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!
Saturday, June 30, 2012
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. :-)
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Beethoven "Eyeglasses" Duo, WoO 32, and Kalliwoda, Six Nocturnes, Op. 186
My Sunday evening sonata partner plays the cello as well as the piano (and about a dozen instruments besides, but that's another story!) and so last week I got him to get his cello out of the basement to join me in one of my favorite pieces, the Beethoven Duo for Viola and Cello, called the "Eyeglasses" because of the note on the manuscript, "mit zwei
obligaten Augengläsern". It was never published in Beethoven's lifetime, and has the bizarre-looking catalog number "WoO 32", where "WoO" stands for "Werke ohne Opus", work without opus number. Apparently, the first movement wasn't published until 1912, after it was discovered in one Beethoven's notebooks; the second movement was found in the same notebook in the 1940s. I'm just happy it survived: it's just a fun, fun piece. And it's the first piece I played when I started playing the viola again back in 2009 (with this same cellist, as it happens!)
As readers of this blog will remember, I'm on a real Kalliwoda kick, and my sonata partner was very indulgent, and read through with me his Six Nocturnes for Viola and Piano, Op. 186. I think these are wonderful pieces: very "violistic", if I can coin that phrase. My partner said that they were very sight-readable, because Kalliwoda never does anything in the least unexpected. :-( Still, I think all violists ought to give these a try. I may like the first one the best; listen and see if you don't think it's very pretty. My sonata partner likened some of these pieces to melodies by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and to me, that's high praise (I used to be a huge Gilbert and Sullivan fan!)
I realized that there's a link here: both of these pieces are what I call "fun", and that's a thread that can be hard to find in chamber music, particularly in the romantic era. Haydn certainly had fun, and created fun experiences for his players, as did Beethoven early in his career. But somehow, music, particularly chamber music, took a very serious turn early in the nineteenth century, leaving "fun" to composers like Strauss, Offenbach, and Sullivan. I mean, I just adore Brahms, but no one would ever consider calling his chamber music "fun"!
As readers of this blog will remember, I'm on a real Kalliwoda kick, and my sonata partner was very indulgent, and read through with me his Six Nocturnes for Viola and Piano, Op. 186. I think these are wonderful pieces: very "violistic", if I can coin that phrase. My partner said that they were very sight-readable, because Kalliwoda never does anything in the least unexpected. :-( Still, I think all violists ought to give these a try. I may like the first one the best; listen and see if you don't think it's very pretty. My sonata partner likened some of these pieces to melodies by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and to me, that's high praise (I used to be a huge Gilbert and Sullivan fan!)
I realized that there's a link here: both of these pieces are what I call "fun", and that's a thread that can be hard to find in chamber music, particularly in the romantic era. Haydn certainly had fun, and created fun experiences for his players, as did Beethoven early in his career. But somehow, music, particularly chamber music, took a very serious turn early in the nineteenth century, leaving "fun" to composers like Strauss, Offenbach, and Sullivan. I mean, I just adore Brahms, but no one would ever consider calling his chamber music "fun"!
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Haydn, Op. 33, No. 4, and Brahms, Op. 51, No. 1
Friday evening was one of the rare quartet sessions that I didn't set up myself. My schedule finally allowed me to accept an invitation to play at the violist's house where I played the Mozart Clarinet Quintet back in January. Unfortunately, he's basically no longer playing: he's 93 years old, and age is catching up with him at last. But he and his wife are still hosting string quartets every other Friday night.
We started with the next quartet in the house Haydn cycle, the B-flat major, Opus 33, No. 4. Since I only have one and a half quartets left to finish my project to play all of the Haydn quartets, you won't be surprised to hear that this was one I'd played before, but it was over a year ago, so it still sounded fresh to me. At least I still chuckled out loud at the false recap, and the very deceptive true recap, in the first movement. Here's a recording: listen to the beginning, and then the section from three minutes in to about three minutes thirty seconds, and see if you can spot the fake recap and the true one. I think it's really hard!
One of the violinists suggested the Brahms C minor quartet, and we all agreed. I would have preferred to play that piece some other time than the middle of the night (the tradition at this house is to gather around 8:30 and have some tea and chocolate first, which means we didn't start playing until 9pm!) but I will seldom pass up an opportunity to play Brahms, particularly with such an excellent group of musicians!
This is a piece with which I have a long history. According to my records, I've played it, or movements of it, six times since starting to play the viola again in 2009, and I have at least one distinct memory of slogging through it before the large gap in my chamber music. And each time, it gets better, which is gratifying. I still got lost a couple of times, once causing a breakdown. I can't rely on my sense of rhythm in Brahms; I really have to count! One of the listening guests was reading the score, and said later: "you know, there's a section in the third movement where no one has anything on the downbeat for bars and bars: I had to close the score, it was making me dizzy". I said, "that's Brahms. That's what he does". So I'm going to continue to play this piece until I get it right. :-)
It's funny: the other composer with whom I need to count more than I do is Haydn. People think Haydn is an easy composer to play, but between his constant jokes and traps, and his love of irregular phrase lengths, I find I have to count like a maniac to avoid mistakes.
Since I'm on a music theory kick, I should mention that that it seems to me that the two quartets in Brahms' Opus 51 are both focused on a different interval. In this quartet, it's the diminished seventh (very clearly outlined in the first few bars of both the first and last movements.); in the second, the A minor, it's the tritone. Unfortunately, neither is a particularly graceful interval to play on a stringed instrument (particularly the tritone), but the music is so good I forgive Brahms his less-than-perfect string writing. :-)
We started with the next quartet in the house Haydn cycle, the B-flat major, Opus 33, No. 4. Since I only have one and a half quartets left to finish my project to play all of the Haydn quartets, you won't be surprised to hear that this was one I'd played before, but it was over a year ago, so it still sounded fresh to me. At least I still chuckled out loud at the false recap, and the very deceptive true recap, in the first movement. Here's a recording: listen to the beginning, and then the section from three minutes in to about three minutes thirty seconds, and see if you can spot the fake recap and the true one. I think it's really hard!
One of the violinists suggested the Brahms C minor quartet, and we all agreed. I would have preferred to play that piece some other time than the middle of the night (the tradition at this house is to gather around 8:30 and have some tea and chocolate first, which means we didn't start playing until 9pm!) but I will seldom pass up an opportunity to play Brahms, particularly with such an excellent group of musicians!
This is a piece with which I have a long history. According to my records, I've played it, or movements of it, six times since starting to play the viola again in 2009, and I have at least one distinct memory of slogging through it before the large gap in my chamber music. And each time, it gets better, which is gratifying. I still got lost a couple of times, once causing a breakdown. I can't rely on my sense of rhythm in Brahms; I really have to count! One of the listening guests was reading the score, and said later: "you know, there's a section in the third movement where no one has anything on the downbeat for bars and bars: I had to close the score, it was making me dizzy". I said, "that's Brahms. That's what he does". So I'm going to continue to play this piece until I get it right. :-)
It's funny: the other composer with whom I need to count more than I do is Haydn. People think Haydn is an easy composer to play, but between his constant jokes and traps, and his love of irregular phrase lengths, I find I have to count like a maniac to avoid mistakes.
Since I'm on a music theory kick, I should mention that that it seems to me that the two quartets in Brahms' Opus 51 are both focused on a different interval. In this quartet, it's the diminished seventh (very clearly outlined in the first few bars of both the first and last movements.); in the second, the A minor, it's the tritone. Unfortunately, neither is a particularly graceful interval to play on a stringed instrument (particularly the tritone), but the music is so good I forgive Brahms his less-than-perfect string writing. :-)
Mozart "Dissonance" Quartet, K465, and Mendelssohn Op. 44 No. 1
After a relatively quiet time (there was some music, but no time to blog about it) I've had an intense schedule of four sessions on four successive nights! I think that was a bit much, even for me. :-)
Wednesday I had the pleasure of meeting a new cellist. As a violist, I feel I can never have too many cellists in my circle of acquaintance: the music you can play without a cellist is quite limited. This cellist was a good player, a nice person, and, as a bonus, lives in my town. A real find!
We started off with the Mozart "Dissonance" Quartet, K465, the last of the six quartets dedicated to Haydn. The dedication is rather touching, I think: it seems to show a side of Mozart that we don't often think of:
Wednesday I had the pleasure of meeting a new cellist. As a violist, I feel I can never have too many cellists in my circle of acquaintance: the music you can play without a cellist is quite limited. This cellist was a good player, a nice person, and, as a bonus, lives in my town. A real find!
We started off with the Mozart "Dissonance" Quartet, K465, the last of the six quartets dedicated to Haydn. The dedication is rather touching, I think: it seems to show a side of Mozart that we don't often think of:
- To my dear friend Haydn,
- A father who had resolved to send his children out into the great world took it to be his duty to confide them to the protection and guidance of a very celebrated Man, especially when the latter by good fortune was at the same time his best Friend. Here they are then, O great Man and dearest Friend, these six children of mine. They are, it is true, the fruit of a long and laborious endeavor, yet the hope inspired in me by several Friends that it may be at least partly compensated encourages me, and I flatter myself that this offspring will serve to afford me solace one day. You, yourself, dearest friend, told me of your satisfaction with them during your last Visit to this Capital. It is this indulgence above all which urges me to commend them to you and encourages me to hope that they will not seem to you altogether unworthy of your favour. May it therefore please you to receive them kindly and to be their Father, Guide and Friend! From this moment I resign to you all my rights in them, begging you however to look indulgently upon the defects which the partiality of a Father’s eye may have concealed from me, and in spite of them to continue in your generous Friendship for him who so greatly values it, in expectation of which I am, with all of my Heart, my dearest Friend, your most Sincere Friend,
- W.A. Mozart
The quartet gets its name from the slow introduction to the first movement, with its harmonies so strange for the time that some of the early editions tried to "correct" them. Haydn said, “If Mozart wrote it so he must have had a good reason for it.”
This reading went very well, I thought, even though the first violinist had practiced the wrong piece. She did so well that I think I'm going to keep telling her the wrong pieces to practice. :-)
The other quartet we played that evening is the Mendelssohn Op. 44 No. 1 in D major. Readers of the blog will know that I particularly enjoy Mendelssohn. I have an idea for a project (now that the Haydn quartet project is nearly over) to play all of the Mendelssohn string quartets in one day. There are eight of them, plus twelve short fugues he wrote as a child: I think it's doable. With lots of breaks. And perhaps lots of coffee. :-)
The Mendelssohn D major quartet was great fun. On top of just being beautiful music, I got to play a bunch of open B sharps, something which always tickles me.
The new cellist remarked that the chord three from the end in the first movement was strange: she played a G sharp, which is not in the key of D major. I've included an excerpt from the score (please forgive my inexpert cut-and-paste job).
Internet research reminded me that this is called a "secondary dominant", in this case V7/V. Looking for explanations of this led me to discover a wonderful set of YouTube videos by David Newman, who teaches voice and ear training at James Madison University. I can't decide which is my favorite: they're all absolutely amazing. If you have any interest in music theory at all, you have to listen to them!
This reading went very well, I thought, even though the first violinist had practiced the wrong piece. She did so well that I think I'm going to keep telling her the wrong pieces to practice. :-)
The other quartet we played that evening is the Mendelssohn Op. 44 No. 1 in D major. Readers of the blog will know that I particularly enjoy Mendelssohn. I have an idea for a project (now that the Haydn quartet project is nearly over) to play all of the Mendelssohn string quartets in one day. There are eight of them, plus twelve short fugues he wrote as a child: I think it's doable. With lots of breaks. And perhaps lots of coffee. :-)
The Mendelssohn D major quartet was great fun. On top of just being beautiful music, I got to play a bunch of open B sharps, something which always tickles me.
The new cellist remarked that the chord three from the end in the first movement was strange: she played a G sharp, which is not in the key of D major. I've included an excerpt from the score (please forgive my inexpert cut-and-paste job).
Internet research reminded me that this is called a "secondary dominant", in this case V7/V. Looking for explanations of this led me to discover a wonderful set of YouTube videos by David Newman, who teaches voice and ear training at James Madison University. I can't decide which is my favorite: they're all absolutely amazing. If you have any interest in music theory at all, you have to listen to them!
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