CM Notes » Takacs Quartet
Mill Valley Chamber Music Society
January 11, 2009
String Quartet in C Major, op. 76, no. 3 Hoboken no. III: 77 “Emperor” Franz Josef Haydn 1732 - 1809
Haydn probably wrote 83 string quartets but experts disagree because the last 7 of them are contained in an integrated work The Seven Last Words of Christ. There are also squabbles about one more or less turning up in ancient castles and so forth but for the rest of us the body of work we usually associate with his name is quite good enough.
By opus 76 he was at the top of his form. The quartets date from 1797 and 1798. Count Joseph Erdody commissioned the set and Haydn dedicated them to his patron. He only wrote two more completed quartets after that. Later masters pored over his collection of quartets, studying the devices he used to make each one unique. The choice of key was very important to him. All three of the great Viennese masters, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, were sensitive to the “color” of particular keys. Haydn controlled the succession of keys from one quartet to another in each series. In opus 76, only the second one is in a minor key. He did not use the same key twice in succession within a series.
The roles of the voices in the quartet have become very supple. The first violin is no longer a prima donna but pulls its weight throughout each movement. Many important statements still appear in the higher registers but that reflects a certain aesthetic reality and not status. Before Haydn’s time music evolved slowly from the contrapuntal, and thus musically democratic, style of the 17th century to the “classical” style of the 18th.
This transitional work took place in Mannheim where composers such as Carl Stamitz began experimenting with sonata form. This description has two meanings. One is the shape of the work as a whole. The other is the internal structure of a particular movement. In that sense it means that there are an initial statement of the thematic material, a development of these themes and finally a recapitulation of the initial statement.
By the end of the eighteenth century, it was customary for large scale instrumental sonatas and symphonies to be in four movements with the two outer movements being being fast and the inner two slower. With this change the first violin assumed the dominance which lasted for almost 60 years. Haydn showed that this dominance was illusory and that themes could move from one instrument to another and still maintain thematic continuity.
In Haydn’s hands the classical string quartet was actually a miniature symphony. It was a completely different composition from the many divertimentos and other occasional pieces which happened to have 4 voices. Because he devoted so many years to thinking about the string quartet, Haydn was able to release himself even from a slavish dependence on sonata form while keeping the structure firmly under control.
The opus 76 quartets were truly loved and received nicknames very soon after they were published. Number 3 in this set, ”Emperor” or “Kaiser”, stems from Haydn having used his own anthem of “God Save Emperor Francis” in the second movement. This tune later became the German national anthem, “Deutschlandlied”. Haydn wrote the movement as a set of variations on this theme.
Haydn stuck to his choice of C major for the first, third and fourth movements though c minor does appear in the last movement. The first movement is in sonata form as is the last movement. The motive appears right at the beginning and Haydn spends most of his time working it out. A peasant drone provides an interesting sort of intermezzo about halfway through the first movement. Quite unexpectedly the violins play a Hungarian dance tune in a remote key over this drone. It then vanishes and does not reappear.
The third movement is the standard minuet and trio. The last movement opens in c minor with three fierce chords but one still finds fragments and shards of the opening theme even at this late stage. C major makes a fleeting reappearance but the minor key imposes its own mood.
String Quartet no. 1, op. 7 Bela Bartok 1881 – 1945
There is an austerity about Bartok’s music, a stripped down quality with no superfluous content which makes it instantly recognizable. He wrote this quartet in 1908, early in his career but one already notes that it lacks a key signature. Consider how radical this move was in light of the comments about Haydn and keys above. A key signature tethers a piece to the diatonic system which was being exploded by Schoenberg. Bartok was moving off in his own direction, interested in the experiments not only of Schoenberg but Debusssy and Stravinsky at times.
As music evolved to the early modern period it was organized in “modes”, unique series of notes found in ancient music. One problem with these older arrangements was that the harmonics contradicted each other when more than one note was played at the same time. Modes gave way to the “well tempered” idea by which every tone and semitone had a standardized major and minor scale attached to it. J.S. Bach was the champion whose prestige set the standard for 200 years.
Bartok was fully educated in the conventional music of his time and might have become a concert virtuoso if he had had a different temperament. Instead he preferred to gather folk melodies and compose pieces which made use of his discoveries. Hungary was tired of being an adjunct to the Austro-Hungarian empire and nationalism in music was a powerful form of political protest.
Bartok was a fervent nationalist. His earliest music still bore traces of the dominant florid styles of that era but he rapidly shook that off and became increasingly dissonant. As he pursued his own ideas the publishers were less and less enthusiastic. Even Busoni could not manage to persuade Breitkopf and Hartel to accept Bartok’s Opus 6.
Folk music grew outside the confines of the “official” styles, not concerned with keys, modes or any other such trappings. Bartok strove to remain faithful to the melodies, building the organic structure of what followed from the inside out. Any harmonic or rhythmic adornment rose logically from the folk song. He did not impose the song onto a preordained form.
In all he wrote 6 string quartets, each one reflecting his specific thinking at that point. The first quartet has the least amount of folk music in it as it came before his long sojourns in the countryside, usually with Kodaly.
Bartok used his ”Geyer” motive in the first movement, a dirge-like lento which fuses itself into the next movement without a break. Stefi Geyer was a gifted violinist with whom he was in love and for whom he started to write a violin concerto. When Stefi broke it off he was angry and recycled the theme into several other works. As the movements succeed each other, the tempi quicken.
The first movement is tripartite: A-B-A. No tonality is established while the violins play in canon but the music hovers between various keys briefly. The use of canon and chromatic intervals keeps the tonality unstable. The end of the repeated A section sets the transition to the second movement.
The third movement is in a spare mood. It is one of the first works which uses the brusque folk like style which later became a constant for him. The cello begins with a parody of a popular Hungarian song. Pentatonic phrases appear at least twice in this finale.
String Quartet in a minor, op. 41, no. 1 Robert Schumann 1810 - 1856
1842 was Schumann’s “year for chamber music”. That was when he wrote the gorgeous piano quintet, the piano quartet and the three string quartets. The latter works only took seven weeks to complete, almost lightning speed if one thinks about it. It suggests that the ideas were far advanced in his mind before he even sat down to write them although we have no evidence for this. Schumann was a tenacious diarist as well as a prolific writer of musical criticism. We know a great deal about his daily life.
Mozart left clear evidence that much of his music was mentally complete before he began to write it. Beethoven was at the opposite end of the spectrum, working and re-working his themes until he expressed exactly what he meant. Recent research has blurred these neat little labels. Mozart did make changes and corrections in his manuscripts. It makes sense that other composers would have worked on their ideas subconsciously. Their next steps then depended on the different ways they created the actual work.
In the years leading up to his marriage to Clara Wieck, Schumann went from one depression to another. Most people know killed himself. His suicide is largely attributed to the late effects of syphilis and general paresis of the insane. That may indeed be part of it but a careful reading of his biography shows that he was prone to severe depressions throughout his adult life. Before he was married he led a fairly wild life with too much alcohol and often injudicious connections with women. In modern psychiatric diagnosis his drinking would be seen not as primary alcoholism but as symptomatic, an attempt to free himself from the demons.
Clara Wieck was the daughter of Friedrich Wieck, the leading piano teacher of his generation. She was 9 years old when Schumann first encountered her at his teacher ‘s house, already a polished pianist and ready for a scintillating career. Wieck poured everything he had into her as Leopold Mozart did with his son. When Schumann rediscovered her at the age of 15 and fell in love Wieck was furious. He had not created his marvelous daughter to be thrown away on a penniless musician.
Clara’s father may have had a very cynical agenda for his amazing daughter but he was an astute observer. Schumann’s drinking gave him a perfect weapon for the refusal of his consent. They finally overcame all Friedrich Wieck’s stalling and were married in 1840. By 1842, Robert Schumann was in a very mellow frame of mind.
We have had all these interesting thoughts about the background of the string quartets and we have not even gone into the fact that Schumann was first and foremost a pianist. In looking over his catalogue one finds very few pieces other than the symphonies without a piano somewhere or another.
How did he approach those four separate ”naked” lines which epitomize the quartet? This “nakedness” terrified Brahms and delayed his writing a string quartet until quite late in his career.
Listening to the string quartet opus 41, no. 1 shows that Schumann had absorbed his harmony lessons well. Although he plays it safe by keeping to the key of A minor for three of the four movements, within each movement he is quite adventurous. The first movement opens with a flowing introduction. The principal theme is rhythmical and developed with some contrapuntal techniques. The phrases are fluid and convey a definitely romantic feeling in spite of these formal references. He explores fairly remote keys before the recapitulation in the signature key.
The second movement sparkles with a rapid repeated note forming its base. Instead of a trio, Schumann turns to an intermezzo for the central section. This too is an indicator of romanticism. In the third movement, adagio, very lyrical themes move from one instrument to another supported by arpeggios above and below. The extraordinary energy hinted at in the scherzo returns in full force for the last movement.
It contrasts two separate motifs, one ascending and the other descending. Nominally the descending theme is the principal one but in fact the rapidly ascending split thirds of the second theme dominate. The split thirds are played by all four instruments in turn.
January 11, 2009
String Quartet in C Major, op. 76, no. 3 Hoboken no. III: 77 “Emperor” Franz Josef Haydn 1732 - 1809
Haydn probably wrote 83 string quartets but experts disagree because the last 7 of them are contained in an integrated work The Seven Last Words of Christ. There are also squabbles about one more or less turning up in ancient castles and so forth but for the rest of us the body of work we usually associate with his name is quite good enough.
By opus 76 he was at the top of his form. The quartets date from 1797 and 1798. Count Joseph Erdody commissioned the set and Haydn dedicated them to his patron. He only wrote two more completed quartets after that. Later masters pored over his collection of quartets, studying the devices he used to make each one unique. The choice of key was very important to him. All three of the great Viennese masters, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, were sensitive to the “color” of particular keys. Haydn controlled the succession of keys from one quartet to another in each series. In opus 76, only the second one is in a minor key. He did not use the same key twice in succession within a series.
The roles of the voices in the quartet have become very supple. The first violin is no longer a prima donna but pulls its weight throughout each movement. Many important statements still appear in the higher registers but that reflects a certain aesthetic reality and not status. Before Haydn’s time music evolved slowly from the contrapuntal, and thus musically democratic, style of the 17th century to the “classical” style of the 18th.
This transitional work took place in Mannheim where composers such as Carl Stamitz began experimenting with sonata form. This description has two meanings. One is the shape of the work as a whole. The other is the internal structure of a particular movement. In that sense it means that there are an initial statement of the thematic material, a development of these themes and finally a recapitulation of the initial statement.
By the end of the eighteenth century, it was customary for large scale instrumental sonatas and symphonies to be in four movements with the two outer movements being being fast and the inner two slower. With this change the first violin assumed the dominance which lasted for almost 60 years. Haydn showed that this dominance was illusory and that themes could move from one instrument to another and still maintain thematic continuity.
In Haydn’s hands the classical string quartet was actually a miniature symphony. It was a completely different composition from the many divertimentos and other occasional pieces which happened to have 4 voices. Because he devoted so many years to thinking about the string quartet, Haydn was able to release himself even from a slavish dependence on sonata form while keeping the structure firmly under control.
The opus 76 quartets were truly loved and received nicknames very soon after they were published. Number 3 in this set, ”Emperor” or “Kaiser”, stems from Haydn having used his own anthem of “God Save Emperor Francis” in the second movement. This tune later became the German national anthem, “Deutschlandlied”. Haydn wrote the movement as a set of variations on this theme.
Haydn stuck to his choice of C major for the first, third and fourth movements though c minor does appear in the last movement. The first movement is in sonata form as is the last movement. The motive appears right at the beginning and Haydn spends most of his time working it out. A peasant drone provides an interesting sort of intermezzo about halfway through the first movement. Quite unexpectedly the violins play a Hungarian dance tune in a remote key over this drone. It then vanishes and does not reappear.
The third movement is the standard minuet and trio. The last movement opens in c minor with three fierce chords but one still finds fragments and shards of the opening theme even at this late stage. C major makes a fleeting reappearance but the minor key imposes its own mood.
String Quartet no. 1, op. 7 Bela Bartok 1881 – 1945
There is an austerity about Bartok’s music, a stripped down quality with no superfluous content which makes it instantly recognizable. He wrote this quartet in 1908, early in his career but one already notes that it lacks a key signature. Consider how radical this move was in light of the comments about Haydn and keys above. A key signature tethers a piece to the diatonic system which was being exploded by Schoenberg. Bartok was moving off in his own direction, interested in the experiments not only of Schoenberg but Debusssy and Stravinsky at times.
As music evolved to the early modern period it was organized in “modes”, unique series of notes found in ancient music. One problem with these older arrangements was that the harmonics contradicted each other when more than one note was played at the same time. Modes gave way to the “well tempered” idea by which every tone and semitone had a standardized major and minor scale attached to it. J.S. Bach was the champion whose prestige set the standard for 200 years.
Bartok was fully educated in the conventional music of his time and might have become a concert virtuoso if he had had a different temperament. Instead he preferred to gather folk melodies and compose pieces which made use of his discoveries. Hungary was tired of being an adjunct to the Austro-Hungarian empire and nationalism in music was a powerful form of political protest.
Bartok was a fervent nationalist. His earliest music still bore traces of the dominant florid styles of that era but he rapidly shook that off and became increasingly dissonant. As he pursued his own ideas the publishers were less and less enthusiastic. Even Busoni could not manage to persuade Breitkopf and Hartel to accept Bartok’s Opus 6.
Folk music grew outside the confines of the “official” styles, not concerned with keys, modes or any other such trappings. Bartok strove to remain faithful to the melodies, building the organic structure of what followed from the inside out. Any harmonic or rhythmic adornment rose logically from the folk song. He did not impose the song onto a preordained form.
In all he wrote 6 string quartets, each one reflecting his specific thinking at that point. The first quartet has the least amount of folk music in it as it came before his long sojourns in the countryside, usually with Kodaly.
Bartok used his ”Geyer” motive in the first movement, a dirge-like lento which fuses itself into the next movement without a break. Stefi Geyer was a gifted violinist with whom he was in love and for whom he started to write a violin concerto. When Stefi broke it off he was angry and recycled the theme into several other works. As the movements succeed each other, the tempi quicken.
The first movement is tripartite: A-B-A. No tonality is established while the violins play in canon but the music hovers between various keys briefly. The use of canon and chromatic intervals keeps the tonality unstable. The end of the repeated A section sets the transition to the second movement.
The third movement is in a spare mood. It is one of the first works which uses the brusque folk like style which later became a constant for him. The cello begins with a parody of a popular Hungarian song. Pentatonic phrases appear at least twice in this finale.
String Quartet in a minor, op. 41, no. 1 Robert Schumann 1810 - 1856
1842 was Schumann’s “year for chamber music”. That was when he wrote the gorgeous piano quintet, the piano quartet and the three string quartets. The latter works only took seven weeks to complete, almost lightning speed if one thinks about it. It suggests that the ideas were far advanced in his mind before he even sat down to write them although we have no evidence for this. Schumann was a tenacious diarist as well as a prolific writer of musical criticism. We know a great deal about his daily life.
Mozart left clear evidence that much of his music was mentally complete before he began to write it. Beethoven was at the opposite end of the spectrum, working and re-working his themes until he expressed exactly what he meant. Recent research has blurred these neat little labels. Mozart did make changes and corrections in his manuscripts. It makes sense that other composers would have worked on their ideas subconsciously. Their next steps then depended on the different ways they created the actual work.
In the years leading up to his marriage to Clara Wieck, Schumann went from one depression to another. Most people know killed himself. His suicide is largely attributed to the late effects of syphilis and general paresis of the insane. That may indeed be part of it but a careful reading of his biography shows that he was prone to severe depressions throughout his adult life. Before he was married he led a fairly wild life with too much alcohol and often injudicious connections with women. In modern psychiatric diagnosis his drinking would be seen not as primary alcoholism but as symptomatic, an attempt to free himself from the demons.
Clara Wieck was the daughter of Friedrich Wieck, the leading piano teacher of his generation. She was 9 years old when Schumann first encountered her at his teacher ‘s house, already a polished pianist and ready for a scintillating career. Wieck poured everything he had into her as Leopold Mozart did with his son. When Schumann rediscovered her at the age of 15 and fell in love Wieck was furious. He had not created his marvelous daughter to be thrown away on a penniless musician.
Clara’s father may have had a very cynical agenda for his amazing daughter but he was an astute observer. Schumann’s drinking gave him a perfect weapon for the refusal of his consent. They finally overcame all Friedrich Wieck’s stalling and were married in 1840. By 1842, Robert Schumann was in a very mellow frame of mind.
We have had all these interesting thoughts about the background of the string quartets and we have not even gone into the fact that Schumann was first and foremost a pianist. In looking over his catalogue one finds very few pieces other than the symphonies without a piano somewhere or another.
How did he approach those four separate ”naked” lines which epitomize the quartet? This “nakedness” terrified Brahms and delayed his writing a string quartet until quite late in his career.
Listening to the string quartet opus 41, no. 1 shows that Schumann had absorbed his harmony lessons well. Although he plays it safe by keeping to the key of A minor for three of the four movements, within each movement he is quite adventurous. The first movement opens with a flowing introduction. The principal theme is rhythmical and developed with some contrapuntal techniques. The phrases are fluid and convey a definitely romantic feeling in spite of these formal references. He explores fairly remote keys before the recapitulation in the signature key.
The second movement sparkles with a rapid repeated note forming its base. Instead of a trio, Schumann turns to an intermezzo for the central section. This too is an indicator of romanticism. In the third movement, adagio, very lyrical themes move from one instrument to another supported by arpeggios above and below. The extraordinary energy hinted at in the scherzo returns in full force for the last movement.
It contrasts two separate motifs, one ascending and the other descending. Nominally the descending theme is the principal one but in fact the rapidly ascending split thirds of the second theme dominate. The split thirds are played by all four instruments in turn.
