CM Notes » Pacifica String Quartet
February 19 2006
String quartet in C major K 465 “The Dissonant” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756 - 1791
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was very impressed by Joseph Haydn’s virtual invention of the form, and mastery, of the string quartet. To learn more about the genre he wrote a number of his own quartets. In this, as in other types of composition, Mozart solved harmonic and structural problems in as many months as Haydn had taken years to overcome. At the end of a year, Mozart was completely up to speed. In September 1785, Mozart issued six string quartets of impeccable grace and style. Haydn had such a large and generous spirit that he was not threatened by this facility but instead admired it unreservedly. K 465 is the last in the series.
Mozart severed the links with the past by liberating the four parts, giving them equal status. This quartet has a new sense of partnership among the instruments, not just four-part harmony. It is unusual to find written evidence of Mozart trying out new ideas and working on his musical problems but numerous fragments survive from the period with just such attempts in them. We are more used to the idea that he thought everything out in his head and simply put the results down on paper without needing any corrections.
Mozart frequently used the mundane key of C major, including for this quartet. As if to tease the listener Mozart allowed the first 22 bars of the first movement to drift from key to key, with false starts. He explored a very disturbing, almost modern dissonance, before settling down in the tonic. Cohn considers the sounds of this section to be separate lines related to the basic chords but which each takes its own path by slightly deviating from the accepted triads. Wagner had no opinion of this quartet and thought that Mozart was simply making a lot of mistakes.
Critics fall all over themselves to find explanations for the complex introduction, but Mozart might just have wanted to make dull old C major sound fresh. The long diversion leads the ear to seek all sorts of resolution before the true one. The rest of the work does not stray from accepted key patterns.
The remainder of the first movement is very agreeable in truly Mozartean manner. The Andante is in F major, the subdominant. There is still some harmonic surprise waiting in the third movement, the Menuetto. He shifted rapidly from C major to c minor in the Trio giving extra drama to the music. In the last movement, also in C major, some sections have the cello imitating the first violin three octaves down leading to a sound which was way ahead of its time.
String quartet in c minor opus 130 “The Grosse Fuge” Ludwig van Beethoven 1770 - 1827
For all their peccadillos of character, Mozart and Beethoven had a very touching humility when it came to their music. Both men wanted to go on learning and growing rather than simply grind out pieces which they knew would sell. This quality sometimes led to failure in the public arena because they got too far ahead of everyone else. Many years had to pass before the rest of the world caught up.
The string quartet in c minor, with the Grosse Fuge, is a case in point. It exemplifies the power and grandeur but also the uncanny uses of form and harmony of Beethoven’s late period. “Late period” is a label from the romantic era used to demarcate the works. According to modern scholars the three so-called periods of his work probably have very little to do with how Beethoven felt or what may have been in his mind at the time.
He was not what we think of as an old man by then but his life had straddled some very eventful epochs and his health was the cause of great anxiety. Even allowing for some hypochondriasis, he had a lot to concern him. It was all compounded by the fact that most illnesses were not treatable in the early nineteenth century. Fifty felt old to Beethoven.
Chief among his difficulties was the deafness which came on so insidiously but progressed so relentlessly until it was complete by 1802. The problems with his family were largely his own fault but nevertheless distressing and distracting. By 1824 he had completed his major works and devoted the last few years of his life to the string quartet, for the first time since 1810.
Grove points out Beethoven may have felt an undercurrent of challenge by this time. Weber and Schubert were still his contemporaries but Berlioz, Chopin and Bellini all produced work in the 1820s with very fresh new voices. One way he responded was to delve deep into earlier forms and add complexity which had never been known before.
Opus 130 is unusual in that there are six movements: two scherzi and two slow movements are added to the usual four movement structure. It could be called a “sonata da camera” or divertimento.
The Grosse Fuge, the original finale, has a strange history. Prince Galitzin, who commissioned three quartets but was only able to pay for the first one before Beethoven’s death, found the Grosse Fuge too confusing and complicated. To oblige him, and other friends and critics, Beethoven wrote another finale for this quartet.
The Grosse Fuge has been known by a separate opus number since then, opus 133. There are good arguments for playing the fugue as part of the quartet but also for leaving it out and using Beethoven’s second finale. Most ensembles prefer to use the original version. Ratner from Stanford makes the interesting assertion that the Grosse Fuge’s succession of march, aria and gigue complete the initial half of the work as a full scale divertimento with its dance-like movements. Divertimenti always end with a gigue.
The opening movement in B flat major shifts abruptly from Adagio to Allegro numerous times and there are accompanying sharp changes in dynamics which underscore this instability. Beethoven embedded the core of the second subject in the opening theme, an intellectual feat in itself, and then built the development on the second subject’s rhythm. The next movement is a brief and glittering Presto in B flat minor, for all intents and purposes a scherzo.
By the third movement, Beethoven has reached the key of D flat major and provides a long Andante, a “sonata without development”, according to Cobbett. It achieves its ends by immense richness of melody. Following this Andante there is a waltz-like movement, “Alla danza tedesca”, a German dance. Here is the second scherzo and yet the mood rapidly returns to elegiac with the fourth movement, the Cavatina in E flat major. It is really a Lied, with alternating calm and agitated sections.
The Finale ended up being almost as long as the whole of the rest of the work. It is in three broad segments, after an Overture. The first segment in B flat major is a superb fugue with all the correct counterpoint. The second and third sections of the Grosse Fuge are “fantasias” on the themes already presented (Ratner).
String quartet number 2 “Intimate Letters” (1927) Leos Janacek 1854 - 1928
Music of all types is composed with passion. It is an art which reflects powerful emotional states and sends powerful emotional messages. Without that passion it is only “muzak”, trite, stale and meaningless. The Puritans were afraid of music and its effects for very good reason. Dictators and tyrants are very concerned by music and its capacity to arouse both patriotic and unpatriotic emotions. Sibelius’ “Finlandia” had to be performed under the neutral title of “Impromptu” as long as Finland remained a Russian Grand Duchy at the end of the nineteenth century. The inflammatory message was unmistakable.
Moving from the general to the particular, no music was more influenced by passion than this late quartet by Janacek. In 1917, in late middle age, he met a lovely young woman, Kamila Stosslova, the wife of David Stossel, an antique dealer, and fell passionately in love with her. Other composers have been hit by the same lightning. Cesar Franck found Augusta Holmés, according to rumour.
Janacek was inspired to write some of his greatest works as a result of his feelings for Mme Stosslova. The Glagolitic Mass, “Cunning Little Vixen” and “Katya Kabanova” came during the last ten years of his life. With these works Janacek ceased to be a regional Czech composer but entered the international realm.
The very name he chose for this work, “Listy dùverné”, in Czech, “Secret Letters” or “Secret Pages” in English, indicates what was going on in his mind. It did not seem to matter that Mme Stosslova was very passive about his overwhelming reaction, somewhat indifferent to his music and deeply devoted to her husband and family. In addition she was Jewish, an insuperable barrier in those days. As far as anyone can tell from the records left by other people, including Mme Janackova (Mrs Janacek), Kamila merely put up with Leos to be polite.
Janacek lived largely in his private fantasy world, happy to know she was there and that he loved her, without any need for her to respond. To use an overworked expression she became his muse. The best comparison is with Dante and Beatrice.
Leos Janacek grew up and remained in the provincial city of Brno most of his life. The other very famous citizen of that town was Abbe Gregor Mendel. Because of his extreme poverty, the years Janacek spent in Prague and Vienna as a student were every painful. He was a fanatical Czech nationalist, refusing to speak German or even to attend a performance of his own opera “Jenufa” when it was given in German.
The quartet is not atonal but it is profoundly modernistic. It has no key signature and does not observe the classical rules of tonality. He used unusual methods to convey his ideas. These included octatonic and inflected harmonies, and chords built up from the interval of a fourth. The rhythms include changing meters and dislodged accents. Each of the four movements indicates a different facet of his feelings for Kamila. Originally Janacek wanted to use a viola d’amore with its fourteen strings instead of the conventional viola, simply because of the instrument’s name. He wrote the quartet in the last year of his life.
Janacek liked to infuse his work with Moravian folk tunes, and he avoided both counterpoint and sonata form. He attempted to incorporate the patterns of ordinary speech into his melodic line, quite different from the standard recitative of opera and oratorio. This is all surprising because of his very rigid education in musical theory and his complete immersion in classical structure.
Janacek struggled as a piano teacher after returning to Brno. One of his first students was the fourteen year old Zdenka whom he married when she was sixteen. Her parents were not enthusiastic but he defied them boldly. Unfortunately the marriage very quickly became unhappy. The parents had been right to be concerned. He was quite unkind to this very young girl.
“Jenufa” marked the beginning of his fame. The opera was performed very frequently and rapidly became well known. Janacek became infatuated with the soprano who sang the leading role. Zdenka was resigned to much of his behavior but felt relatively safe with Kamila because of the difference in age and religion.
Mentioning these aspects of Janacek’s life is not to stir prurient interest but to enable us to understand better what drove him to write this particular piece.
String quartet in C major K 465 “The Dissonant” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756 - 1791
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was very impressed by Joseph Haydn’s virtual invention of the form, and mastery, of the string quartet. To learn more about the genre he wrote a number of his own quartets. In this, as in other types of composition, Mozart solved harmonic and structural problems in as many months as Haydn had taken years to overcome. At the end of a year, Mozart was completely up to speed. In September 1785, Mozart issued six string quartets of impeccable grace and style. Haydn had such a large and generous spirit that he was not threatened by this facility but instead admired it unreservedly. K 465 is the last in the series.
Mozart severed the links with the past by liberating the four parts, giving them equal status. This quartet has a new sense of partnership among the instruments, not just four-part harmony. It is unusual to find written evidence of Mozart trying out new ideas and working on his musical problems but numerous fragments survive from the period with just such attempts in them. We are more used to the idea that he thought everything out in his head and simply put the results down on paper without needing any corrections.
Mozart frequently used the mundane key of C major, including for this quartet. As if to tease the listener Mozart allowed the first 22 bars of the first movement to drift from key to key, with false starts. He explored a very disturbing, almost modern dissonance, before settling down in the tonic. Cohn considers the sounds of this section to be separate lines related to the basic chords but which each takes its own path by slightly deviating from the accepted triads. Wagner had no opinion of this quartet and thought that Mozart was simply making a lot of mistakes.
Critics fall all over themselves to find explanations for the complex introduction, but Mozart might just have wanted to make dull old C major sound fresh. The long diversion leads the ear to seek all sorts of resolution before the true one. The rest of the work does not stray from accepted key patterns.
The remainder of the first movement is very agreeable in truly Mozartean manner. The Andante is in F major, the subdominant. There is still some harmonic surprise waiting in the third movement, the Menuetto. He shifted rapidly from C major to c minor in the Trio giving extra drama to the music. In the last movement, also in C major, some sections have the cello imitating the first violin three octaves down leading to a sound which was way ahead of its time.
String quartet in c minor opus 130 “The Grosse Fuge” Ludwig van Beethoven 1770 - 1827
For all their peccadillos of character, Mozart and Beethoven had a very touching humility when it came to their music. Both men wanted to go on learning and growing rather than simply grind out pieces which they knew would sell. This quality sometimes led to failure in the public arena because they got too far ahead of everyone else. Many years had to pass before the rest of the world caught up.
The string quartet in c minor, with the Grosse Fuge, is a case in point. It exemplifies the power and grandeur but also the uncanny uses of form and harmony of Beethoven’s late period. “Late period” is a label from the romantic era used to demarcate the works. According to modern scholars the three so-called periods of his work probably have very little to do with how Beethoven felt or what may have been in his mind at the time.
He was not what we think of as an old man by then but his life had straddled some very eventful epochs and his health was the cause of great anxiety. Even allowing for some hypochondriasis, he had a lot to concern him. It was all compounded by the fact that most illnesses were not treatable in the early nineteenth century. Fifty felt old to Beethoven.
Chief among his difficulties was the deafness which came on so insidiously but progressed so relentlessly until it was complete by 1802. The problems with his family were largely his own fault but nevertheless distressing and distracting. By 1824 he had completed his major works and devoted the last few years of his life to the string quartet, for the first time since 1810.
Grove points out Beethoven may have felt an undercurrent of challenge by this time. Weber and Schubert were still his contemporaries but Berlioz, Chopin and Bellini all produced work in the 1820s with very fresh new voices. One way he responded was to delve deep into earlier forms and add complexity which had never been known before.
Opus 130 is unusual in that there are six movements: two scherzi and two slow movements are added to the usual four movement structure. It could be called a “sonata da camera” or divertimento.
The Grosse Fuge, the original finale, has a strange history. Prince Galitzin, who commissioned three quartets but was only able to pay for the first one before Beethoven’s death, found the Grosse Fuge too confusing and complicated. To oblige him, and other friends and critics, Beethoven wrote another finale for this quartet.
The Grosse Fuge has been known by a separate opus number since then, opus 133. There are good arguments for playing the fugue as part of the quartet but also for leaving it out and using Beethoven’s second finale. Most ensembles prefer to use the original version. Ratner from Stanford makes the interesting assertion that the Grosse Fuge’s succession of march, aria and gigue complete the initial half of the work as a full scale divertimento with its dance-like movements. Divertimenti always end with a gigue.
The opening movement in B flat major shifts abruptly from Adagio to Allegro numerous times and there are accompanying sharp changes in dynamics which underscore this instability. Beethoven embedded the core of the second subject in the opening theme, an intellectual feat in itself, and then built the development on the second subject’s rhythm. The next movement is a brief and glittering Presto in B flat minor, for all intents and purposes a scherzo.
By the third movement, Beethoven has reached the key of D flat major and provides a long Andante, a “sonata without development”, according to Cobbett. It achieves its ends by immense richness of melody. Following this Andante there is a waltz-like movement, “Alla danza tedesca”, a German dance. Here is the second scherzo and yet the mood rapidly returns to elegiac with the fourth movement, the Cavatina in E flat major. It is really a Lied, with alternating calm and agitated sections.
The Finale ended up being almost as long as the whole of the rest of the work. It is in three broad segments, after an Overture. The first segment in B flat major is a superb fugue with all the correct counterpoint. The second and third sections of the Grosse Fuge are “fantasias” on the themes already presented (Ratner).
String quartet number 2 “Intimate Letters” (1927) Leos Janacek 1854 - 1928
Music of all types is composed with passion. It is an art which reflects powerful emotional states and sends powerful emotional messages. Without that passion it is only “muzak”, trite, stale and meaningless. The Puritans were afraid of music and its effects for very good reason. Dictators and tyrants are very concerned by music and its capacity to arouse both patriotic and unpatriotic emotions. Sibelius’ “Finlandia” had to be performed under the neutral title of “Impromptu” as long as Finland remained a Russian Grand Duchy at the end of the nineteenth century. The inflammatory message was unmistakable.
Moving from the general to the particular, no music was more influenced by passion than this late quartet by Janacek. In 1917, in late middle age, he met a lovely young woman, Kamila Stosslova, the wife of David Stossel, an antique dealer, and fell passionately in love with her. Other composers have been hit by the same lightning. Cesar Franck found Augusta Holmés, according to rumour.
Janacek was inspired to write some of his greatest works as a result of his feelings for Mme Stosslova. The Glagolitic Mass, “Cunning Little Vixen” and “Katya Kabanova” came during the last ten years of his life. With these works Janacek ceased to be a regional Czech composer but entered the international realm.
The very name he chose for this work, “Listy dùverné”, in Czech, “Secret Letters” or “Secret Pages” in English, indicates what was going on in his mind. It did not seem to matter that Mme Stosslova was very passive about his overwhelming reaction, somewhat indifferent to his music and deeply devoted to her husband and family. In addition she was Jewish, an insuperable barrier in those days. As far as anyone can tell from the records left by other people, including Mme Janackova (Mrs Janacek), Kamila merely put up with Leos to be polite.
Janacek lived largely in his private fantasy world, happy to know she was there and that he loved her, without any need for her to respond. To use an overworked expression she became his muse. The best comparison is with Dante and Beatrice.
Leos Janacek grew up and remained in the provincial city of Brno most of his life. The other very famous citizen of that town was Abbe Gregor Mendel. Because of his extreme poverty, the years Janacek spent in Prague and Vienna as a student were every painful. He was a fanatical Czech nationalist, refusing to speak German or even to attend a performance of his own opera “Jenufa” when it was given in German.
The quartet is not atonal but it is profoundly modernistic. It has no key signature and does not observe the classical rules of tonality. He used unusual methods to convey his ideas. These included octatonic and inflected harmonies, and chords built up from the interval of a fourth. The rhythms include changing meters and dislodged accents. Each of the four movements indicates a different facet of his feelings for Kamila. Originally Janacek wanted to use a viola d’amore with its fourteen strings instead of the conventional viola, simply because of the instrument’s name. He wrote the quartet in the last year of his life.
Janacek liked to infuse his work with Moravian folk tunes, and he avoided both counterpoint and sonata form. He attempted to incorporate the patterns of ordinary speech into his melodic line, quite different from the standard recitative of opera and oratorio. This is all surprising because of his very rigid education in musical theory and his complete immersion in classical structure.
Janacek struggled as a piano teacher after returning to Brno. One of his first students was the fourteen year old Zdenka whom he married when she was sixteen. Her parents were not enthusiastic but he defied them boldly. Unfortunately the marriage very quickly became unhappy. The parents had been right to be concerned. He was quite unkind to this very young girl.
“Jenufa” marked the beginning of his fame. The opera was performed very frequently and rapidly became well known. Janacek became infatuated with the soprano who sang the leading role. Zdenka was resigned to much of his behavior but felt relatively safe with Kamila because of the difference in age and religion.
Mentioning these aspects of Janacek’s life is not to stir prurient interest but to enable us to understand better what drove him to write this particular piece.
