September 28, 2008

String quartet in E flat major, opus 9, number 2 Franz Joseph Haydn 1732 – 1809

Admiration for Haydn’s strength and character never grows dim. He persisted in obtaining some sort of a musical education in the face of extreme poverty. He did not have Mozart’s remarkable father or Beethoven’s slightly easier path but had to do everything himself. Haydn was born in Rohrau, a small village in the Hungarian countryside. He was a very poor boy, taken away from his home to sing in the Emperor’s choir and then callously pushed out once his voice broke to fend for himself.

His sacrifices were vindicated when Prince Esterhazy took him on as Capellmeister in Eisenstadt in 1761. This was not a sinecure but the immediate struggle to survive was very much muted. The Prince expected him to be in charge of the chapel choir and the opera performances as well as keep the orchestra in order.

Haydn wrote the sort of music the Prince wanted but also was able to teach himself during the long quiet months at Fertöd, just over the border in Hungary. The evolution of his symphonic style over the years is testimony to the continuing effort he made. Even though some of his musicians were not quite as good as he would have liked, he was able to hear what he wrote and make corrections.

Access to a fairly large orchestra was a luxury and privilege. Only the extremely wealthy could afford to maintain one. Because Haydn was the full time conductor and knew its capabilities intimately, he was able to shape his work to fit the skills of the musicians. Handel, who conducted his own work in many places, always re-wrote the solo parts to fit the singers he was given.

Much commoner than full scale orchestras were the small ensembles seen at parties and different social occasions. They played much lighter music suitable for diversion and background chatter. The moment of enlightenment came when he was listening to such a group and realized he could write symphonic music for this skeletal combination: two soprano voices, an alto and a baritone. It was a challenge he set himself and he spent many years working it out.

The string quartets were published in sets of three or four, with the same opus number acting as a link. Haydn had nothing do with this numbering. The six quartets of opus 9 were probably written between 1768 and 1771, but the original manuscripts have been lost.

The Prince took on a good violinist in 1762, Luigi Tomasini. He and Haydn became friends and the first violin parts of the opus 9 quartets have quite difficult parts because Haydn had Tomasini in mind when he wrote them. In all there were 68 quartets.

The first movement of this quartet has a slightly extended sonata form, with pared down themes and more adventurous modulation. It development is richer than in earlier work and expects more of the first violin than previously.

In the slow movement Haydn still used older forms but at some of the pauses, Tomasini might have inserted a small cadenza or long trill. Skilful chromaticism pervades this movement with subtle changes taking place throughout.

It took Haydn a long time to find the key to suitable last movements, to balance the complexity of the others. This one is a charming Presto.

Lyric Suite Alban Berg 1885 – 1935

The Mill Valley Chamber Music Society audience is not a stranger to coded musical “love letters”. Leos Janacek’s “Intimate Letters” prepared us for this next version. Alban Berg was in love with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, Franz Werfels’ sister, whom he had met in Prague in 1927. Their problem was that each of them was married to someone else. He wrote the six movements of the suite to express the state of their emotions in such a way as to go right past the casual listener but to be quite obvious to the two lovers themselves.

Berg was a devotee of Arnold Schoenberg and dedicated to his system of serial music. Erwin Stein, a student of Schoenberg and Berg’s friend, wrote that most of the work “is strictly in accordance with Schoenberg’s technique of the ‘Composition with 12 inwardly related tones’”. The 1st movement, much of the 3rd movement, the middle section of the 5th movement and the 6th movement all follow this rule. Even the sections which do not adhere so closely to Schoenberg’s rules still use his method.

Rene Leibowitz describes it as “…a sonata movement without a development”. The recapitulation starts as soon as the exposition ends.

The exegesis which follows is indebted to David Schiff, George Perle and his colleagues Douglass M. Green and Douglas Jarman. Before 1977 the secret remained closed. Then Mr Perle found Mrs. Fuchs-Robettin’s own copy of the score. It contained the clues he needed to clarify the meaning of the music. Berg himself had annotated this copy.

Berg used the new atonal serial technique very early. Almost all his important music was written in this style. A German critic, writing in 1957, notes the following: “…the first movement of the Lyric Suite develops out of the disorder of the intervals in its first bar, the notes of which, strung out horizontally, present the complete chromatic scale and from this, in the second and following bars, grows the Basic Set in its thematic shape”.

The “Lyric Suite’s” series was based on four initials: H (which in the German speaking countries denotes B natural), F, A and B. From this beginning, Perle next recognized Mrs Fuchs-Robettin’s two children, Dorothy (“Dodo”) and Munzo, her son. He preferred to speak Czech. Berg used a rhythmic tag of Dvorak’s “Slavonic Dances” to represent Munzo. Finally Berg adduced Hanna’s and his “magic numbers” to be 23 and 10 respectively and runs of 23 or 10 measures indicate one or other lover.

One has to get up very early in the morning to be ahead of all this. At the time of the first performance critics found it accessible musically though they had no idea of these hidden meanings. Each movement invokes the events in the affair.

The opening movement is in a rather pleasant jovial mood before the lovers meet for the first time, or to use a favorite expression, ” the status quo ante”. The second movement is marked ”amoroso”, a reflection of their first meeting in a park where Mrs. Fuchs-Robettin was taking her children for a walk.

In the third movement, headed “misterioso”, an interlude marked ”ecstatico” is surrounded by soft fluttering tones almost without a pitch. This represents their declaration of love. By the fourth movement they have advanced to a kiss, and beyond, the section marked “appassionato”. Berg uses a phrase from Alexander Zemlinsky’s “Lyric Symphony” to underscore his reference, and wrote “you are my own” in his mistress’s copy.

The fifth movement shows the incipient break up, with tormented passages, “delirando”. A dark tremolo gives this weight. At the end the sixth movement is called “desolato”. The inevitable is happening and the music reflects a breakdown.

While this scenario represents careful scholarship and seems to be quite plausible as well as a boon to the writer of program notes, is not universally accepted. The audience must form its own judgment.

String quartet in G major, opus 106 Antonin Dvorak 1841 – 1904

Antonin Dvorak wrote this remarkable string quartet in the autumn of 1895, finishing it in just under a month. It was almost his very last one. Apart from a happy family scramble through the score, sight reading for the most part, the first performance was given in 1896 by the Bohemian Quartet in Prague.

Gervase Hughes, a noted Dvorak scholar, believes it was a “hymn of thanksgiving for his safe return, alive and well, to his native land.” Hughes goes on to say “… except perhaps in the third movement, the mood is appropriately and emphatically ‘national’.

Although Mrs Jeanette Thurber, his employer at the National Conservatory in New York, had fervently hoped he would renew his contract when it lapsed in 1894, Dvorak was not keen. He missed Czechoslovakia very badly. They reached a compromise in which he went home for five months at the end of 1894 and returned to New York in the spring of 1895.

The family enjoyed a long lazy time at Vysoka, the quiet Czech village where they unwound in the summers. When he rather reluctantly returned to New York, he only took one of his children, the 9 year old Otakar, a young scamp who would have been too much of a handful for the grandparents. Otakar also needed to improve his English.

This is the background for the music. Going home for good re-charged Dvorak’s creative powers. He had of course written major works while in New York but the long summer break in 1895 had additional benefit.

The music may sound very “Czech” but the curious thing is that Dvorak rarely incorporated actual folk song in his music. He wrote new melodies which had the style and feeling of such songs. At the end of his life one of the reasons he gave for not writing much more was his having run out of melodies. Slightly more cynical critics have added that he was being left behind by sweeping changes in music composition and the rise of atonality.

The folk influences clearly heard in his music are Bohemian, Russian, African- American and Native American. During his childhood there was a lot of music around him. His father played the violin and the zither. His brothers and sisters also played instruments. They lived in the small village of Nelahozeves, surrounded by country people.

It is well known that Dvorak had to overcome extreme poverty to become a professional musician, but the family always supported him emotionally as well as financially, to the best of their abilities. At one stage his uncle Vaclav Dusik took him in and helped him with his education. That period led to his lifelong fascination with trains and locomotives. Sophisticated people tend to sneer at this innocent interest. It arose because the uncle was a railwayman.

At the time Dvorak was starting to write this quartet, Joseph Suk was courting the composer’s 17 year old daughter Ottilie. The father was not enthusiastic. What father is ever enthusiastic about another man coming to take his daughter away? Dvorak predicated his approval on Suk’s bringing him engine numbers and timetables whenever he visited the family.

The quartet has four movements. The first one is optimistic, almost triumphalist, with a strong first theme in a dotted rhythm. It is followed by a smoother second theme, also in the tonic. A third theme emerges in the key of B flat major. This one is lilting with flowing triplets.

Introducing the development indicated the immense degree of skill with which Dvorak manipulated his material. Hughes compares this section to that in which Smetana, an earlier master of Czech music, attempted to do the same thing. For five bars there are subtle rhythmical shifts with alternating triplets in the viola and cello beating against standard 2/4 time in the violins.

The development makes use of all three themes, with rich harmony and modulation. When the recapitulation appears the first theme is embroidered with a more delicate counter melody and patterned foundation. The second theme is the basis of the coda.

Dvorak chose E flat flat major for the second movement. Hughes noted that whereas Brahms chose keys moving “up” the scale for his first symphony, C major, E major, A flat major and back to C major, Dvorak moved in the reverse direction, going back “down”. This movement is lyrical and haunting. The effect is achieved by the shifting harmony between E flat major and e flat minor. It could loosely be called a set of variations. Dvorak uses themes which seem to be Bohemian but if it had been written in America, they might also have seemed to be African American.

The third movement is a surprise. It is almost a conventional “Viennese” scherzo. The fourth movement has what Hughes called “excessive exuberance “ but which we, benefitting from recent comments might perhaps call “irrational exuberance”.