Join us at 6:30 PM on Monday as the Trinity Chamber Players and our Community Musicians fill the Great Hall with great music by special request, composed by Ernst von Dohnányi, Robert Schumann and Georg Fredrick Handel.
Our first work by special request will be the Serenade for String Trio in C Major, Opus 10 by Ernst von Dohnányi, as requested by our TCP cellist, Christine. She will perform the trio in a few weeks in a formal concert setting, so we’re going to read it with her on Monday to give her a head start learning this virtuosic work.
Dohnányi was a marvelous Hungarian pianist, composer, and conductor, and was the grandfather of Christoph von Dohnányi one of the great conductors of our own age. Ernst (or Ernő in Hungarian – he used the German Ernst on his published music) was born in 1877 in what is now Bratislava in Slovakia, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
His first musical studies were with his father, an amateur cellist, and the local church organist. Both gentlemen seemed to do a pretty good job; Ernst was admitted to study piano and composition at the Budapest Academy of Music, where he was a classmate of another great composer, Béla Bartók. Ernst’s first published piece, a piano quintet in C minor published in 1895, came to the attention of Johannes Brahms, who organized the premiere of the work in Vienna. In 1897 Ernst made his debut as a piano soloist in Berlin to great acclaim, and began touring Europe, England and the United States, making his debut here with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra during the 1898-99 season.
Ernst taught at the Hochschule in Berlin from 1905 to 1915, where as a soloist, chamber musician and conductor he began promoting music of Hungarian composers including Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Despite his championing of composers who mined Hungarian and eastern European musical traditions, Dohnányi’s own works were very much in the mainstream of European music, á la Brahms.
Dohnányi moved to the United States after WWII, which had claim both of his sons, one lost in combat and the other (Christoph’s father) executed along with his brother-in-law, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for his role in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Dohnányi accepted a position at Florida State in Tallahassee (T-hassle, to you cognoscenti) and continued conducting and composing until he died of pneumonia in New York City in February, 1960, where he had come to record solo piano music for Epic records.
His Serenade in C major resides in that key only in name; the young Ernst explores chromaticism with liberal application of sharps and flats throughout. I believe it to be an engaging piece; in truth I’ve heard only the viola part thus far, but it sounds like it will be fun!
Now, what about Bob? Robert Schumann, that is. Born in 1810, Bob was introduced to the world of letters and music at an early age. His father was a bookseller and novelist, who encouraged his son to read and to learn music, which Bob did, composing his first works by age seven. Schuman proved quite talented, but his musical aspirations suffered a blow when his father died in 1826; his mother discouraged Bob’s pursuit of music in favor of a more substantial career. Schumann obliged by going to Leipzig to study law in 1828 and continued his studies in Heidelberg in 1829.
In 1830, Schumann heard Niccolò Paganini in concert, which prompted him to abandon law and return to Leipzig to study piano with Frederich Weick. His dreams of becoming a concert pianist were shelved by a hand injury, the cause of which continues to be the subject of speculation. Some say that Schumann crippled his right hand with a device he used to strengthen the fourth finger, some contend that a loss of coordination was the result of mercury poisoning as a side effect of treatments for syphilis, and some contend that he underwent ill-advised surgery to alter the tendons in his hand. We’ll never know, but I’m sure the speculation will never wane.
As it happened, Frederich had a daughter, Clara, a brilliant young pianist who was nine years younger than Schumann. Bob and Clara eventually fell in love, but when Schumann asked for her hand in 1837 she was only eighteen, and Frederich would not allow the union of his brilliant daughter and a man who was trying make his living as a composer. Lawsuits ensued (Schumann’s legal training was put to use) but Clara turned 21 before there was any resolution, and they married in 1840, eventually producing eight children.
During the 1830s, Schumann wrote almost exclusively for piano. He began embracing other forms in the year of his marriage, which seemed to agree with him. In 1840 he wrote 168 lieder. In the following year, he wrote his first symphony (Spring) and what was to become his fourth symphony after many revisions. In 1842 he turned to chamber music, composing the Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Opus 44, which we read with pianist Peter Basquin back in October, and his three string quartets, the first of which we’ll play on Monday.
In 1844, Schumann began to experience depression, nervous prostration and the persistent presence of the pitch A four octaves above middle C. He continued to compose, but his health and his mental stability continued to deteriorate. He finally had himself committed to an asylum in 1854, and died two years later, at age 46. His condition may have resulted from syphilis which may have been dormant for many years (Smetana, who died from syphilis, was bedeviled by a high E before going completely deaf). A tumor was found at the base of Schumann’s brain during his autopsy, which also could explain his mental decline and early demise (though not particularly early for a composer).
For me, Schumann shares with Mozart a palpable intellectual intensity; their minds raced. Costanza Mozart wrote of her husband’s need to distract himself so he could compose, and I’ll always remember that observation brought to life in the movie Amadeus. While much of the movie is fantasy, seeing Mozart bent over sheets of music on a billiards table, quill pen hand, alternately writing and throwing balls against the table cushions in one continuous, fluid motion – that scene alone was worth the price of admission.
In the music of both men I hear their minds running at fever pitch, always near the edge, always breathlessly intense, even in their most quiet and introspective moments. Of course there are other great intellects, but none that strike me as so unrelentingly intense. Then, of course, there is Bach, the musical leviathan, the intellectual Great Blue Whale in whose wake these racing porpoises perform feats of genius with other denizens of the musical sphere who also play their parts according to their talents, all forever in the currents and eddies of Bach’s passage.
Schumann’s and Mozart’s music is quite different – Mozart’s scores may present difficulties, but they are idiomatically suited to the instruments for which he wrote, which is another way of saying if I can’t play one of his passages, it’s me, not him. Schumann, on the other hand, reveals himself to be a pianist who came late to writing for strings, with many of his passages being anything but idiomatically suited to the instruments. If I can’t play it, it’s still me, not him, but he’s not helping!
We’re playing the String Quartet in A minor, Opus 41 No. 1 on Monday by special request – my request! It’s my birthday this weekend, and I want to play the Schumann A minor – I wanna, I wanna, I wanna! I think you’ll be glad to hear it; it’s dramatic, exciting, beautiful, frabjous, wonderful, etc., etc.
We really need no special request or reason to play another Handel Concerto Grosso, so we’ll read his Opus 6 No. 6 in G minor on Monday with our Community Musicians. Even after 250 or so years, Handel still gives us WOW moments; we really didn’t think he was going to take the music there, but WOW, we’re glad he did! If you go to http://trinitychamberplayers.blogspot.com you can read a bit more about Handel and the creation of his twelve concerti grossi in Opus 6 in the notes for Monday, January 30.
Once again, grab your instrument, grab your ears, and join us on Monday for another evening of great music and great fun!
Let’s play!
Jim (the violist)
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