SEASON 26_Program Notes 1

Season 26

On The Threshold

PROGRAM NOTES by Jeffrey Sykes, DMA

I: In C

Wednesday July 6, 2022

Chapel in the Hills, Wimberley – 7 pm (Free, limited seats, reserve seat(s) at ticket site)

Thursday July 7, 2022

Trinity Baptist Church, San Antonio – 7 pm


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) • Quintet in C Major, K. 515 for two violins, two violas & cello (1787)  

 — Sant’Ambrogio, dePasquale, Bryla-Weiss, Sorgi, Rapier
Johannes Brahms  (1833-1897) • Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 60 for piano, violin, viola & cello (1875)

 — Yanagitani, dePasquale, Sorgi, Ross

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Quintet in C Major, K. 515 for two violins, two violas & cello (1787)

—  Sant’Ambrogio, DePasquale, Bryla-Weiss, Sorgi, Rapier
 

Mozart wrote six quintets for two violins, two violas and a single cello: one of the viola quintets is a very early work; one of them is an arrangement of a wind serenade; and four of them date from his last years. These four late string quintets are considered by many critics to be his greatest chamber music. Considering that it’s Mozart we’re talking about, the Mozart who turned everything he touched into gold, that’s quite a statement. The great critic Charles Rosen claimed that the quintets showed a “complexity in the inner voices that had disappeared from music since the death of Bach.” That complexity leads to a tremendous warmth and richness of sound that endears them to performers and audiences alike.

 

Many composers had written string quintets before Mozart, most notably Boccherini. Most of these works feature two cellos, not two violas; and most are effectively duets between the first violin and first cello, accompanied by the second violin, the viola, and the second cello. These works are charming, agreeable, fun to listen to—but only rarely do they rise above the emotional level of divertimenti. Mozart brought to the string quintet a seriousness of purpose coupled with an equality of all the parts. There are moments in the late quintets when a solo voice is contrasted with the rest of the ensemble, as in a concerto; moments of intimate dialogue between five equal instruments; and moments when all voices are united in one musical thought.

 

Mozart wrote the String Quintet in C Major, K. 515, in April 1787, not long after a period of writing the six “Haydn” quartets and the “Hoffmeister” quartet and just before starting on his opera Don Giovanni. Mozart offered the work on subscription, together with the Quintet in G minor, K. 516, advertising that the two quintets were “beautifully and correctly written.” Many of Mozart’s greatest chamber works were first offered on subscription to the public, and this common method of dissemination had worked well for Mozart. Unfortunately in this case, so few people were interested in subscribing that Mozart delayed the release of the works. The quintets were certainly much more complex than the usual fare of the day. (If you remember the movie Amadeus, you might remember what Emperor Joseph II tells Mozart after the premiere of one of his operas: “Too many notes!” Perhaps the Viennese public felt the quintets also had too many notes.) He ended up selling them to the Viennese publisher Artaria in 1788.

 

Charles Rosen claims that the opening movement is the largest of all of Mozart’s sonata-allegro movements, indeed the largest before Beethoven. Despite its majestic proportions, it maintains an amiable lyric intensity throughout, filled with conversational banter between instruments. Most Classical-period works follow the opening sonata-allegro movement with a slow movement, then a minuet or scherzo. Mozart reverses the traditional order, placing the minuet first, followed by the slow movement. The slow movement is almost an operatic duet for the first violin and first viola; Mozart even goes so far as to include short cadenzas for the two. Mozart always preferred playing the viola part in chamber music, and one could easily imagine he wrote this part for himself to play. The Haydn-esque finale in rondo form has an abundance of great melodies and features some wonderful moments of virtuosity from the first violin.

 

 

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 60 (written 1855-75; published 1875)
 — Yanagitani, dePasquale, Sorgi, Ross

 

When Brahms wrote to his publisher Simrock regarding the Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 60, he included this advice about the title page: “You might display a picture on the title page. Namely a head—with a pistol pointing at it. Now you can form an idea of the music! I will send you my photograph for this purpose! You could also give it a blue frockcoat, yellow trousers, and riding boots, since you appear to like color printing.”

 

For any well-educated German speaker of the 19th century, the reference would be unmistakable: Brahms is referring to Werther, the hero of Goethe’s great epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Written in 1774, Goethe’s novel became an instant success, brought Goethe international fame, and was an important influence on Romantic thinking in literature, art, and music. Werther, a young artist of sensitive and passionate temperament, falls in love with Charlotte; but Charlotte is already married to Albert, also a close friend of Werther. Werther sees no way out of his great dilemma other than suicide. He writes to Albert asking to borrow his pistols, claiming he is headed on a journey; when he receives the pistols, he plots his suicide, and shoots himself in the head on Christmas Eve. Werther’s clothing—a blue coat worn over a yellow vest with yellow trousers and riding boots—became an instantly-recognizable fashion trend among young people wanting to show their discontent with the status quo. Sadly, the novel also spawned many copycat suicides.

 

Brahms, of course, saw in Werther a reflection of his own hopeless love for Clara Wieck Schumann. Brahms had met Robert and Clara Schumann in 1853, and they instantly became close friends. Robert contacted his publisher Breitkopf and asked him to publish music by Brahms; Clara coached Brahms at the piano and helped him find concert engagements. The Schumanns launched Brahms’ career, and Brahms continued to bask in the friendship of two of the finest musicians in Europe. But this idyllic time was not to last long: Robert attempted suicide on February 17, 1854, by throwing himself into the Rhine. He spent the remainder of his days in an asylum.

 

Brahms became Clara’s greatest support during this difficult time, moving into her home, helping take care of her children, organizing Robert’s papers, and attending to his business arrangements. He stayed with the children while Clara went off on her concert tours. He wrote Clara regularly while she was away, reporting on Robert’s condition. (Clara was not allowed to visit Robert in the asylum. She saw him only once more, two days before his death.) It was also during this time that Brahms conceived his strong romantic passion for Clara. He wrote to their mutual friend Joachim: “I love her and am under her spell. I often have to restrain myself forcibly from just quietly putting my arms around her and even—I don’t know, it seems to me so natural that she could not misunderstand.” This attraction was clearly reciprocated, and yet the two were in a very difficult situation, constrained by societal expectations and by their loyalty to Robert and, later, his memory.

 

Brahms began work on the first version of what would become the Piano Quartet in C Minor in 1855, right in the thick of the emotional turmoil following Robert’s suicide attempt. Brahms was dissatisfied with the work—likely its emotional content struck too close to home—and he put it aside until 1869, in the meantime completing and publishing the Piano Quartets in G Minor and A Major, Op. 25 and 26. Even after extensive revisions, including transposing the work from its original C-sharp minor to C minor, he was still dissatisfied. He returned to the work in 1873-75, and it is then that this work assumed its definitive form. The first and third movements largely date from 1855-56, the scherzo from 1856-61, and the finale from 1875. The quartet clearly cost Brahms great emotional effort; few works of his had such a difficult and protracted gestation. In all of Brahms’ output, it is rare to hear such darkly oppressive music as we hear in the first movement; and equally rare to hear music as beautiful as the slow movement of the quartet. The C Minor Piano Quartet was first performed in Vienna on November 18, 1875, with Brahms himself at the piano, and members of the Hellmesberger Quartet.

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