Sunday, January 29, 2006 7:00 p.m.
The Cavani String Quartet
The Cavani String Quartet
Annie Fullard, Violin
Mari Sato, Violin
Kirsten Docter, Viola
Merry Peckham, Cello
Program
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartString Quartet in G Major, K. 387
Allegro vivace assai
Menuetto: Allegro
Andante cantabile
Molto allegro
Béla Bartók
String Quartet No. 3
Prima parte
Seconda parte
Ricapitulazione della prima parte
Coda
INTERMISSION
Antonín DvorákString Quartet in F major, Op. 96, "American"
Allegro ma non troppo
Lento
Molto vivace
Finale: Vivace ma non troppo
Program Notes
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756-1791String Quartet in G Major, K. 387, 1782
A stretch of roughly twelve months straddling 1781 and 1782 is a fine candidate for the greatest single year in chamber music history. During that time, Haydn completed his Op. 33, the set of six string quartets that demonstrated a new and mature style that would become the influential standard for the most refined form of Viennese Classicism. It was also the year that Mozart moved to Vienna, met Haydn, and experienced the Op. 33 quartets directly in the quintessential chamber fashion: by sitting down and playing them along with Haydn and two other prominent Viennese chamber composers, Vanhal and Dittersdorf. During the ensuing months, Mozart also came into his first extended contact with the music of Bach, focusing in particular on his fugues with their high art of counterpoint. In the final months of this stunning year, Mozart initiated a project entirely of his own will, without commission nor patron: to compose a set of his own string quartets dedicated to Haydn. By the end of 1782, Mozart finished the first in a series of string quartets that would be known as the "Haydn" quartets, the String Quartet in G Major, K. 387.
Mozart composed the six "Haydn" string quartets in two concentrated stretches between 1782 and 1785. Haydn first heard them played by a quartet featuring Mozart himself on viola. A lavish written dedication of the quartets to Haydn was matched by an equally generous verbal appreciation of Mozart by Haydn. That Mozart profoundly advanced his compositional abilities is clearly evident by comparing these quartets with his previous set of six. The time he spent and the evidence of his difficulty in the manuscript edits suggest this was a great labor, atypical of Mozart's legendary swift and perfect compositional process. The quartets clearly reflect his study of Haydn's Op. 33. To some, they exceed Haydn's in quality, variety and originality. Mozart's quartets, in turn, directly influenced Haydn in his own subsequent quartets, no doubt spurring him to even greater achievements. With such an intimate dialog directly between two masters within a single form, a significant genre is truly established.
A perfect and stunning illustration of the defining qualities of the Viennese Classical string quartet is the last movement of Mozart's String Quartet in G major. The movement is in sonata form featuring two different themes. Each theme is no mere motive or melody, however: each is a brief four-part fugue, the most demanding polyphonic device of the Baroque era, perfected by Bach. Rather than a fugue throughout as most Baroque fugues and even earlier quartet movements from Haydn, Mozart's sonata begins with a fugue, swiftly changes to a new lyrical theme with accompaniment (homophony), switches again to the second fugue, then switches again to yet another lyrical, accompanied theme to finish the exposition. This is but a thumbnail sketch: the music is far more supple and complex. Between the fugues are sequences of both homophony and rich polyphony. Perhaps most miraculous: the two fugue subjects join into a double fugue. The development includes yet a third brief fugue on a fresh subject that segues into a stunning mélange of accompanied melody, counterpoint, ensemble blending and a constant fluctuation of mood and dynamics encapsulating the dramatic multiplicity of great opera. All of this is so organically crafted that it blends into a single skein of perfect construction and exquisite continuity. This astonishing and ravishing music is the exclusive province of Viennese Classical chamber music, perhaps only of Mozart himself and most specifically within this single towering movement of his very first "Haydn" quartet.
Béla Bartók, 1881-1945String Quartet No. 3, 1927
Most commentaries summarize the chamber music of Béla Bartók as follows: Bartók made the most significant contribution to the string quartet since Beethoven and his quartet cycle is the most important of the 20th century. These are powerful words. How has this conclusion been reached and what does it really mean? It is quite possible that a lover of Beethoven is, at least initially, confounded by the music of Bartók. How are the two composers related? It is worth exploring this generally universal summary in greater detail.
Like Beethoven, Bartók's relationship to the string quartet was an intimate, life-long preoccupation. Bartók wrote his first, unpublished quartet at the age of eighteen. His six mature published quartets span a period of thirty years. Bartók began preliminary sketches for yet another quartet shortly before his death in 1945 at the age of sixty-three. As with Beethoven, Bartók's music shows a dramatic stylistic evolution with each quartet exploring a new terrain of musical thought. Like Beethoven, Bartók radically expanded the notion of the string quartet in nearly every dimension: form, technical means, tonality, rhythm and essential musical content. Finally, as with Beethoven, Bartók's quartet cycle is regarded as an intimate personal journal of a brilliant creative spirit, uncompromising and unrelenting in a search for new musical expression. Despite using what might first appear to be an unrecognizable modern language, Bartók's quartets fit perfectly within a continuous trajectory of exploration in the quartet medium, true to the principles of quartet writing including its most essential properties.
There is not enough space here to properly explore the unique properties of Bartók's music nor the influences and events that contributed to their formation. Aside from his historical context, education and significant musical gifts, the single most important influence on Bartók was his extensive exploration of Hungarian folk music. One of the first important and highly academic ethnomusicologists, Bartók regarded this folk music as a perfected art equal in significance to Western art music. His eventual resolve was to achieve a fusion of both forms in a daunting synthesis that some have called the meeting of East and West. From his native folk music, Bartók absorbed the essence of melodic and rhythmic patterns but also more abstract organizing principles such as concision and constant variation. Rarely quoting the original folk sources, at least in his major works, Bartók reworked their spirit through the most lofty aspects of classical music achieving a blend that is strikingly original, fascinating, curiously approachable and unutterably profound.
Bartók's six quartets trace a sort of arc of development beginning with the influences of late Romanticism and ending with a quartet in four movements in a relatively tonal language, though distinctively Bartók's own. The middle quartets are more radical with the third quartet representing Bartók's most "difficult" music, the farthest extreme of his explorations. The shortest of the cycle, String Quartet No. 3 has only one movement divided into four parts with readily perceivable boundaries. The core of the quartet comprises two parts. The first part is slow, poignant and generally fragmentary, built from a few short motives introduced within the first several measures. The second part is fast, lively, more continuous and based on longer themes, most of which are closely related permutations of a single idea. This part is driven through a dramatic intensification by the acceleration of tempo, pungent rhythms, the tension of fugue and a kaleidoscope of coloristic effects, one of the most distinctive aspects of Bartók's quartet writing. The third part is a compact recapitulation of first part, explicitly named as such, though, typical of Bartók, hardly literal. The final part is a brief coda that recalls the second part in a compressed resurgence of driving motion that builds to a conclusion of enormous power. The music is dense and complicated but astonishingly ordered. If not apparent to the ear, a reading of score reveals an extraordinary wealth of counterpoint featuring canons, two different fugues (in the second part), and many of the learned devices found in Bach and Beethoven including inversion, augmentation, stretto, etc. Like all truly great music, the quartet works on many levels from the surface sensations to the deepest details of construction. Its richest musical meanings require repeated listening, if not a lifetime of contemplation.
Antonín Dvorák, 1841-1904String Quartet in F major, Op. 96, "American", 1893
Antonín Dvorák was the most prolific chamber music composer of the late nineteenth century. He wrote numerous excellent works in every standard form as well as for novel ensembles. His natural and seemingly effortless proclivity for chamber music resulted in a body of work that was unusual for a composer of the Romantic period, a time in which the exploration of large forces, extra-musical programs and expansive, subjective forms had little to do with this intimate and formalized genre most associated with the Classical era. It was characteristic of his time for Dvorák to express his musical nationalism; strong elements of his native Bohemian (i.e. Czech or Slavonic) folk music appear in his music in the dance and narrative forms of the furiant and the dumka respectively. But despite such general influences of form, rhythm and mood, Dvorák's music was always entirely original, characteristic, and, by the standards of the best chamber music, masterful. Though he was not a pioneer, his music has a freshness, a clarity of texture and a bounty of dramatic lyricism that makes it original.
Dvorák's most well-known works date from the 1890's during his three-year sojourn to America where he served as director of the National Conservatory in New York. They include the New World Symphony, the Viola Quintet and the "American" String Quartet. Dvorák encountered American folk music in the form of Native-American drumming and African-American spirituals, the latter of which he regarded as profoundly original music that might serve as a basis for a national style. Many find strong influences of both genres in Dvorák's own "American" compositions while others claim that his music is entirely consistent with his own European folk and classical traditions. Dvorák himself denied that he intentionally incorporated any American elements. Nonetheless, the "American" String Quartet in particular bears the stamp of the time and place of its composition.
Ironically, Dvorák composed the American quartet while on holiday in the predominantly Bohemian farming community of Spillville, Iowa. A spirit of relaxation and perhaps joyful homecoming inspired him to swiftly compose the quartet within a few weeks. Flowing, spacious, and bright, the music seems to reflect his disposition, if not, as some claim, the expanse of the American plains. The most pervasive aspect of the quartet supporting these qualities, as well as reflecting Dvorák's general preoccupation with folk idioms, is the use of the pentatonic or five-note scale: nearly every primary and secondary theme throughout the quartet uses a form of it. Common in folk music around the world, the pentatonic scale omits the semitones found at the 4th and the 7th degrees of the more common classical scale yielding a specific quality of broadness, stability and a lack of tension (even in a minor key). Whatever influences or expressive intentions lay behind this choice, it imbues the quartet with a personality and a continuity that is distinctive and strongly evocative. The most particular trace of the quartet's rural, American origin, however, is birdsong. The third movement Scherzo features the song of the Scarlet Tanager, a bird that Dvorák heard and transcribed while hiking the countryside. After an initial statement of a sprightly, rustic theme, the first violin sings the birdsong high in the treble range. The instantaneous evocation of dance, the outdoors, and the piercing simplicity of nature's own music define a pure moment of folk music as high art.
Kai Christiansen is a musicologist and a frequent writer and lecturer on chamber music.
© Kai Christiansen. All rights reserved.