Quartets from the mid-1780's
by Haydn, Mozart, Vanhal, and Ditters
celebrating the magical evening when these eminent composers
sat down together to play chamber music.
According to the Reminiscences of Michael Kelly (who sang the roles of Don Basilio and Don Curzio in the premier of Mozart's Figaro in 1786) there took place in Vienna sometime in 1784 a party at which "the players were tolerable; not one of them excelled on the instrument he played, but there was a little science among them, which I dare say will be acknowledged when I name them: the First Violin . . . Haydn, the Second Violin . . . Baron Dittersdorf, the Violoncello . . . Vanhall, the Tenor . . . Mozart. The poet Casti and the [composer] Paisiello formed part of the audience. I was there, and a greater treat, or a more remarkable one, cannot be imagined. On the particular evening to which I am now especially referring, after the musical feast was over, we sat down to an excellent supper, and became joyous and lively in the extreme."
This remarkable gathering, which gave us the idea for tonight's program, could furnish quite a number of like programs, since Kelly did not specify the works played. It does seem reasonable to restrict the field somewhat and assume that each of the four partygoers would have brought his most recent work in the spirit of "Look what l've just come up with!" Even within this framework there are something like 1,296 different combinations of the six quartets of Haydn's op. 33 (published 1782), Vanhal's last six (1786), von Dittersdorf's only six (1788), and Mozart's six dedicated to Haydn {1785).
Haydn, as the eldest by some years and as the most experienced in quartet composition, can claim a certain pride of place, and not only because he is more familiar to our latter-day ears than von Dittersdorf or Vanhal. Whether we can fairly say he was the originator of the practice of building entire movements around one small, characteristic turn of phrase must remain a moot point. Certainly he was one of the most expert at this technique, which was evidently something composers were "coming up with" in the 1780's. In today's example, we hear a piece so severely self-restricted as to range of ideas that, especially in the first movement, it skirts fragmentation and becomes a "whole piece" (as well as a satisfying one) somewhat alchemically or in spite of itself. Vanhal's quartet plays more easy-goingly with the same notion; its last movement is almost entirely built of one little motive, beginning and ending with identical gestures (rather as the word "Ciao" is used in Italian), to charming effect.
On the other hand, von Dittersdorf does not so much transform his tunes as transplant them. The radical changes of texture, key, and speed we encounter in the course of one movement are never less than striking, and sometimes alarming; we are left not so much with a tune in our heads as with a sense of having been to some unexpected places. A much-respected composer in his own day, von Dittersdorf represents something of a stylistic polar opposite to the continuity-through-change aesthetic of Haydn and Vanhal, which forms a pillar of the Viennese classical style as we now understand it.
Mozart, the junior member of the group, is represented tonight by a work in profound contrast to the others. There is no thought of either economy or abruptness here; K. 499 is long and opulent -- full of themes and transformations and subtle inner workings and leisurely explorations and lengthy ellipses -- even by the standards of a composer whose work was generally thought to be overly complex and full of ideas. Where Mozart got his penchant for such writing, in a musical climate where brevity was the favored soul of wit, is a delicious mystery.
The urbane and energetic man of the Autobiography of von Dittersdorf finds a different articulation in his music, which is fairly erratic and antic, not notable for its reasoned arrivals at conclusions. A similar, only partly commensurable relation can be seen between Mozart's letters, lively, flighty, and by now entirely too famous for their scatology, and the searching qualities of his music. The obvious conclusion -- that one's words and one's music say very different things about one's self -- leaves us wishing Haydn and Vanhal had left bodies of writing to be compared with their music, helping us, by a sort of triangulation, to get some deeper sense of who they were as well. The urge toward biography is not external to an attraction to the work; interest in the dialog between the work of art and its creator is one of the finest fascinations the concert-goer can indulge.
Copyright: Elisabeth Le Guin, February 1994
Colorful compositions by
Luigi Bocclherini
Joseph Teixidor y Barcelo
Carlo d'Ordonez
Juan Crisostomo de Arriaga
That a concert of eighteenth-century Spanish music should by definition be a concert of curiosities is a strange state of affairs, is it not? Spain is a very large piece of Europe and, although a peninsula, is no more isolated than its sister peninsula Italy. The Pyrenees are no higher or more forbidding than the Alps. Spain under the monarchy of Carlos III (1759-88) was far from politically marginal, but although Carlos was the model of an Enlightened ruler, supportive of the arts and sciences, his country seems to have had little to show for it in the realm of music.
The reasons for this are complex, a combination of demographics and biases. For all its military power, Spain in the late eighteenth century was badly underpopulated, largely as a result of the previous century's wars. The population base necessary for the full richness of a native cultural life (and a representative number of geniuses) was simply missing in many parts of the country, while in the cities, most eyes and ears turned to France as the fountainhead of all art and philosophy; the King himself led the fashion among the upper classes for things as the French did them. (Even Arriaga, born long after Carlos' death, betook himself to Paris for his "real" education as soon as he was able.) When the cultured citizens of a country themselves identify as "outsiders," alienated at once from their native culture and, geographically, from the dominant one, the effects seem to be both severe and long-lasting.
By means of this concert we hope to present some evidence that late-eighteenth-century Spain was nonetheless far from a cultural desert. Boccherini, after all, elected to stay there, though he could probably made a far greater career for himself in Paris or London or Vienna. The quartettino we play tonight (Boccherini used the diminutive ending to designate a piece with two movements rather than the more usual three or four) was written in 1781, when Boccherini was still in the exclusive service of the Infante Don Luis, Carlos' brother; it comes from that richest and most tranquil period of the composer's creative life, the nine years spent at Arenas, during which there was apparently very little to do but compose. The isolation and concentration of those years make an irresistible parallel to Haydn's years at Eszterhaza, by which he said he was "forced to become original."
Joseph Teixidor y Barcelo and Boccherini might have had some knowledge of each other, since both were working in Madrid in the late 1780's -- Boccherini at the salon of the Duquesa de Osuna (Don Luis having died in 1785) and Teixidor as organist at the Capilla Real. The Catalonian Teixidor's musical focus seems to have been on the sacred and the scholarly; he wrote Masses, a Vespers, and a number of disquisitions on musical history and style. His only known essay into Boccherini's artistic "territory", the very different realm of secular music written for aristocratic enjoyment, is this string quartet, the somber beauty and considerable originality of which make us wish he had seen fit to continue the experiment. [Since this was written, our colleague Emilio Moreno of Barcelona has turned up several other quartets by Teixidor; we look forward to the opportunity to play them.]
Juan Crisostomo de Arriaga, born the year after Boccherini's death, belongs to another generation both of Spaniards and of artists. Such prominence as Spain had enjoyed under Carlos was in a disastrous process of erosion by 1806; such perfection as the Viennese classical style had enjoyed at the hands of Haydn and Mozart was likewise being furiously eroded and transformed by the likes of Beethoven. Born into the midst of these changes, Arriaga has acquired the unfortunate label of "the Spanish Mozart." The likeness is superficial: both were outstanding prodigies, both died young, though Arriaga's death at nineteen makes Mozart's look far less premature. The ready melodic gift by which Arriaga might be likened to Mozart also links him, and far more appropriately, to Rossini. The quartet we play tonight is the first of three, of which Fetis said, "It is impossible to find anything more original, more elegant, or more purely and correctly written." It probably dates from Arriaga's sixteenth year.
Carlo d'Ordonez (as with Teixidor, the variant spellings are legion) belongs on this program by virtue of his last name rather than his actual nationality; he was born and seems to have lived out his life in the environs of Vienna, the "natural son" of a self-exiled Spanish aristocrat. He worked briefly as a violinist in the court of Joseph II and composed some interesting symphonies and dramatic works. His chamber music was tailored to the Emperor's rather exigently conservative taste, which demanded learned counterpoint as evidence of "seriousness," even in music written for the chamber -- thus the contrapuntal imitation that pervades and nearly overwhelms this and all of Ordonez' quartets.
In preparing this concert, we found ourselves remarking from time to time, "Ahah! THAT certainly sounds Spanish!" -- a perception that we could all share but barely describe or justify. Even Boccherini, the only composer on this program who was Spanish by choice, seems (despite the famous Fandango and sundry other character pieces) to have felt considerable disdain for the folk idiom of his adopted country. There would scarcely have been any conscious incorporation of Spanishness (whatever that is) into any of the music we play tonight; it was not fashionably exotic, the way Polish or Bohemian folk music was in Vienna at the time. So what were we hearing? A tendency to linger on the dominant harmony, the elegantly mournful inflection of the harmonic minor mode, an occasional echo of the back-snap of a castanet rhythm in the accompaniment -- it is hard to know to what extent we might be "reading in" our "Spanishness." We wonder if you hear it.
Copyright: Elisabeth Le Guin, December 1993
Mozart's Adagio & Fugue, K. 546
Haydn's Quartet, Op. 20 No. 2
Beethoven's Grand Fugue, Op. 133
each with its own specially selected prelude
In some respects, the study of composition has changed very little since the time of the composers on this program. All of them are known to have worked from the Gradus ad Parnassum, Johann Joseph Fux's 1725 monument of instruction in "strict" -- that is, 16th century -- counterpoint; this text, or texts based upon it, is still used in counterpoint and composition classes today. All of tonight's composers would, in their travels through or residencies in Vienna, have felt Fux's long shadow in that city. He was Court Kapellmeister in Vienna from 1715 until his death in 1741; his firm belief that all sacred music should be in the "strict" style had a considerable effect on the music heard in the churches there.
At the same time as major currents in European musical thought flowed toward the ever-greater textural clarity, formal articulation, and accessibility of material that characterize the galant or Classical style, eddies and undercurrents developed. Albrechtsberger, a renowned composer and theorist, and Beethoven's (among others') counterpoint teacher, proclaimed himself "no friend of the galant"; his learned fugues for string quartet were a deliberate holding-out for something more substantial in chamber music and were admired and praised as such by his contemporaries. The fugal finales to three of Haydn's op. 20 quartets were probably a similar creative reaction to charges of lightness and insignificance in his earlier divertimenti.
The principles of interaction audible in fugue -- order, hierarchy, cooperation, conversation, the thorough and imaginative discussion of a subject or subjects with an aim of ultimate unity -- found unusually complete and fine expression in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Wolfgang Mozart was introduced to Bach's music at the soirees of the Baron van Swieten -- an early and influential advocate of musical antiquarianism -- and letters document Mozart's subsequent interest in the fugal compositions of J.S. Bach and his sons and his efforts to obtain scores for study. Contemporary accounts attest to Mozart's prowess as an improviser of fugues, and his composition in learned style, as well as directly acknowledging his respect for Bach, show in general the seriousness with which Mozart regarded contrapuntal mastery.
In Werner, Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven (as a student, Beethoven produced stringquartet fugues like Albrechtsberger's) the mutual influences of learned counterpoint and the galant esthetic can be felt, jostling to accommodate one another. In late Beethoven, however, they assume a more problematic and peculiar relationship, as he attempts to synthesize widely disparate elements into something not merely pleasant or effective, but "poetic." The Great Fugue puts elements of "strict" counterpoint, Classical orderliness, and early Romantic eccentricity -- the spiritual hallmarks of at least three centuries -- into a twenty minute crucible, to unique and unforgettable effect. Denounced as incomprehensible, praised as magnificent, this piece never ceases pushing at boundaries, whether formal, perceptual, or technical. It is not so much a summing up of fugue in chamber music as it is a wild leap into uncharted territory, with results as intriguing -- and as questionable -- as the results of most acts of insane courage.
Copyright: Elisabeth Le Guin, 1992
A bouquet of quartets chosen from
Quartettini Op. 33 of Luigi Boccherini (1781)
Quatuors Concertantes Op. 33 of Leopold Kozeluch (1791)
The "Russian" Quartets Op. 33 of Franz Joseph Haydn (1781)
The conceit around which we organize this concert -- that of the opus number 33, under which several 18th-century composers happened to have produced string quartets -- may be a slight one, but it invites us to look at the works in a slightly different way, which is always an interesting thing to do. The very concept of an opus number can be a musicological rats'-nest. More often than not, they were assigned by publishers, not the composers themselves, as a kind of in-house tracking system in the case of very prolific composers like Haydn. Given the eighteenth century's state of intra-business communications, and the general climate of piracy and opportunism that reigned in the music publishing business, there was no guarantee that the same numbering system would be used by two different publishers of the same work -- or even by the same publisher over the course of years. Some composers fared worse than others in this regard. Haydn, by virtue of the enormous popularity of his music and its great quantity, fared very badly indeed -- so badly that we no longer refer to his work by opus number at all, but rather by the heroically compiled cataloguing system Anthony van Hoboken finished thirty years ago. The sole exception to this is the string quartets, which are still commonly known by their opus numbers.
It is Haydn's opus 33 that forms the backbone of our program, and rightfully so. He first published this group of six quartets with Artaria and Company in 1781-2, with the remark that they were composed in "an entirely new and special way." Possibly too much has been made of this supposed "entire newness;" the works seem more like a consolidation and enrichment of the discoveries, innovations, and experiments Haydn had been making in his previous string quartets than any sort of radical departure. Certainly in opus 33 we find a marvelous assurance, in terms of the composer's knowing what he wants to express and just how to express it in this medium. These works have remained among the most popular string quartets in the eighteenth-century repertory, by virtue of that very assurance. Performers can rest assured that Haydn's effects and novelties will "come off" well; listeners will always find themselves pleased and surprised in a perfectly calculated mixture.
The firm of Artaria and company was founded in 1765 as a printer of maps, art and, ten years later, of music. It still exists in Vienna, although it no longer prints music, having reverted in the mid-nineteenth century to its original purposes. In establishing business relations with this firm Haydn made one of his happiest choices, for among the multitudes of music publishers in Vienna, Paris, London and Amsterdam, Artaria distinguished itself by its sound editorial policy, fine selection of repertory, and decent business practices. Over 300 of Haydn's first editions appeared through Artaria. They were Mozart's chief publisher during his lifetime and represented a great many others as well -- among them Kozeluch, although his opus 33 of 1790-1 appeared not with Artaria but with the Parisian publisher Sieber.
Kozeluch also made a happy choice, for Sieber's firm had established a reputation similar to Artaria's since its founding in 1771. (Perhaps in this case the good taste and fair handling of its artists came from fellow feeling, for Jean-Georges Sieber had been a horn-player and harpist in Paris prior to his entry into publishing.) The boom in music publishing that saw the founding of both these houses, and many others in Europe during the 1760s and -70s, was a direct result of the rise of the middle class, the sudden appearance of leisure time for common folk, and the resulting new market for music to be made at home. Sieber's firm printed music about as long as Artaria did but did not survive the death of its founder in 1822.
Kozeluch might also have chosen to publish his own quartets, since he himself, still able to ride the wave of profitability, founded a Viennese publishing house in 1784. (It was continued for some years by his brother as the Musicalisches Magazin.) The six quartets of his opus 33 are his only essays in the medium; Kozeluch made his mark chiefly as a composer for the piano. The experimental, pre-Romantic vein that distinguishes some of his keyboard writing is less evident in this quartet, which is a Viennese "solid citizen" of the most eminent sort: well-constructed, thoughtful, and interesting without ever being alarming.
Our last opus 33, that of Boccherini, breaks the mold by being the composer's own designation; this group of six "quartettini" (two-movement works) was not published during the composer's lifetime. Boccherini himself gave them this opus and the date 1781, in his manuscript catalog of his own work, painstakingly compiled near the end of his life. He also proudly states that they were written in his service-from-afar as chamber composer to Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia -- which statement casts doubt on the date he gave, since he was not in a position to advertise this position until after his Spanish patron's death in 1786, and also explains the works' unpublished state: they were officially Friedrich's property. Boccherini, who published copiously with both Artaria and Sieber, was never at a loss for a good publisher despite his isolation in Spain; publication was his chief liaison with the rest of musical Europe. The care lavished on the catalog is a testimony to just how important his compositions were to him as a representation to the rest of the world of who he was. The care lavished on this little work, sparkling, dulcet, and pensive in a typical Boccherinian mixture, likewise bespeaks the importance he attached to formal recognition from the Prussian patron he never met.
Copyright: Elisabeth Le Guin, April 1994
Quartets by Galuppi, Paisiello, Alyabyev, and Glinka
In the case of the Italians Paisiello and Galuppi, The Russian Connection was that they were long-term guests and resident composers at the court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg.
Quartets by Johan Wikmanson, Josef Martin Kraus, and Franz Berwald
Scandanavian Connections are primarily Swedish, but in the 18th century, there was little else. In a stretch, we could play a quartet by Niels Gade, the Danish colleague of Mendelssohn and Schumann.
2 Canzoni of Giovanni Gabrieli, 2 Fantazias of Henry Purcell, Sinfonia "al Santo Sepolcro" by Vivaldi, Adagio & Fugue by Mozart, Boccherini Op. 8, No. 3, and Haydn Op. 20, No. 2
Intimate Imitations was a program whose theme, the imitative or fugal style, did not reveal itself to us until we had performed it once. We discovered that the Boccherini we originally programmed was the only piece without at least one movement in an imitative texture, so we switched to his Op. 8, No. 6, which features a thrilling and noisy fugue as its finale, in contrast to Haydn's Op. 20, No. 2 last movement fugue, marked "sempre sotto voce." But Haydn, as always, has a surprise up his sleeve for the very end...
A Duo, a Trio, and a Quartet
Opening with the Duo "with two obligato eyeglasses" for viola and cello, continuing with a Trio for violin, viola, and cello, and concluding with the Quartet Op. 59, No. 2, the Second Razumovsky, Beethoven displays the wide range of styles this master used in writing chamber music for strings.
Quartets from the mid-1830's by Felix Mendelssohn, his sister Fanny, and Georges Onslow
Robert Schumann observed that after Beethoven Georges Onslow and Felix Mendelssohn carried on the German tradition of quartet writing. The single quartet by Felix's elder sister Fanny Hensel dates from 1834 and reveals her absorption in the style of Beethoven's last compositions.