Bring your Valentine to Community Music Monday at the Manhattan Youth Downtown Community Center! This coming week we will play on February 14, so grab your sweetie and we promise it will help!
The Trinity Chamber Players will start with a work by Beethoven that is purported to contain young Ludwig’s impressions of Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. The story may be apocryphal, but while composing his first string quartets in Vienna during 1798 and 1799, a set of six quartets commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz, Beethoven read the Shakespeare play (presumably in translation) and was quite taken with it. Indeed, a few well-worn volumes of Shakespeare were said to be among Beethoven’s possessions when he died.
What’s more, at the time he was composing the quartets Beethoven became friends with Karl Friedrich Amenda, who wrote that the Adagio of Opus 18 No. 1 movement was influenced by the Shakespeare play, and in particular the vault scene. Amenda was employed by the Lobkowitz household in 1798 and later became the private music teacher of Mozart’s children. He was a good violinist and a good friend to Beethoven during the Opus 18 years.
So it seems Beethoven fashioned the slow movement of his F Major quartet as a tone poem based upon the tragedy. If you’re so inclined, you can hear forebodings in the beginning, a beautiful love theme, the fight between the Montagues and the Capulets, turmoil, suspense, tragedy, etc. – all makings of a great three-hanky slow movement. If you still have doubts, just look at Beethoven’s tempo instruction for this movement – “Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato” or “Slow, affectionate and passionate.” Now we’re talkin’ Valentine’s Day!
The quartet is presented among the six Opus 18 quartets as No.1 whereas it was the third Beethoven composed for the set. He placed it up front because he thought the opening theme would catch the eye and ear more readily than the languid opening of the real No. 1, which is No. 3. Got that?
The American composer Samuel Barber’s first String Quartet Opus 11 also has a winner of a slow movement, also labeled Adagio. We’ll play the movement in its original setting for string quartet (plus whoever among our Community Musicians wishes to play along), although Barber later transcribed it for a whole bunch of strings, titling the result the Adagio for Strings.
Chances are you already know it. For some reason Oliver Stone had the bad taste to use the Adagio as background music in the movie Platoon for a super-slow-motion sequence in which Willem Dafoe is riddled with bullets in the jungles of Vietnam for what seems like about a half-hour. Not the best use of the score methinks, and by means of the visual association Ollie definitely was not helping with anything to do with Valentine’s Day (boo Ollie! – bad Ollie! What a foin mess, Ollie!). The Adagio is really one of the most romantic pieces composed in the last 100 years.
We’ll also play another Adagio, this one by Robert Schumann, from his first String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 41 No. 1. This piece is simply gorgeous. If this doesn’t help your Valentine’s Day, you need to seek professional counseling.
Schumann was a genius, a gifted musician, a publisher, a manic depressive – you get the picture. He married Clara Weick, a wonderful composer in her own right, and he was an early champion of Brahms’ music. Schumann liked Brahms so much that in about 1854 he invited the 21 year-old Brahms to live with him and Clara. We won’t recount the 150 years or so of gossip surrounding that situation, or Schumann’s descent into madness, etc., but if you are interested, pianist Israela Margalit has written a play about their relationship, “Trio,” which begins a run at the Lounge 2 Theatre in Hollywood, CA on March 12, 2011.
The entire Opus 41 No. 1 is a wonderful work, and I promise we’ll play the whole thing sometime this spring. It’s chock full of beastly difficult passages, so give us a little while to work them up to speed.
Finally, what would Valentine’s Day be without a little Tchaikovsky? Bring your stringed instrument and join us in reading his Elegie from his Serenade for Strings. The Serenade was written in homage to Mozart, but Mozart as seen through romantic 19th Century Russian eyes, for large string orchestra. The Elegy works with considerably more modest forces as well, but it will be all the better if you grab your violin (even better, your viola), take a few deep breaths and dive in with us!
Remember, Valentine’s Day comes but once a year, so make it count; be sure to bring your sweetie to spend it with us!
Let’s Play!
Jim
The Trinity Chamber Players will start with a work by Beethoven that is purported to contain young Ludwig’s impressions of Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. The story may be apocryphal, but while composing his first string quartets in Vienna during 1798 and 1799, a set of six quartets commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz, Beethoven read the Shakespeare play (presumably in translation) and was quite taken with it. Indeed, a few well-worn volumes of Shakespeare were said to be among Beethoven’s possessions when he died.
What’s more, at the time he was composing the quartets Beethoven became friends with Karl Friedrich Amenda, who wrote that the Adagio of Opus 18 No. 1 movement was influenced by the Shakespeare play, and in particular the vault scene. Amenda was employed by the Lobkowitz household in 1798 and later became the private music teacher of Mozart’s children. He was a good violinist and a good friend to Beethoven during the Opus 18 years.
So it seems Beethoven fashioned the slow movement of his F Major quartet as a tone poem based upon the tragedy. If you’re so inclined, you can hear forebodings in the beginning, a beautiful love theme, the fight between the Montagues and the Capulets, turmoil, suspense, tragedy, etc. – all makings of a great three-hanky slow movement. If you still have doubts, just look at Beethoven’s tempo instruction for this movement – “Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato” or “Slow, affectionate and passionate.” Now we’re talkin’ Valentine’s Day!
The quartet is presented among the six Opus 18 quartets as No.1 whereas it was the third Beethoven composed for the set. He placed it up front because he thought the opening theme would catch the eye and ear more readily than the languid opening of the real No. 1, which is No. 3. Got that?
The American composer Samuel Barber’s first String Quartet Opus 11 also has a winner of a slow movement, also labeled Adagio. We’ll play the movement in its original setting for string quartet (plus whoever among our Community Musicians wishes to play along), although Barber later transcribed it for a whole bunch of strings, titling the result the Adagio for Strings.
Chances are you already know it. For some reason Oliver Stone had the bad taste to use the Adagio as background music in the movie Platoon for a super-slow-motion sequence in which Willem Dafoe is riddled with bullets in the jungles of Vietnam for what seems like about a half-hour. Not the best use of the score methinks, and by means of the visual association Ollie definitely was not helping with anything to do with Valentine’s Day (boo Ollie! – bad Ollie! What a foin mess, Ollie!). The Adagio is really one of the most romantic pieces composed in the last 100 years.
We’ll also play another Adagio, this one by Robert Schumann, from his first String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 41 No. 1. This piece is simply gorgeous. If this doesn’t help your Valentine’s Day, you need to seek professional counseling.
Schumann was a genius, a gifted musician, a publisher, a manic depressive – you get the picture. He married Clara Weick, a wonderful composer in her own right, and he was an early champion of Brahms’ music. Schumann liked Brahms so much that in about 1854 he invited the 21 year-old Brahms to live with him and Clara. We won’t recount the 150 years or so of gossip surrounding that situation, or Schumann’s descent into madness, etc., but if you are interested, pianist Israela Margalit has written a play about their relationship, “Trio,” which begins a run at the Lounge 2 Theatre in Hollywood, CA on March 12, 2011.
The entire Opus 41 No. 1 is a wonderful work, and I promise we’ll play the whole thing sometime this spring. It’s chock full of beastly difficult passages, so give us a little while to work them up to speed.
Finally, what would Valentine’s Day be without a little Tchaikovsky? Bring your stringed instrument and join us in reading his Elegie from his Serenade for Strings. The Serenade was written in homage to Mozart, but Mozart as seen through romantic 19th Century Russian eyes, for large string orchestra. The Elegy works with considerably more modest forces as well, but it will be all the better if you grab your violin (even better, your viola), take a few deep breaths and dive in with us!
Remember, Valentine’s Day comes but once a year, so make it count; be sure to bring your sweetie to spend it with us!
Let’s Play!
Jim
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