If we were playing community poker night, I wouldn’t bet the farm on a pair of sixes. But the particular pair of sixes we’ll be holding Monday night constitute a pretty strong hand! Our Trinity Chamber players will complete our cycle of the Beethoven Opus 18 quartets this Monday with a reading of the final quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 18 No. 6, and we will read the sixth and final quartet in E-flat Major of Haydn’s Opus 64 quartets.
You can see and hear Beethoven’s growth as a composer during the two-plus years in which he composed the Opus 18 quartets. Considered in chronological sequence, remembering that No. 3 is No. 1 and No. 1 is No. 3, the young Beethoven wrote remarkably sophisticated and progressively adventurous music. Opus 18 No. 6 stretches the boundaries of the Haydn-esque Opus 18 quartet style quite a bit more than the previous five, presaging Beethoven’s five middle quartets, which he began composing after a pause of six years (you may remember in December we read one of the three middle quartets dedicated to Count Razumovsky, the quartet in E Minor, Opus 59 No. 2).
The last two movements of Opus 18 No. 6 employ devices Beethoven would continue to develop in subsequent compositions. The theme of the Scherzo distorts the rhythm with syncopation, instilling in the listener, and not infrequently the performers, a modicum of discomfort. To the final movement, Beethoven appended a subtitle – La Melancholia; if you read much about music, you’ve no doubt encountered a truckload of books and articles telling you that this movement, and much of the music of Beethoven, expresses his pain, his grief, his etc. I’ve found that if you collect this literature in sufficient quantities it makes an excellent fertilizer!
While I’m sure Beethoven at this age suffered self-doubt, romantic rejection and/or physical ailments, he was a working performer and composer in a highly pressurized and competitive musical marketplace. He was a revolutionary composer of supremely well-structured, intellectually compelling and emotionally satisfying music, not a purveyor of mushy self-pity.
I would argue that Beethoven’s depiction of melancholy was in response to his discovery of Mozart’s ability to induce feelings of nostalgia through careful timing and manipulation of musical themes. The story goes that in the late 1790’s Beethoven heard Mozart’s Piano Concerto in c minor, K491, at the Augarten, a park employed as an outdoor concert venue in Vienna. At the end of the first movement, at the point Mozart reveals this hat trick, Beethoven turned to his companion, pianist J.B. Cramer, and exclaimed, “Cramer! We shall never be able to do anything like that!”
But of course Beethoven did, and sooner than later, in his own third piano concerto in c minor (my favorite). He gave the concerto the opus number 37 even though it was written around 1800, at the time he was finishing his Opus 18 quartets (the later opus number may reflect the fact that he did not premiere the concerto for another three years).
The opening theme of the concerto rhythmically outlines a minor triad which resolves to tonic not once, but three times; Beethoven often seemed to have no confidence that his audience would remember the tonic key. That rhythmic theme is the first to be introduced in the movement’s development section, but then it appears only in truncated form, sans the triple resolution to tonic, and Beethoven flogs the unresolved thematic remnant mercilessly in the cadenza he wrote for the piano soloist. Immediately after the cadenza, however, the three resolutions to tonic finally emerge to be repeated softly several times by the tympani over a sotto voce series of arpeggiated figures in the piano, producing the desired, and quite marvelous, nostalgic effect.
Considered from this perspective, La Melancholia in Opus 18 No. 6 undoubtedly is another effort by Beethoven, the cutting-edge revolutionary composer, to expand the possibilities for inducing a wider range of feelings through his music, and it is decidedly not some pitiful blubbering episode of public whimpering. Not trusting his audience to catch the feeling any more than he trusted them to remember a tonic key, Beethoven helpfully provided a guide – La Melancholia. Okay? Got it? Good!
Haydn must rest more peacefully knowing that a good deal less claptrap has been written about him, although he has by no means been immune. The final quartet of Opus 64 is another of his quartets that you just want to take home with you, like the proverbial doggie in the window (speaking of claptrap! Sorry, Mr. H).
You may remember we played the fifth of the Opus 64 quartets, The Enforcer – oh, all right – The Lark two weeks ago. Composed around 1790, the Opus 64 quartets had a profound influence on Beethoven; indeed I find evidence of direct influence in the scores of this pair of sixes.
The most obvious influence Beethoven picked up is Haydn’s insertion of an unexpected adagio of sorts in the coda of Opus 64 No. 6’s final movement, which otherwise moves at a fast clip. Just before the end, Haydn unexpectedly inserts two short portions of the main theme played at half-tempo, followed by a resumption of the fast tempo that brings the movement to an end with unison descending scales and a series of short, sharp chords.
Beethoven does the same at the end of the last movement of Opus 18 No. 6, actually inserting a tempo change of Poco Adagio (pretty slow) to present two short portions of his main theme, before stomping the pedal to the metal with a Prestissimo (pretty darned fast) as he ends the movement with unison descending scales and a series of short, sharp chords. Is there an echo in here?
There’s inspiration for Beethoven in Haydn’s first movement of Opus 64 No. 6 as well. There’s a snippet in Haydn’s 9th and 10th bars in which the viola outlines major seconds and minor thirds with eighth notes while the 1st violin plays a small rhythmic figure twice. Haydn expands upon this in the movement’s development, with the 2nd violin playing the eighth notes for 17 bars while the rest of the instruments take turns tossing that little rhythmic figure around.
Beethoven opens the first movement of his quartet with the 2nd violin playing the same sort of repetitive eighth note figure of thirds and seconds while the 1st violin and cello take turns tossing a theme back and forth. Where have I heard that before?
It’s flattery, not larceny – Haydn’s ideas were too good to let lie, and Beethoven’s expansive treatment of them makes them his own. By the way, remember that Beethoven was Haydn’s student for a while in the early 1790’s, when the Opus 64 quartets were first published, so it is almost certain that Beethoven studied these Haydn scores.
All of which brings us back to the importance of Haydn. His symphonies are great, his oratorios are stupendous (his operas are forgettable), but his string quartets are his greatest legacy to us – not only in and of themselves, but for the massive outpouring of creativity they have inspired in others over more than two centuries.
Next, how about a scenic three movement tour? (Cue Gilligan’s Island theme) A three movement tour – on the ocean with Cap’n Vivaldi at the helm and – oh, noooo! La Tempesta di Mare! Lightning, rogue waves! Sheets of rain! Violins!
Bring your instrument and join us for Vivaldi’s Concerto in E-flat Major, Opus 8 No. 5, La Tempesta di Mare – the Storm at Sea. You are no doubt familiar with concerti 1 through 4 in Opus 8, collectively known as The Four Seasons. This is the next concerto in the set, in which our intrepid composer eschews normal seasonal weather to seek out the perfect storm. And he finds it, too! Or at least a perfectly lovely little storm that he unleashes in Opus 8 No. 5 and once again in his F Major flute concerto, RV 433.
This was revolutionary music in its day. Vivaldi was only seven years older than Bach (and Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, the over-achieving triplets of 1685) and indeed, Bach was a great admirer of Vivaldi’s compositions (he even arranged nine of Vivaldi’s concerti for organ, keyboard, or mixed ensemble). The rhythmic energy and exuberance of Vivaldi’s works was matched by harmonic inventiveness and engaging thematic material. Vivaldi’s fame spread throughout Europe in the early eighteenth century and he became the toast of kings.
Alas, tastes changed, and Vivaldi found himself in difficult financial circumstances toward the end of his life. It is believed he moved from Venice to Vienna to become a court composer for one of his admirers, Charles VI, but soon after he arrived, and before he could secure his position, Charles died. Vivaldi himself followed suit shortly thereafter in 1741.
Unlike our time, back then audiences demanded new music. Vivaldi was all but forgotten; even Bach was neglected for most of a century before Mendelssohn championed Bach’s revival. No champions and no such luck for Vivaldi.
Violinist Fritz Kreisler helped bring Vivaldi’s music back into the public’s consciousness early in the last century. Kreisler had a habit of writing music, especially music that would fit neatly onto the three-minute side of a 78-rpm record, and attributing the pieces to obscure composers of the past. Thus a (somewhat more substantial) Kreisler violin concerto was presented as a work of Vivaldi, and audiences began to take notice (in the 1950’s, Kreisler admitted his authorship of a number of works that had been accepted as authentic, causing a general reddening of the musicological establishment’s complexion).
In 1926, an Italian monastery in need of repairs offered 14 folios of Vivaldi manuscripts for sale, and further investigation helped unearth a treasure trove of manuscripts including 300 concerti, 19 operas, and more than 100 other works. It’s not clear when the first modern performances of The Four Seasons took place, but the first recording in Italy was made in 1939, and in the US by violinist Louis Kaufman 1950, who recorded the remaining Opus 8 concerti later that year.
After a 200 year silence, Vivaldi came roaring back and is now ubiquitous. Go figure. Better yet, grab your instrument, grab your ears, and come join us on Monday as we add to the general (as a Slavic Elmer Fudd would say) welter of Wiwaldi wafting ‘wound the world!
Let’s Play!
Jim (the wiolist)
P.S. I had jury duty on Monday and Tuesday, complete with long periods of waiting with spotty wi-fi access. It looks like I filled the time by filling blank pages – next week will be shorter. I promise! Maybe.
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