Play it again, Sam! Community Music Monday, June 6, 2011 at Charlotte’s Place

Dear Musicians and Music Lovers:

Let’s play and listen together one more time, ere summer's truly upon us!

Please join us on Monday in a new (for us) location: Charlotte’s Place, 109 Greenwich Street, just north of the corner of Rector and Greenwich (the #1 subway Rector Street stop is at the corner).

Charlotte’s Place is a new, welcoming community facility opened recently by Trinity Wall Street, our partnering sponsor of Community Music Mondays with Manhattan Youth.

Just as truly as the summer soon will be upon us, we will well and truly play some works we have visited previously. We’ll start with the F major Dvorak “American” quartet, slide into the C minor Beethoven Opus 18, No. 4 quartet, and end the evening, depending on the musical forces available to us, with either the boisterous Holst St. Paul’s Suite or Mozart’s Bb Major quartet K458 "The Hunt."

The great thing about great music is that it is always good to go back for more! (I would that it were so with chocolate. Dark chocolate. With a high cacao content.) And, of course, if you want to prep your ears for our session, you can find a few lines about most of these pieces on our blog http://trinitychamberplayers.blogspot.com/.

So, please join us as we salute the end of a season of music with an encore, and welcome the sultry summer in anticipation of an autumn of more great music and great fun.

Let’s Play!

Jim (the violist)

A Beethoven Warm-Up Lap and Cycling With Mozart - Community Music Monday, May 23, 2011

Dear Musicians and Music Lovers:

It’s time to work out again on Monday! Musically, that is – although being a professional musician these days is very much an athletic career. We’ll play the String Trio in G major, Opus 9 No. 1 by Beethoven, the String Quartet in A Major, K. 464 by Mozart, and read movements of Mozart’s String Quartet in D Major, K. 499 with our Community Musicians.

Beethoven took some warm-up laps with his three Opus 9 string trios, composed in 1798, which immediately preceded the composition of his six Opus 18 string quartets. He had composed his Opus 3 string trio in 1794 (which we played three weeks ago, on May 2^nd), three piano trios in 1795, for violin, cello and piano, and a good deal of music for various combinations of winds and strings during the 1790s, but since about 1783 the bar for string quartets in Vienna (and everywhere for eternity) had been set quite high and gained a lot of altitude over the subsequent fifteen years thanks to the musical tag team of Haydn and Mozart (of course Haydn flew solo in the final half of that span) . It took real chutzpah for Beethoven to dive into the genre.

The three Opus 9 trios are works that stand on their own; they aren’t sketches of Beethoven’s first quartets, and really have more in common thematically with his later symphonic writing. I suspect he already had ideas for the trios quite apart from any he might have been contemplating for the quartets, and immersed himself in composing for strings either to sharpen his string-writing skills or just to get these works out of the way prior to digging into the quartet genre.

The Opus 9 trios hew to the four-movement format of string quartets established by Haydn and Mozart, whereas Beethoven’s earlier Opus 3 trio with its six movements was more of a serenade. Beethoven begins the G Major trio with an Adagio introduction leading into an Allegro that comprises the first movement – very Haydn-y of him. That ‘s followed by the usual Adagio for the second movement, but the expected Minuet third movement is replaced by a Scherzo, in which Beethoven gave himself more latitude for exploration and digressions than he would have had in the more strict minuet format (Beethoven and Schubert treated the Scherzo, which term denotes playfulness, as the Minuet on steroids). The last movement is the expected rousing finale marked Presto, and it certainly will take some magic to read it at that speed.

To celebrate the arrival of our violinist Amy, who has a late work commitment on Monday, we will read the String Quartet in A Major, K. 464 by Mozart. With this reading, we will complete our cycle (thus the pun-ish title above) of the ten Great string quartets by Mozart: the six quartets dedicated to Haydn, the D Major quartet written for (or at least to be published by) Franz Anton Hoffmeister, and the three Prussian quartets written for  Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and noted Cellist.

In the A major quartet, one of the six dedicated to Haydn, Mozart flirts with chromaticism (which he later embraces with no holds barred in the introduction to the following C Major quartet). The third movement of this quartet is particularly interesting; it is a theme-and-variations Andante that presages the andante variation movement in his Divertimento for string trio of 1788 (which we played on May 2) and it is echoed in the variation movement of Beethoven’s Opus 18 No. 5 string quartet.

We invite our Community Musicians to join us for a reading of the first three movements of Mozart’s Hoffmeister quartet in D Major K. 499. The Adagio is gorgeous, and a fitting way to close out the evening.

This will be the final Community Music Monday at the Manhattan Youth Downtown Community Center until next September.  On behalf of everyone who has participated this season, I thank Trinity Wall Street and Manhattan Youth for joining together to make these sessions possible. Since September, we’ve played together on 29 Monday evenings, reading 95 works of 35 composers (you can see a listing on http://trinitychamberplayers.blogspost.com/ ).

It’s been a great pleasure for me to explore these works with you, and I look forward to sharing great music with you again in the fall.

Let’s Play!

Jim (the violist)

Haydn Right Now, Mozart in the Moment – Community Music Monday, May 16, 2011

Dear Musicians and Music Lovers:

This week, we’re going back to the source – Franz Joseph Haydn and his influential, wonderful, not to mention frabjous string quartets. The Trinity Chamber Players will begin the evening with Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major, Opus 76 No. 5, a work in which Haydn innovates, plays with us, and perhaps even tells us something about himself.

We explored Haydn somewhat on March 28, when we discussed the influence of his String Quartet in E-Flat major Opus 64, No. 6 on Beethoven and his String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 18 No. 6. On March 14, we also explored Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major, Opus 64 No. 5, known as The Turkey Buzzard or something like that – oh, yes, The Lark (these names...). The Opus 64 quartets were composed in the twilight of Haydn’s employment at Esterhazy, whereas the Opus 76 quartets were composed after he had been cut loose to remake himself as a musical entrepreneur.

Although Haydn met with immediate success upon leaving Esterhazy, he had ambivalent feelings about leaving the security of steady employment, especially as it might impact his family. He wrote, “This  freedom, how sweet it tastes! … I have often sighed for release; now I have it in some measure- even though I am burdened with more work, the knowledge that I am not bound to service makes ample amends for all my toil. And yet, dear though this freedom is to me, I long to be in Esterhazy's service... if only for the sake of my poor family.”

He needn’t have worried. Where Mozart was beset by debt and Beethoven just got by financially, Haydn became quite wealthy. His “family” for whom he worried was considerably larger than his blood relations; in his will, Haydn left money to many tradesmen and common folk with whom he had relations through the years, including many female friends, some of whom may have enjoyed a deeper friendship with him than others. Haydn married when he was young, but it was a childless and, by his account, an unhappy union. It is rumored that both Haydn and his wife found themselves enamored of others from time to time.

The quartet, composed between 1796 and 1797, opens with a movement progressing from what promises to be a simple theme and variations based on a lilting melody, but the textures become more complex as it is transformed into an allegro that charges toward a conclusion that sounds almost symphonic.

The second movement, in the rather strange key of F-sharp major, is the main course of this musical feast. Here, Haydn lets down his guard and allows us a glimpse within during a movement that is quite beautiful and not a little melancholy. The key, which sports six sharps, tends to sound somewhat on edge because of the care that must be taken to play everything in tune, and it is also a minefield for players who may forget that even E-sharps are de rigueur.

The minuet is indeed a minuet – perhaps a little surprising given the more freely composed first movement, and following as it does 72 previous string quartets written by Haydn over so many years. But Haydn still finds opportunities for invention and expression in the very formal minuet form, as as he does with the string quartet medium itself.

The last movement, which we played by itself on our first Monday night together back in September, is the Haydn we have come to expect; witty, playful and thoroughly enjoyable. In his later years he is the master of his craft, and the music still flows. As has been noted previously, Haydn may not have invented the string quartet, but his dedication to the medium certainly put it on the map, and his quartets not only endure, but are still box office after more than 200 years.

I've also noted that Haydn and Mozart engaged in a “virtuous spiral” of mutual inspiration for their quartet output beginning in the early 1780s, when Mozart moved to Vienna and became familiar with Haydn’s Opus 33 quartets. This prompted Mozart to write his six “Haydn” quartets, so called because Mozart dedicated them to Haydn, rather than to some prince. Even though they were born a generation apart, and rarely saw each other due to Haydn’s employment at Esterhazy, they admired each others’ work and formed a close friendship.

Haydn usually was in Vienna at Christmas, and on two occasions around the beginning of 1785 he and Mozart played these new quartets by Mozart, with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Haydn on violin, Mozart on viola, and Johann Baptist Vanhall on cello. The tenor Michael Kelley, an Irishman who later sang the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro, was in attendance at one of these sessions and reported, “the players were tolerable,” although, “not one of them excelled on the instrument he played," but he enjoyed himself immensely nonetheless.

The first four of Mozart’s set of six quartets would have been finished by this time, and certainly his String Quartet in D Minor K 421 would have been played during one of these sessions. Mozart worked and reworked these scores, as apparently can be seen in the manuscripts, as he challenged himself to master Haydn’s classical style. His effort produced what some say is the pinnacle of the classical string quartet.

Tonight’s D minor quartet begins with a dramatic Allegro moderato to set the tone, followed by a somewhat more relaxed andante, and then a minuet that recalls in spirit the drama of the first movement. The trio of the minuet is a jarring contrast; it is an elegant dance in the midst of sturm und drang. This minuet and trio strangely are never far below my consciousness; they exemplify the tension between cultured refinement and unbridled passion that is, for me, the essence of Mozart. The last movement is a theme and variations on an elegant dance in a minor mode.

We invite our Community Musicians to read another Haydn quartet with us – his String Quartet in D Minor Opus 76 No. 2. In this work I hear Haydn paying homage to Mozart, who had died about four years prior, and in particular I hear echoes of the Mozart K 421 quartet in the first movement.

I read a comment in the NY Times last week in response to an article comparing classical music audiences and baseball fans (sigh). The responder wrote that Mozart, Haydn and the gang are by no means museum fare; whenever we play one of his works, Mozart’s music is right now, in the moment. It was worth wading through a silly comparison just to get to that response.

So grab your ears, grab your instrument, be in the moment with us, and get some Right Now time with Mozart and Haydn!

Let’s Play!

Jim (the violist)

Beethoven the Healer - Community Music Monday, May 9, 2011

Dear Musicians and Music Lovers:

The last six string quartets by Beethoven – collectively the “Late” string quartets, although they are really not deceased – were written from 1824 to 1826. There are actually five quartets; you may remember that the original fugal finale of the B-Flat major quartet, Opus 130 - which we played a few weeks ago - was published separately as the Grosse Fugue, Opus 133 after Beethoven composed a new finale for Opus 130.

Beethoven had not written a string quartet in a dozen years when he sketched a quartet in 1822 and offered it to the publisher Peters in Leipzig, who turned him down. In November of that year, the Russian Prince Nikolaus Galitzin, a good amateur cellist, asked that Beethoven compose up to three String Quartets. The prince, having heard the premiere of Weber’s Der Freischutz in June, had considered commissioning Weber for the quartets, but the violist in his personal quartet, Karl Zeuner, convinced the prince to turn to Beethoven. Hooray for violists!

Beethoven accepted, but first he had to clear the decks of a few other works: the Ninth Symphony, the Diabelli Variations and the Missa Solemnis. It was 1824 before he could begin composing quartets in earnest, and he completed the three quartets for Galitzin in 1825.

Just as with his Opus 18 quartets, the opus numbers do not reflect the chronology of composition. Opus 127 was composed first, followed by Opus 132, and Opus 130 with the original fugue which became Opus 133, all completed in 1825. The C-Sharp Minor quartet Opus 131 was finished in 1826, followed by the final quartet Opus 135, followed in turn by the new finale of Opus 130. This new finale was the final substantial work by the composer.

Beethoven was delayed in writing Opus 132 by ill health, one of the bouts of severe intestinal inflammation he suffered in his last years. His doctor told him to give up wine and coffee and to go to the country for fresh air. In May, Beethoven had recovered sufficiently to go to the Viennese suburb of Baden, where he composed the quartet.

The Adagio movement bears two inscriptions: “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart,” (Holy song of thanks of a convalescent to the Deity) and “Neue Kraft fühlend,” (Feeling new strength). While it is logical to assume that Beethoven was writing of his own convalescence and recovery, there is a deeper meaning here as well.

Beethoven was a deeply religious man, and also believed deeply in the healing power of music. He was known to visit those who suffered and improvise for them at the pianoforte. His subjects were grateful, and wrote of the solace he gave them either from physical maladies or from grief. One woman, who was grief-stricken because of the death of her child, was invited to Beethoven’s apartment where she reported he said “We will speak in tones,” before performing an extended improvisation for her. Apparently Beethoven spoke little or not at all during these healing sessions, communicating only through music.

In light of Beethoven’s belief that music could heal, the central theme of the Heiliger Dankgesang movement is perhaps more than merely autobiographical. It is Beethoven reaching across 185 years to play for us, to heal our spirits and give us solace and comfort.

The Opus 132 is a beautiful and inventive work of a master in his intellectual prime, and we hope you will enjoy exploring it with us.

Our Community Musicians are invited to join us in exploring the Mozart String Quartet in E-Flat Major K 428. If it turn out there are a lot of us, of course we may make a substitution, but we will improvise an outcome in the moment.

So, grab your ears, grab your instrument, and join us for great music and great fun!

Let’s play!

Jim (the violist)

Good Things Come in Threes – Community Music Monday, May 2, 2011

Dear Musicians and Music Lovers:

One of our Trinity Chamber Players regulars, Amy, will be diverted by work obligations, so it seems a propitious time to explore a bit of the string trio literature. Thus, on Monday evening, we will read Mozart’s Divertimento in E-Flat Major, K 563 for String Trio, then an early and seminal work of Beethoven, his String Trio Opus 3, also in E-Flat Major, and we invite our community musicians to join us in a communal reading of the Lento assai movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135. If we have time left, we’ll get into even more trouble!

Mozart’s Divertimento was written in Vienna in the fall of 1788, when Mozart was 32, and it was premiered in Dresden on April 13, 1789. Mozart himself played the viola part at the premiere, so the bar has been set pretty high for me. Have mercy!

String trios were not common fare at the time; indeed, only a handful of trios for this instrumentation had been written previously: several by Haydn in 1784, and in 1783 by Vaclav Pichl, who was the concertmaster of the Vienna court theater in the early 1770’s (P.D.Q. Bach is reputed to have written the only other pickle music of which I am aware The Little Pickle Book, S. 6. But I digress.)

The absence of the second violin dictated that quite a bit of extra work had to be handed to the viola and cello when composing a string trio, which complicated composing to a degree that most composers just dug up another violinist. Mozart’s trio demands a lot from each performer, but the rewards for their efforts are bountiful.

The Divertimento was written after Mozart completed his three final symphonies, which he wrote in the summer of 1788. It was a stressful time in Mozart’s life; his young daughter had died, he was borrowing heavily to pay his living expenses, and in fact the Divertimento was dedicated to Michael Puchberg, a fellow Freemason and one of Mozart’s creditors. The Divertimento’s premiere in Dresden was part of a concert tour from which Mozart hoped not only to earn some money, but to attract commissions.

Although the title Divertimento suggests a light serenade, sort of 18^th Century elevator music (although at the time I guess they would have had to play it on the stairs), Mozart’s Divertimento is by no means lightweight. It has the musical heft of his string quartets and quintets.

I find the theme-and-variations Andante movement in particular to be positively operatic in its scope, perhaps due to Mozart giving us a foretaste of the Finale of Act 2 of The Magic Flute. In the opera scene in question, Tamino is led onstage by two armored men as he prepares to have his worthiness tested – I believe it is in Number 21 in the score, and the duet is “Der, welcher wandert.”  In the opera, the armored men (a tenor and a bass) sing this duet octaves, which is in fact the chorale tune “Ach Gott, vom Himmel sei darien,” an homage by Mozart to Bach.

In the Divertimento, the viola also plays a chorale tune at the end of the Andante, but it is not a Bach chorale as far as I know. I doubt it is a random ditty, however; Mozart must be quoting something here, perhaps a tune of his own or by someone else. If you recognize it, please let me know!

Following the Divertimento, we will take up an early work of Beethoven, the String Trio in E-Flat Major, Opus 3. Determining how early a work this is has provided work for musicologists; some sources claim Beethoven wrote it as early as 16 years of age, but the preponderance of evidence points to the trio having been written in 1794, when he was 24.

It’s a lively work and very much Beethoven, but I find it remarkable because of the musical ideas Beethoven used here and continued to employ or expand upon throughout his career. Two in particular stand out: the Andante presages the Scherzos in the String Quartets Opus 18 No. 5, Opus 59 No. 1, the Andante of Opus 130, and the Scherzo of the eighth symphony; and the Finale uses offbeat accents that are heard again in the last movement of the seventh symphony.

Following the Opus 3 trio, we invite our Community Musicians to join us in reading the Lento assai movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135. It’s a beautiful and moving piece from the final substantial work completed by Beethoven. The conductor Arturo Toscanini packaged the Scherzo and Lento assai movements of Opus 135 as a showpiece for his NBC Orchestra string section, reversing the order so he could end with the livelier of the two movements.

It’s gonna be a feast for the ears, so bring both of them, and your instrument if you have one, and join us for an evening of great music and great fun!

Let’s Play!

Jim (the violist)

An evening of Dvořák with a little Fauré for good measure - Community Music Monday, April 25, 2011

Dear Musicians and Music Lovers:

Tonight pianist Peter Basquin joins us again for an evening of Dvořák with a little leavening courtesy of Fauré. The Trinity Chamber players will be playing the first movement of the Fauré Piano Quartet in C Minor, Opus 15 for services on Sunday, May 1 at Trinity Wall Street, so we’re reading it tonight prior to a rehearsal later in the week when we’ll prepare the movement for prime time. If you were with us on March 7, you heard the entire composition in all its gorgeous glory, and we will have revisit the work sometime during the upcoming music season.

Next, we will read the Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Opus 81, by Antonin Dvořák. Dvořák was one of those composers who couldn’t help but write great melodies; when he was composing his Symphony No. 8 in G Major he wrote that the melodies were coming to him so quickly and in such profusion that he couldn’t write them all down.

This Quintet follows an earlier effort by Dvořák, also in A Major, Opus 5, with which he was quite dissatisfied. In fact, he destroyed the manuscript of the earlier effort following its premiere in 1872. He reconsidered his impetuosity a decade and a half later, however, and secured a copy of the score from a friend so he could make revisions. Apparently Dvořák had an oh-what-the-heck moment shortly after he began revising the earlier work, and he instead composed an entirely new quintet in the same key in 1887.
We invite our Community Musicians to join us in reading another great Dvořák composition, his Serenade for Strings in E Major, Opus 22. This is another wonderfully tuneful and inventive work, and a pleasure to play and hear.

So grab your instrument, grab your ears, and join us tonight at 6:30 PM for an evening of great music!

Let’s play!

Jim (the violist)

Yes, There Is Music Today!

Dear Musicians and Music Lovers:

Well, I thought the week before last week was busy, but I hadn't seen anything yet. It seems Uncle Sam insists we all become accountants.

But now that all of that is over, let's play some music!

Tonight, we'll read the penultimate Mozart quartet, the eighteenth quartet of Gaetano Donizetti (yes, that Donizetti) and music of Sibelius and whoever else tickles our fancy.

Donizetti? But he’s an opera composer, for Pete’s sake! He’s by no means an obscure footnote of an opera composer, either: L’elisir d’amore, Lucia de Lammermoor, La fille du regiment, Don Pasquale, Lucrezia Borgia, and the list goes on and on – Donizetti’s Anna Bolena is even featured on the Met’s opening night gala this year. He composed somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 operas, plus 16 symphonies, 18 or 19 string quartets (depending on whom you believe), 3 oratorios, 28 cantatas, etc., etc. Another working musician’s working musician.

One would think he would have needed to be a centenarian to complete such a body of work, but in fact he died at age 51 from complication of syphilis, which had rendered him insane in his last few years. He was born into a poor family in Bergamo, Italy in 1797. He came to the attention of the German opera composer Simon Mayr, who had accepted a music director job in a Bergamo church, when Gaetano was five or six.

The young boy was admitted to a choir school founded by Mayr when he was nine, where he learned composition, orchestration and counterpoint, and from which he wrote his first operas. By the time he reached his early twenties, he was writing operas for companies in Naples, Milan and Rome with some success. His Ana Bolena from 1830 cemented his career, and he became celebrated throughout Europe.

The String Quartet in E minor was composed in 1836, following Donizetti’s very successful debut of Lucia de Lammermoor. Donizetti does not take up the challenge of the late Beethoven quartets. Period. Perhaps quite understandably, Donizetti is more concerned with musical melodrama of an operatic nature. Haydn and Mozart, both opera composers, certainly wove melodramatic threads into their quartets as well, but a look at the E minor quartet’s score tells me we are in for a sumptuous feast of melodrama.

Mozart's quartet in B-flat Major, K 589 is one of the three "cello quartets" which are his last foray into this genre. I've written before that these are groundbreaking works, in which Mozart begins to move beyond the Haydnesque quartet into a new and sophisticated realm of musical writing.

The music is less concerto-like, and focused more on developing musical ideas and motifs across the ensemble. This leads Mozart to treat the instruments more as equals rather than using the first violin as a solo instrument to be accompanied by the three others.

Of course, Haydn came by this solo/accompaniment arrangement for his early quartets honestly, as Luigi Tomasini, the court violinist at Esterhazy, seems to have been the most accomplished string player for miles around.  Haydn naturally wrote for him the most challenging music in the ensemble, and even in Haydn’s late quartets, written long after his tenure at Esterhazy had ended, the first violinist hauls the most musical freight.

You may recall that Mozart wrote these three last quartets for the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm II, who was a cellist, and who probably expected NOT to be in a subservient role, thank you very much. Perhaps that’s why Mozart threw convention out the window and treated all four instruments more equally.

The first of these three quartets is the most conventional, the last is a lively, jazzy contrapuntal tour de force, and this B-flat Major quartet is often overlooked, sandwiched as it is between two more immediately accessible siblings. For me, it is sonic liquid, it is a breath held in wonder and expectation, it is Mozart giving us a look ahead at the path he would have traveled, if only he had lived to make the journey.

We’ll wind up the evening with an Andante Festivo by Jean Sibelius, and if we have any more time we will delve into our bag of music and see what else comes up. As always, we’ll have fun, so please join us!

Let’s play!

Jim (the violist)