don't hold up to this model; there's no second theme, or the themes are scrambled in the recap. Haydn makes it all work; maybe it's just his genius that later composers found unable to imitate, sticking to a closer adherence to the model.
In any case, I recommend the Haydn project to any string quartet player (although you could start with Opus 9 and get most of the enjoyment out of the process that I did, without annoying your cellists :-) And I'd like to thank all the players who helped me achieve this goal!
This was the last quartet in another way: with this reading, I have completed my goal of playing all 68 of Haydn's quartets, a goal I set for myself early in 2011, when I'd played only a couple of them. This has been an incredible musical journey. I can't express how much I've learned, and how much greater an appreciation I now have for Haydn as a composer.
I think the most impressive thing about Haydn is, that as long as he lived, and as much music as he wrote, he never "phoned it in": he was always exploring new ideas, new ways of writing music. His productive life spans most of the classical period, and in some ways it seems to me that it was Haydn's spirit that was pushing forward to Romanticism.
To take just one example of Haydn's development over his career: one of the ways people suggest for telling the music of Haydn from that of Mozart is chromaticism; Mozart's music tends to be more chromatic than that of Haydn. And that's true for most of Haydn's life, but by the end, he incorporates more and more of the spirit of Mozart in this way. Listen to the minuet of Op. 103: it practically slithers!
Another amazing thing about Haydn is just how varied his music is, and in how many ways he was ahead of his contemporaries. Four-bar and eight-bar phrases are pretty standard in Western music, but Haydn's phrase-lengths are much more variable. I doubt you could dance to any of the minuets in his string quartets! And we all learn about sonata form in school: first theme, second theme, exposition, development, recapitulation. And that holds well from Mozart to Mahler. But so many of the Haydn movements that are supposed to be in sonata form don't hold up to this model; there's no second theme, or the themes are scrambled in the recap. Haydn makes it all work; maybe it's just his genius that later composers found unable to imitate, sticking to a closer adherence to the model.
In any case, I recommend the Haydn project to any string quartet player (although you could start with Opus 9 and get most of the enjoyment out of the process that I did, without annoying your cellists :-) And I'd like to thank all the players who helped me achieve this goal!
Quartets: Schubert G major, Mendelssohn unpublished, Mozart "Hoffmeister"
Last Sunday I continued the experiment of having morning chamber music, and I have to say, I do like the experience of playing the viola while awake. :-)
Since it was morning, I suggested we start with the Schubert G major string quartet, D. 887. This is Schubert's last string quartet, and I think an absolutely beautiful work (I know, I say that way too often, but still!) It feels to me that it doesn't get played that often, and I think there's an obvious reason for that: it's a perfect example of what Schumann called "himmlische Länge" (heavenly length). This is one long string quartet, and tiring: it's filled with tremolos which can take significant energy to play. I had thought this might be the longest string quartet ever written, but apparently it doesn't crack the top five.
In this quartet, you get lots of what you'd expect from Schubert: abundant modulation, and flipping back and forth between major and minor modes. And gorgeous melodies! But I think my favorite moments are in the second movement, where the first violin and viola share a two-note interpolation that remains fixed as the entire quartet modulates further and further away. One example is around 2:20 in the YouTube clip: see if you can hear what I'm talking about. It always sends shivers down my spine!
Next, I got another piece crossed off my life-list, the Mendelssohn String Quartet in E-flat major, written in 1823, when Mendelssohn was about 14 years old, but not published until well after his death. Even though it's on both the recordings I have of the complete Mendelssohn string quartets (Melos and Pacifica), it's not included in the standard Peters Edition parts, and was therefore difficult to find. I finally had to order it from Ourtext in the UK (a wonderful place if you're looking for obscure chamber music, by the way: very cheap, even with international shipping)
And I think it was worth getting and playing. It's uneven; the final movement is a fugue, which, while it has its moments, feels very much like a student exercise. But the other three movements are fine, particularly the slow movement, about which the first violinist remarked, "he already had that lyrical thing down, didn't he?" And through the miracle that is the rampant copyright violation on Youtube, you can listen to the entire quartet yourself. :-)
We probably should have stopped at that point, but no one said "no", and everyone was playing so well that I was reluctant to move on to lunch. We finished with the Mozart "Hoffmeister" Quartet in D major, K.499. This was definitely "a quartet too far", though: we were dragging by the end. But Mozart is always a delight to play. But, as sometimes happens, I wanted to ask Mozart, who often played viola in quartets, what fingering he could possibly recommend for certain passages. Either Mozart had very large hands, or a very small viola. :-)
Since it was morning, I suggested we start with the Schubert G major string quartet, D. 887. This is Schubert's last string quartet, and I think an absolutely beautiful work (I know, I say that way too often, but still!) It feels to me that it doesn't get played that often, and I think there's an obvious reason for that: it's a perfect example of what Schumann called "himmlische Länge" (heavenly length). This is one long string quartet, and tiring: it's filled with tremolos which can take significant energy to play. I had thought this might be the longest string quartet ever written, but apparently it doesn't crack the top five.
In this quartet, you get lots of what you'd expect from Schubert: abundant modulation, and flipping back and forth between major and minor modes. And gorgeous melodies! But I think my favorite moments are in the second movement, where the first violin and viola share a two-note interpolation that remains fixed as the entire quartet modulates further and further away. One example is around 2:20 in the YouTube clip: see if you can hear what I'm talking about. It always sends shivers down my spine!
Next, I got another piece crossed off my life-list, the Mendelssohn String Quartet in E-flat major, written in 1823, when Mendelssohn was about 14 years old, but not published until well after his death. Even though it's on both the recordings I have of the complete Mendelssohn string quartets (Melos and Pacifica), it's not included in the standard Peters Edition parts, and was therefore difficult to find. I finally had to order it from Ourtext in the UK (a wonderful place if you're looking for obscure chamber music, by the way: very cheap, even with international shipping)
And I think it was worth getting and playing. It's uneven; the final movement is a fugue, which, while it has its moments, feels very much like a student exercise. But the other three movements are fine, particularly the slow movement, about which the first violinist remarked, "he already had that lyrical thing down, didn't he?" And through the miracle that is the rampant copyright violation on Youtube, you can listen to the entire quartet yourself. :-)
We probably should have stopped at that point, but no one said "no", and everyone was playing so well that I was reluctant to move on to lunch. We finished with the Mozart "Hoffmeister" Quartet in D major, K.499. This was definitely "a quartet too far", though: we were dragging by the end. But Mozart is always a delight to play. But, as sometimes happens, I wanted to ask Mozart, who often played viola in quartets, what fingering he could possibly recommend for certain passages. Either Mozart had very large hands, or a very small viola. :-)
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Haydn, Op. 1, No. 6
I got to play the last of the complete string quartets in my project to do all of those Haydn composed. This was the C major, Op. 1, No. 6. It was a special occasion, because I got to welcome a new volunteer to the Haydn Project, the 10-year-old son of my Sunday evening sonata partner. He's the young violinist with whom I played the Schubert string trio earlier this year, and I have to say, he keeps getting better. Technically he was fine, but I was particularly impressed with his musicality. He got lost a few times, but always managed to figure out how to get back. And that's a trick that I have to admit sometimes eludes me in Haydn!
The Haydn Op. 1 and Op. 2 quartets are somewhat odd. They're really not fully developed string quartets: the viola and particularly the cello parts aren't very interesting, and in general, they often fall back to the melody-and-accompaniment pattern. The slow movement of 1/6, for example, is beautiful, but it's entirely a first violin solo with pizzicato accompaniment from the other three strings. And these quartets have a symmetrical structure with two minuets. My joke is that Haydn figured he wouldn't be able to write a thousand minuets in his life if he didn't try to cram some extras into his early quartets. (Has anyone added up how many minuets Haydn wrote? It's got to be at least 200!)
Oh, I almost forgot: I said "last of the complete string quartets" because the only one I have remaining is the unfinished Op. 103, and I'm hoping to play that later this month. This has been an absolutely incredible musical journey, and I recommend it to all amateur string quartet players. Although if you're a cellist, I might suggest, as Haydn himself apparently recommended, that you start with Opus 9. :-)
The Haydn Op. 1 and Op. 2 quartets are somewhat odd. They're really not fully developed string quartets: the viola and particularly the cello parts aren't very interesting, and in general, they often fall back to the melody-and-accompaniment pattern. The slow movement of 1/6, for example, is beautiful, but it's entirely a first violin solo with pizzicato accompaniment from the other three strings. And these quartets have a symmetrical structure with two minuets. My joke is that Haydn figured he wouldn't be able to write a thousand minuets in his life if he didn't try to cram some extras into his early quartets. (Has anyone added up how many minuets Haydn wrote? It's got to be at least 200!)
Oh, I almost forgot: I said "last of the complete string quartets" because the only one I have remaining is the unfinished Op. 103, and I'm hoping to play that later this month. This has been an absolutely incredible musical journey, and I recommend it to all amateur string quartet players. Although if you're a cellist, I might suggest, as Haydn himself apparently recommended, that you start with Opus 9. :-)
Monday, June 18, 2012
Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59, No. 3, "Razumovsky #3"
I've signed up for another chamber music workshop; this time, the Wellesley Composer's Conference. I'll be attending the second half of the second week, August 2nd through 4th. For the afternoon sessions, I've been assigned to play viola in the Schumann Piano Quintet. For the morning sessions, though, a cellist friend of mine put together a string quartet to play the Beethoven String Quartet in C major, Op. 59, No. 3, the third of the set dedicated to Count Razumovsky. (As an aside, I wonder how many of these late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century noblemen suspected that their lasting claim to fame would be as the dedicatee of some piece of music by a famous composer?)
We've had a couple of read-throughs of the quartet, but this week was our first attempt at taking it apart and working on small sections. We worked mostly on the first movement, and while there were a couple of spots in the main section that needed work (there's one bar with syncopated sixteenth notes for the violins that's a real bear!) we spend most of that time on the introduction.
This introduction is Beethoven at his most audacious and amazing. It's clearly modeled on the opening of the Mozart Dissonance Quartet that I played and blogged about a couple of weeks ago. But Beethoven takes Mozart one further. While the Mozart introduction ventures into far distant keys, it at least starts with repeated Cs in the cello to establish the tonic. Beethoven starts this quartet with a diminished seventh chord, perhaps one of the most dissonant, and certainly the most ambiguous, chords in Western music. Its ambiguity comes from the fact that it's completely symmetric, being made up of three minor thirds and an augmented second, which is enharmonically the same as a minor third. You literally have no idea where it's going, and Beethoven doesn't do anything to clear up the confusion. There are lots of diminished seventh chords in this short introduction, and lots of unusual resolutions, until you finally have the viola drop down from Ab to G, to clue you in that you're actually in C major, the bar before the introduction ends.
By the way, does anyone know of a harmonic analysis of this introduction? Internet research hasn't turned one up, and it would be incredibly helpful for me to figure out my way through this forest of bizarre chords.
As you might expect, this creates a big challenge in interpretation. The introduction needs to be simultaneously mysterious and secure, a difficult pairing to pull off! Plus, there's the problem of intonation. How do you tune an isolated diminished seventh chord? I'm thinking I need to write up a little introduction to the introduction, to establish the key and prepare that initial surprise.
At the end of the evening we read through the last movement, but that, amazingly, seems to be in pretty good shape. Well, we're taking it at a half-note equals 100 (100 beats per minute), which is significantly under the tempo of the recordings (including the one I've linked to). But we can play it at that tempo, and I think it sounds good: you can hear all the motives from the fugue theme that opens the movement, and how Beethoven plays with all of them as the movement progresses. The only trick is that it's all up to me. The movement starts with a viola solo, and if I start too fast, we're in for a train wreck. :-)
We've had a couple of read-throughs of the quartet, but this week was our first attempt at taking it apart and working on small sections. We worked mostly on the first movement, and while there were a couple of spots in the main section that needed work (there's one bar with syncopated sixteenth notes for the violins that's a real bear!) we spend most of that time on the introduction.
This introduction is Beethoven at his most audacious and amazing. It's clearly modeled on the opening of the Mozart Dissonance Quartet that I played and blogged about a couple of weeks ago. But Beethoven takes Mozart one further. While the Mozart introduction ventures into far distant keys, it at least starts with repeated Cs in the cello to establish the tonic. Beethoven starts this quartet with a diminished seventh chord, perhaps one of the most dissonant, and certainly the most ambiguous, chords in Western music. Its ambiguity comes from the fact that it's completely symmetric, being made up of three minor thirds and an augmented second, which is enharmonically the same as a minor third. You literally have no idea where it's going, and Beethoven doesn't do anything to clear up the confusion. There are lots of diminished seventh chords in this short introduction, and lots of unusual resolutions, until you finally have the viola drop down from Ab to G, to clue you in that you're actually in C major, the bar before the introduction ends.
By the way, does anyone know of a harmonic analysis of this introduction? Internet research hasn't turned one up, and it would be incredibly helpful for me to figure out my way through this forest of bizarre chords.
As you might expect, this creates a big challenge in interpretation. The introduction needs to be simultaneously mysterious and secure, a difficult pairing to pull off! Plus, there's the problem of intonation. How do you tune an isolated diminished seventh chord? I'm thinking I need to write up a little introduction to the introduction, to establish the key and prepare that initial surprise.
At the end of the evening we read through the last movement, but that, amazingly, seems to be in pretty good shape. Well, we're taking it at a half-note equals 100 (100 beats per minute), which is significantly under the tempo of the recordings (including the one I've linked to). But we can play it at that tempo, and I think it sounds good: you can hear all the motives from the fugue theme that opens the movement, and how Beethoven plays with all of them as the movement progresses. The only trick is that it's all up to me. The movement starts with a viola solo, and if I start too fast, we're in for a train wreck. :-)
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