I'm sorry I've been remiss on updating my blog; I've been playing quite a bit of music over the past few weeks, but I've been otherwise too busy to write about it. I'm on vacation this week, away from my instruments, so I'm hoping to catch up.
Friday, March 30, I had another wonderful session of string quartets. Our first violinist had requested Mendelssohn, so I chose the Opus 80 quartet, the only complete, published one of his quartets that I hadn't yet played since taking up the viola again. I love Mendelssohn; his music is beautiful, and also, as a string player, it lies under the hand better than almost any other composer. But the Opus 80 is a challenging work.
Felix Mendelssohn had an older sister, Fanny, who was also a composer, and the two were very close. In February of 1847, at the age of 41, Fanny died suddenly of a stroke, the same malady that had felled both their parents and their famous grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn. Felix took his sister's death badly, and eventually decided to write a string quartet as part of the process of working through his grief. This quartet, later published as Opus 80, he finished in September of that year, and started work on another quartet, completing two movements before he himself died of a stroke in November, at the age of 38.
I think the best term to describe the Opus 80 string quartet is "raw". Except for the respite of the slow movement, it has almost none of the melodic touches Mendelssohn is famous for. Even the choice of key is telling: F minor, which in the period was associated with "Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave." The first movement is rhythmically and harmonically driving, and the scherzo that follows is even more so: there is no trace of the kind of "fairyland" lightness with which Mendelssohn so often imbued his scherzi. I have to admit, I was nearly in tears playing this movement (which isn't good for one's accuracy!)
I had thought to go for a complete change of pace (and also to balance out four flats with four sharps)
with one of the few remaining Haydns in my project, the E major, Op. 17, No. 1. I don't know, though: maybe it was playing this after the Mendelssohn, but even with the bright key, this seemed to be quite melancholy, for Haydn. Even though it has one of Haydn's jokes in the first movement, a perfect false recap.
We finished the evening reading one of the movements from Mendelssohn's unfinished quartet, the Theme and Variations published as Op. 81, No. 1. It feels that Mendelssohn has progressed on the path of recovery from grief. It's not hard to believe that he would have completed a set of three quartets, as he did for Op. 44, and together they would have been an amazing journey. Mendelssohn's early death was of course a tragedy, but leaving this musical journey incomplete is to me the most tragic aspect.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, D821
Last Saturday I got a chance to play the Schubert "Arpeggione" Sonata for the first time. One of the interesting things about having been a violinist who didn't really pick up the viola until after the end of my formal training is that I missed out on a lot of the standard viola literature, and the Arpeggione Sonata is one of those pieces.
It's really funny how the Arpeggione Sonata is one of the staples of the viola literature, since it wasn't even written for the viola. Schubert composed the piece for a new instrument, the arpeggione, which went in and out of fashion so fast that this sonata is pretty much the only piece for it. The arpeggione is tuned like a guitar, with six strings and frets, but is bowed like a cello.
It's fascinating how carefully Schubert considered the strengths and weaknesses of the arpeggione in writing this piece. The keys of the movements (A minor, E major, A major) work very well for the strings of the instrument. The biggest drawback of the arpeggione is that, with six strings, the bridge has to be quite flat, and so it's very difficult to play loudly without hitting more than one string. Schubert avoids this problem by having almost the whole piece marked "piano" or "pianissimo", except when there are double stops, or when the notes are to be played on the highest string (therefore making it easier to avoid hitting another string by mistake).
All this, of course, is lost when you play the piece on the viola. Those keys aren't particularly good for the viola, and there's no need to play quietly all the time! Not to mention that the viola can't actually play as low as the arpeggione, so some passages have to be taken up an octave.
Still, it's a beautiful piece, filled with those amazing Schubert melodies. But I want to talk about the beginning of the second movement, the first four notes of the viola in particular.
When I was a kid, I had the companion book to Leonard Bernstein's television broadcasts about music. I didn't see any of the shows at the time; this was back when you had to watch what they were showing on television (how barbaric that seems now). But the book was fascinating, and I remember one lecture in particular, The Infinite Variety of Music. This discussed how much composers can get out of four notes: sol-do-re-mi, in that order, or, as Bernstein puts it, "How Dry I Am". It's a wonderful exploration: well worth watching. And here, in the slow movement of the Arpeggione Sonata, the same four notes! Maybe Schubert wasn't as original as we suppose. :-)
It's really funny how the Arpeggione Sonata is one of the staples of the viola literature, since it wasn't even written for the viola. Schubert composed the piece for a new instrument, the arpeggione, which went in and out of fashion so fast that this sonata is pretty much the only piece for it. The arpeggione is tuned like a guitar, with six strings and frets, but is bowed like a cello.
It's fascinating how carefully Schubert considered the strengths and weaknesses of the arpeggione in writing this piece. The keys of the movements (A minor, E major, A major) work very well for the strings of the instrument. The biggest drawback of the arpeggione is that, with six strings, the bridge has to be quite flat, and so it's very difficult to play loudly without hitting more than one string. Schubert avoids this problem by having almost the whole piece marked "piano" or "pianissimo", except when there are double stops, or when the notes are to be played on the highest string (therefore making it easier to avoid hitting another string by mistake).
All this, of course, is lost when you play the piece on the viola. Those keys aren't particularly good for the viola, and there's no need to play quietly all the time! Not to mention that the viola can't actually play as low as the arpeggione, so some passages have to be taken up an octave.
Still, it's a beautiful piece, filled with those amazing Schubert melodies. But I want to talk about the beginning of the second movement, the first four notes of the viola in particular.
When I was a kid, I had the companion book to Leonard Bernstein's television broadcasts about music. I didn't see any of the shows at the time; this was back when you had to watch what they were showing on television (how barbaric that seems now). But the book was fascinating, and I remember one lecture in particular, The Infinite Variety of Music. This discussed how much composers can get out of four notes: sol-do-re-mi, in that order, or, as Bernstein puts it, "How Dry I Am". It's a wonderful exploration: well worth watching. And here, in the slow movement of the Arpeggione Sonata, the same four notes! Maybe Schubert wasn't as original as we suppose. :-)
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