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!

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. :-)

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"!

Duets and Trio, Kalliwoda, Bach/David, Beethoven

Following along on the theme of catching up on my blog, I'm going to combine parts of two different sessions, so that I can talk about a couple of themes: smaller groups, and arrangements.

First, continuing my obsession with Kalliwoda, I got to play the first of his two violin-viola duets, the Op. 208, No. 1 in C major.   There's a blog post about these two duets here, and I have to say, I agree: wonderful pieces.  Kalliwoda has a gift for melody, I think, and his writing is technically gratifying for both instruments.  Maybe he does love double-stops a bit too much, but he writes them so cleverly that I forgive him.  And he does manage to get a full, rich sound out of only two instruments!

In that same session, we played about half of the Ferdinand David transcription for violin and viola of the Bach Two-Part Inventions.  You can hear three of them here.  I think they work remarkably well, particularly the famous F major No. 8.  I'm eager to play more of David's transcriptions.  And maybe even add his string quartet to my list of quartets by obscure composers to play (not that that list needs more entries!)

I suppose this is a good place to discuss my feelings about arrangements and transcriptions.  I'm in favor of them, as long as they're done with a real understanding of the instruments being transcribed for.   I don't like, for example, to play a string quartet with a flute taking over the first violin part.  But something like the Bach transcriptions by David, an expert violinist (he premiered the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto) can work really well.

On a separate occasion, waiting for a tardy cellist for a session of string quartets, I got to play another transcription, this time the first movement of Beethoven's Op. 87 Trio for Two Oboes and English Horn, in the Henle edition for two violins and viola, prepared by Egon Voss.  It's unclear whether the string version is Beethoven's or not, but he at least approved it.  And it's delightful: notwithstanding the high opus number, this is a very early work, and I have a particular fondness for Beethoven's earliest music.  Another example of a transcription working very well!  You can listen to the original version here, and the transcription here, and form your own opinion.

Haydn, Op. 17, No. 2, and Beethoven, Op. 135

Finally getting back to chamber music after what feels like a long break (I was on vacation in California and didn't bring any instrument with me).  And, of course, starting back up with Haydn.  I took advantage of a quartet with an excellent violinist and an obliging cellist to cross off another of the Opus 17 quartets, No. 2 in F major.  Haydn wrote these quartets for the virtuoso violinist at Eszterhazy, Luigi Tomasini, so the first violin parts are filled with double stops and intricate passage work.  And these were written before Opus 20, when Haydn realized that the violist and cellist might want to have interesting things to play, too. :-)

But even so, this is a beautiful quartet.  I find the closing theme of the first movement enchanting: there's just something about the harmony that moves me, even though the passage is just a few measures long.  (Our second violinist claims it was her B natural, and I have no reason to doubt her).  And as much as I enjoy the more equal distribution of interest in the later Haydn quartets, there's something wonderful about the pure first-violin arias that you often get in the slow movements of the early works, and this is a fine example.   And in the last movement, Haydn shows himself, as always, inventive in his sonata forms, turning a simple bass line, shared by the cello and viola in the exposition, into a much more involved example of counterpoint in the recapitulation.

Staying in F major, we moved to Beethoven's last string quartet, the Opus 135.  Oh, I wish I had had more time to practice this: I really shouldn't have scheduled late Beethoven only a few days after I'd returned from vacation.  But it was okay, and we had fun.

It's hard to describe how bizarre and outlandish the late Beethoven string quartets are.  It feels as if they were written a century before their time.  Certainly Beethoven's contemporaries could make nothing of them: I've previously quoted Louis Spohr's remark that they were "an indecipherable, uncorrected horror".  And while Mendelssohn modeled his Op. 13 after them, he only used the least unconventional ideas.  I think it's fair to say that the rest of the nineteenth century ignored these quartets: it isn't until Bartok that you feel a continuation of the compositional ideas of the late Beethoven quartets.

Just one example of one of the oddities in Opus 135: in the trio of the scherzo, the second violin, viola, and cello play, in octaves, the same measure over forty times in succession, while the first violin plays a kind of melody above.  (The passage is just after the two minute mark here).  It's bad enough for the poor second and viola, but because the cello is a larger instrument, one can't easily play the passage in one position.  You can see on the video how the left hand of the cellist is frantically moving up and down, while the two inner strings can keep theirs still.  Last night, our cellist tried thumb position, not usually used for notes so low on the instrument.  It seemed to work, although she said that it would be very difficult to get to thumb position there reliably and quickly.

The slow movement is in the wonderful key of D-flat major, with five flats.  The middle section goes from major to minor, but Beethoven chooses the enharmonic key of C-sharp minor, which has four sharps.  Confusing: a bit like crossing the International Date Line (or a branch cut for you math geeks out there).   Beethoven has to do this because D-flat minor doesn't exist as a key, because it would have eight flats and you can only have seven in the key signature.  Although I think it would be really cool to have a B-double-flat in a key signature.  And, yes, I know that I have a very strange sense of what would be really cool. :-)

I have to admit, I don't get the last movement at all.  It's subtitled "Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß" ("The Difficult Decision").  The slow introduction is marked "Muss es sein? (Must it be?)" and the succeeding Allegro "Es muss sein! (It must be!)"  I've always heard this explained that Beethoven, months away from death, is wrestling with the eternal question.  And the introduction is as anguished as anything he wrote.  But the Allegro!  I could have understood a feeling of resignation, of acceptance, of maybe even joy.  But what you get is something happy, maybe even mischievous.  And the pizzicato ending is downright silly.    If anyone can help me come up with a way of understanding this, I'd appreciate it!

Beethoven, Op. 18, No. 4, and Haydn, Op. 77, No. 2

I only played two quartets last night: we were all tired, and one of the violinists was on crutches, recovering from day surgery.  But they were two wonderful quartets, and I think we sounded particularly good.  Part of it was the skill of the players (helped out by the viola bow I'm trying out), but I think part of it is that my living room has really good acoustics for chamber music.  We could really get a clarity of sound when needed!

In selecting the program for this evening, I had prepared a bit of a musicological term-paper topic.  One of the violinists had expressed eagerness to play one of Beethoven's Opus 18 quartets (we played No. 4, in C minor), so I chose from among the few (!) remaining quartets in my Haydn project his last complete one, the Opus 77, No. 2, in F major.  (I didn't realize, until I was preparing this blog post, that this quartet had the nickname "Wait Till The Clouds Roll By".  I can find no explanation for this name: maybe one of you out there can help me?)

I don't know if this is true for everyone, but one tends to keep composers in memory in a kind of chronological order, like Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven.  But that is an oversimplification, and the two pieces from tonight show why.  Both were written in the period 1798-1800, while both composers were living in Vienna, and both were commissioned and dedicated to the same patron, Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowicz.  So the term-paper topic is, "compare and contrast these two string quartets".

Both composers are at the top of their form, I think.  Haydn could probably have gotten away with "phoning it in" to Lobkowicz, but there's no trace of that.  He continues his lifelong exploration of the string quartet, particularly noticeable in the distant keys he reaches in the development section of the first movement, and the shift from F major to D-flat major between the minuet and trio.  Beethoven seems to have delayed his attempt at string quartets, publishing a total of five string trios before the Op. 18, perhaps to make sure he was ready to tackle this already-venerated form.   I think he was definitely ready. :-)  This quartet is a thrill from beginning to end.  It's particularly interesting that the traditional "slow" movement isn't slow at all, but a kind of mixture of sonata and scherzo.

In comparing these two works, you can't even fall back on the rule of thumb, "Haydn writes minuets, Beethoven writes scherzos".  On the minuet-scherzo spectrum, the Beethoven 18/4 is definitely on the minuet side compared with the Haydn 77/2.  ("Scherzo" means "joke" in Italian, and Haydn certainly plays a joke on the viola in this movement.  I thought I'd have three chances to get my tricky rhythmic entrance correct, but as it turns out, I needed a fourth. :-)

I think the fundamental question is, can you tell the difference between a piece written by someone in his late sixties, as opposed to someone in his late twenties?  There's something indescribable in the Haydn that makes it seem like "old music" to me, particularly the beautiful slow movement.  And the Beethoven seems like "young music": in the last two movements he has the tempo increase near the end, which feels to me like a reflection of the impatience of youth.  But I'm not sure if that's just not some sort of projection on my part.  Listen to the pieces and let me know what you think!

P.S.  For those of you keeping track at home, the Haydn Quartet Project stands at 59 played, only nine to go!