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. :-)
Showing posts with label Mendelssohn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mendelssohn. Show all posts
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
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!
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Viola quintets: Mendelssohn Op. 18 and Mozart K515
Last night was another session of viola quintets at my house. I know I've been playing a lot of viola quintets, but if I want to play with violists without switching to violin myself, that's pretty much what I have to do. :-) It's unfortunate that there are many fewer quintets than quartets, since some of the great quartet composers didn't write quintets (Haydn, Bartok, Shostakovich), and some of the quintets of great composers are unaccountably neglected (I can't imagine why people don't play Beethoven's Op. 29!) But there are enough wonderful works to keep me occupied for quite a while.
We started with a seldom-played work, the first Mendelssohn quintet, the Op. 18 in A major. I don't really understand why this piece is neglected, but then, one of my gifts (?) as a chamber musician is that I like practically everything. Perhaps this pieces is a little heavily weighted towards the first violin, but our wonderful first violinist had worked up the part so that it was a pleasure to hear. Actually, it was a great group, top to bottom!
We then did three movements of the Mozart K515 Quintet in C major, before running out of energy. K515 is definitely an example of Mozart not being in a hurry! The first movement is very long; you feel like you've been playing forever when you reach the exposition repeat, and realize you're not even half done. The minuet and trio is rather sedate, and the slow movement is also lengthy: it needs to be, to fit in all the thirty-second notes in the beautiful duet between the first violin and first viola. I'd chosen to play second viola on this pieces, and I was happy to have done so: the other violist played so beautifully that it was a pleasure to let her be in the driver's seat.
I had a special reason for wanting to play this work: it was the birthday of one of the violinists, and I had done a setting of Happy Birthday in the style of Mozart, modeled after the opening bars of the first movement of this quintet. That went over well, but perhaps the birthday cake was appreciated even more. :-)
We started with a seldom-played work, the first Mendelssohn quintet, the Op. 18 in A major. I don't really understand why this piece is neglected, but then, one of my gifts (?) as a chamber musician is that I like practically everything. Perhaps this pieces is a little heavily weighted towards the first violin, but our wonderful first violinist had worked up the part so that it was a pleasure to hear. Actually, it was a great group, top to bottom!
We then did three movements of the Mozart K515 Quintet in C major, before running out of energy. K515 is definitely an example of Mozart not being in a hurry! The first movement is very long; you feel like you've been playing forever when you reach the exposition repeat, and realize you're not even half done. The minuet and trio is rather sedate, and the slow movement is also lengthy: it needs to be, to fit in all the thirty-second notes in the beautiful duet between the first violin and first viola. I'd chosen to play second viola on this pieces, and I was happy to have done so: the other violist played so beautifully that it was a pleasure to let her be in the driver's seat.
I had a special reason for wanting to play this work: it was the birthday of one of the violinists, and I had done a setting of Happy Birthday in the style of Mozart, modeled after the opening bars of the first movement of this quintet. That went over well, but perhaps the birthday cake was appreciated even more. :-)
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Mendelssohn, Op. 80, and Haydn, Op. 17 No. 1
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.
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.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Viola quintets: Vaughan Williams, Mozart, Mendelssohn
One of the great things about being a violist is that you can be the "special guest star" and join a string quartet to make an evening of quintets. There are different kinds of string quintets, distinguished by which instrument is added to the standard string quartet. So a "viola quintet" isn't, as you might think, a piece for five violas (although that would be really cool!) but one for two violins, two violas, and a cello.
So last night I was a guest star, crashing the party of a regular string quartet. Two of the people I'd never played with before, and one I'd played with only once. A great group of people: wonderful musicians, amazing sight readers, and just generally fun to be with!
We started out with a piece I'd never played, never heard, and never even heard of, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Phantasy Quintet, from 1912. This was a real sight-reading challenge, particular the scherzo in 7/4 time: counting that made my brain explode. Vaughan Williams has never been a favorite composer of mine, but I really liked this piece, and want to play it again. And I'll add his two string quartets to my list of music I want to play. (That's a very long list, you will not be surprised to learn. :-)
One really cool thing in the Vaughan Williams is that the slow movement, a Sarabande, has the cello tacet (silent for the entire movement). So it devolved upon me, the second viola, to provide the bass line. I love doing that, since I'm a wannabe cellist at heart.
Next up was perhaps the most famous viola quintet, Mozart's G minor quintet, K516. Many people are of the opinion that Mozart's quintets are better than his quartets. I'm not sure I agree with that, and if it's true, it's really just an accident of chronology. Four of the six quintets are late works, written after the famous "Haydn" or "Opus Ten" quartets, and around the same time as the three "Prussian" quartets, which, while wonderful, are unusually focused on the cello since the dedicatee was a cellist. In any case, I love the quintets, and perhaps this one most of all. If I'm in a bad mood, I only have to listen to the last movement, and the way the sobbing slow introduction turns into the sunniest of Allegros cheers me right up.
We finished with the Mendelssohn Op. 87 quintet in B flat major. This is a late work, one of many that were published after the composer's death at the age of 38. A wonderful piece: in places boisterous, in places very touching, with Mendelssohn's amazing string writing throughout. The first violinist remarked that the "passage work" (the hard parts) sounded more difficult than it was. Mendelssohn's string music just lies under the hand better than perhaps any other composer's; one of the reasons he's such a joy to play.
I hope to get invited back to join this quartet to play more of the viola quintet literature. That isn't as vast as the quartet literature (I blame Haydn, who never got around to writing a quintet), but there's plenty there worth playing!
So last night I was a guest star, crashing the party of a regular string quartet. Two of the people I'd never played with before, and one I'd played with only once. A great group of people: wonderful musicians, amazing sight readers, and just generally fun to be with!
We started out with a piece I'd never played, never heard, and never even heard of, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Phantasy Quintet, from 1912. This was a real sight-reading challenge, particular the scherzo in 7/4 time: counting that made my brain explode. Vaughan Williams has never been a favorite composer of mine, but I really liked this piece, and want to play it again. And I'll add his two string quartets to my list of music I want to play. (That's a very long list, you will not be surprised to learn. :-)
One really cool thing in the Vaughan Williams is that the slow movement, a Sarabande, has the cello tacet (silent for the entire movement). So it devolved upon me, the second viola, to provide the bass line. I love doing that, since I'm a wannabe cellist at heart.
Next up was perhaps the most famous viola quintet, Mozart's G minor quintet, K516. Many people are of the opinion that Mozart's quintets are better than his quartets. I'm not sure I agree with that, and if it's true, it's really just an accident of chronology. Four of the six quintets are late works, written after the famous "Haydn" or "Opus Ten" quartets, and around the same time as the three "Prussian" quartets, which, while wonderful, are unusually focused on the cello since the dedicatee was a cellist. In any case, I love the quintets, and perhaps this one most of all. If I'm in a bad mood, I only have to listen to the last movement, and the way the sobbing slow introduction turns into the sunniest of Allegros cheers me right up.
We finished with the Mendelssohn Op. 87 quintet in B flat major. This is a late work, one of many that were published after the composer's death at the age of 38. A wonderful piece: in places boisterous, in places very touching, with Mendelssohn's amazing string writing throughout. The first violinist remarked that the "passage work" (the hard parts) sounded more difficult than it was. Mendelssohn's string music just lies under the hand better than perhaps any other composer's; one of the reasons he's such a joy to play.
I hope to get invited back to join this quartet to play more of the viola quintet literature. That isn't as vast as the quartet literature (I blame Haydn, who never got around to writing a quintet), but there's plenty there worth playing!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Haydn, Op. 50/4; Mendelssohn, Op. 44/2; Brahms, Op. 51/2; Mozart, Rondo Fragment K464a
A very full afternoon of string quartets today. Three full works, plus a nearly-complete movement. My back is tired: occupational hazard for a violist.
A difficult piece in the Haydn String Quartet project today, the F-sharp minor Op. 50, No. 4. Haydn does love to take his players to unusual keys. The problem with F-sharp minor isn't the key itself, which has only three sharps: it's that you often have to play in the parallel major, which in this case has six sharps. I'm not sure I'll ever be a good enough sight-reader to read six sharps on the viola. Perhaps practice would help, but there seem to be many more common things that need practicing first!
Still, the parts of the piece that weren't littered with sharps went quite well, particularly the fugue in the last movement. I think this is the last Haydn quartet with a fugue; there were three in Opus 20, and this definitely feels like an echo of one of those. The Henle edition we played from was silent on this point, but the cellist recommended we play "sotto voce" until the forte near the end, and the effect was wonderful.
Next up was Mendelssohn's E-minor quartet, Op. 44, No. 2. I love Mendelssohn; he's so clearly a string player. His music just "lies under the hand" as we say; it sounds more difficult than it is. We did a great job with this, I thought. I was especially impressed with the second violinist, who had never played or even heard the piece before. We had some duets in octaves that were perfectly together: marvelous!
Contrasting with the Mendelssohn was Brahms' quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2. Now don't get me wrong: I love Brahms. But he is very clearly not a string player. There's a rumor (I heard it again today) that he played the viola, but I can't believe it; Wikipedia says that he studied the cello, and I find that almost as difficult to believe. Nothing he writes for the viola is technically impossible to play, but it's just so awkward. Brahms knew this about himself; he wrote, "Oh, how much more agreeable and sensible it is to write for an instrument one knows thoroughly --- as I presume to know the piano." This quartet is particularly challenging, because it's all about the tritone (an interval of three whole steps together, say from D-sharp to A), and that's an awkward interval in the viola.
We finished up reading through Mozart's unfinished Rondo in A major, K. 464a (or K. Anh. 72). This was probably the first version of the finale for his A-major quartet, one of the six dedicated to Haydn. It's frustrating, because it's almost finished: one more pass through the rondo theme and he would have been done. I have to admit, I like the published finale better, but this is beautiful music that's well worth hearing and playing.
A difficult piece in the Haydn String Quartet project today, the F-sharp minor Op. 50, No. 4. Haydn does love to take his players to unusual keys. The problem with F-sharp minor isn't the key itself, which has only three sharps: it's that you often have to play in the parallel major, which in this case has six sharps. I'm not sure I'll ever be a good enough sight-reader to read six sharps on the viola. Perhaps practice would help, but there seem to be many more common things that need practicing first!
Still, the parts of the piece that weren't littered with sharps went quite well, particularly the fugue in the last movement. I think this is the last Haydn quartet with a fugue; there were three in Opus 20, and this definitely feels like an echo of one of those. The Henle edition we played from was silent on this point, but the cellist recommended we play "sotto voce" until the forte near the end, and the effect was wonderful.
Next up was Mendelssohn's E-minor quartet, Op. 44, No. 2. I love Mendelssohn; he's so clearly a string player. His music just "lies under the hand" as we say; it sounds more difficult than it is. We did a great job with this, I thought. I was especially impressed with the second violinist, who had never played or even heard the piece before. We had some duets in octaves that were perfectly together: marvelous!
Contrasting with the Mendelssohn was Brahms' quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2. Now don't get me wrong: I love Brahms. But he is very clearly not a string player. There's a rumor (I heard it again today) that he played the viola, but I can't believe it; Wikipedia says that he studied the cello, and I find that almost as difficult to believe. Nothing he writes for the viola is technically impossible to play, but it's just so awkward. Brahms knew this about himself; he wrote, "Oh, how much more agreeable and sensible it is to write for an instrument one knows thoroughly --- as I presume to know the piano." This quartet is particularly challenging, because it's all about the tritone (an interval of three whole steps together, say from D-sharp to A), and that's an awkward interval in the viola.
We finished up reading through Mozart's unfinished Rondo in A major, K. 464a (or K. Anh. 72). This was probably the first version of the finale for his A-major quartet, one of the six dedicated to Haydn. It's frustrating, because it's almost finished: one more pass through the rondo theme and he would have been done. I have to admit, I like the published finale better, but this is beautiful music that's well worth hearing and playing.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Haydn, String Quartet in F, Op. 74/2; Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 1 in C, Op. 49; Mendelssohn, String Quartet in a, Op. 13
One of the wonderful things about being an amateur chamber musician is that pretty frequently you have an evening of exceptional music. To use a term from engineering, you get a positive feedback loop going, where somehow the fact that the other players are playing well helps you to play well, also. That's what happened last night. I had three wonderful musicians visiting me at my house, and everyone seem on top of his or her form.
We started, of course, with a Haydn quartet, the F major, Op. 74, No. 2. A typical Haydn quartet, and, boy, did we sound good. And we had a fun time doing it: you should have seen the smile on the first violinist's face when she played the cadenza in the last movement. But this quartet made me a little sad, as do all six of the Op. 71/74 set, and the reason is in the first few measures.
See, I'm very firmly an amateur musician, and one of the things that draws me to chamber music is that it has a strong thread throughout history of being music for amateurs to play together. Schubert's early string quartets were written for his family quartet (Schubert on viola, his brothers on violin, his father on cello). Brahms dedicated his string quartets to notable amateurs. And Haydn's string quartets started out as amateur music: as I recall, there's no evidence that any of his quartets were performed at Eszterhazy while he was in charge of music there.
But when Haydn visited London, he composed the six quartets of Op. 71/74 specifically for public performance. All six of them start with an attention grabber, an introduction that supposedly gets the audience to quiet down before the real quartet starts (although in this quartet, the introduction's theme shows up again at the end of the movement).
So with this set of six quartets, Haydn launches the thread of quartets-as-public-performance-pieces. And that's what makes me a little sad; I would have preferred that string quartets remained amateur music forever.
After the Haydn, we read through Shostakovich's first string quartet, the Op. 49 in C major. There are three things that stand out in Shostakovich's quartets for me. First, he writes great tunes. :-) Second, he writes the most amazing viola parts. You'd think, given all the classical composers who played viola (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak) that the viola would get more prominence in string quartets than it does, but nobody before Shostakovich really seems to get the viola. The third thing I love about Shostakovich is his willingness to write thin textures. You often get trios, duets, or even extended solos in his quartets, something which very seldom happened before. Listen to the second movement of this quartet for an example of all three points.
Finally, we played one of my favorite quartets, the Mendelssohn Op. 13. This lecture goes into detail about what makes this an amazing piece, but briefly, Mendelssohn, eighteen when Beethoven died, decided to emulate the larger-than-life composer, but not the early or middle quartets, but the late ones, at a time when many people agreed with Louis Spohr that Beethoven's late quartets were "an indecipherable, uncorrected horror". The way Mendelssohn brings in elements from so many other genres of music, as Beethoven did, is thrilling. And it's such a romantic piece, beginning and ending with a quote from Mendelssohn's song "The Question". It's a good thing we were the tiniest bit ragged on the ending (we were all tired!) or I probably would have started crying. And tears aren't good for the viola!
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