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Program Notes
Copyright © 2014 by Jason S. Heilman, Ph.D.
Symphony nearly a decade later. The coda boldly introduces a new theme, also based on the opening rhythmic
gesture. The adagio affettuoso ed appassionato second
movement was reportedly inspired by the tomb scene
from the end of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Starting
from a mournful melody in the first violin, answered by
the second violin and viola, this tragic movement builds
to an intense climax, then fades. The fleet-footed scherzo
that follows dispels the gloomy mood and injects a measure of wit. For the allegro finale, Beethoven borrowed
from himself, re-composing a theme from his earlier Cminor String Trio (Op. 9, No. 3). This spinning melody
recurs throughout the movement, bringing the quartet to
an ebullient conclusion.
Quartet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 18, No 1
composed ca. 1798–1800 — 27 minutes
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
When Ludwig van Beethoven moved from his hometown
of Bonn to Vienna in 1792, it was initially for the chance
to hone his compositional skills under the tutelage of Joseph Haydn. Unfortunately, Beethoven’s expectations of
receiving “the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn”
were dashed when he found the elder composer to be a
pedantic and detached teacher. In 1795, Beethoven broke
off all contact after Haydn savaged his Opus 1 piano trios,
calling them unfit for publication. Yet for three years,
Beethoven avoided publishing any music in Haydn’s preferred genres, thus averting any direct comparisons between master and student. This changed when Beethoven
was commissioned to write his first string quartets by
Prince Lobkowicz, one of Vienna’s foremost arts patrons.
Beethoven must have known that Lobkowicz had commissioned six quartets from Haydn that same year
(though Haydn would only complete two, publishing
them as his Opus 77). Comparisons would have been unavoidable, but Beethoven jumped at his chance to beat
Haydn at his own game. Over the next two years, he fulfilled the commission, publishing the six quartets together in 1801 as his Opus 18.
Museon Polemos
composed in 2012 — 26 minutes
Dan Welcher (b. 1948)
One of the most frequently performed composers of his
generation, Dan Welcher has written over a hundred
works, including operas, concertos, symphonies, vocal
works, piano solos, and chamber music. Born in Rochester, New York, Welcher studied bassoon at the Eastman
School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. In
1972, he became Principal Bassoonist of the Louisville
Orchestra while concurrently teaching composition and
theory at the University of Louisville. In 1978, he joined
the composition faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently Regents Professor of Fine Arts.
A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Welcher
leads the UT New Music Ensemble, which he founded,
and from 1999 to 2009, he hosted an award-winning program called “Knowing the Score” for KMFA radio in Austin.
In the eighteenth century, music publishers did not consider string quartets substantial enough to be published
individually. Instead, they were printed in sets of six,
much as Baroque concertos were a century earlier. Beethoven would later break this mold, releasing his last seven quartets as freestanding works, but at the beginning of
his career, he was still bound by tradition. At the same
time, however, this tradition offered composers the
chance to display the full range of their skills over a set of
diverse works. Beethoven did not disappoint: although
the Opus 18 quartets show the influence of Haydn and
Mozart, each one has its own character. Together, they
point to the very different direction Beethoven would later take.
Welcher’s string octet, Museon Polemos, was premiered
in Austin by the Miró and Shanghai Quartets in 2012.
Regarding the inspiration for the work, the composer
wrote:
“The year 2012–13 marked the 100th anniversary of
classical music’s most notorious scandal: the world
premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s epoch-making ballet Le
Sacre du Printemps, usually translated as ‘The Rite of
Spring.’ This piece not only put Stravinsky on the map
for all time; it is generally considered to be the ‘beginning of modern music.’ But Stravinsky was a restless
musical soul, and he didn’t stay in the Bad Boy Modernist mode for very long. By the mid-1920s and all
through the 1930s and 40s, he evolved stylistically into a more polite neoclassical composer. When Texas
Performing Arts commissioned me to write a double
string quartet, it was with an eye to Stravinsky’s neoclassic ballet scores that I began work.
Assembling six quartets into a set was an art form in itself. The composer had only a limited opportunity to appeal to a potential buyer, so the choice of the first quartet
was crucial. This is why Beethoven’s First String Quartet
is not, in fact, the first quartet he composed. Instead, we
believe that this quartet, in the key of F major, was probably composed second, but it ended up as No. 1 on the
basis of its overall strength. The allegro con brio first
movement opens with an attention-grabbing gesture: a
simple turn-based motive in the unison strings. This settles into a propulsive melody, which eventually segues
into a leaping second theme. In the development, Beethoven links the short opening motive into insistent, repeating chains, prefiguring what he would do with his Fifth
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“Basically, Museon Polemos is a 25-minute ballet
without dancers — but with two rival dance teams.
When I say ‘ballet,’ I’m thinking of the classic Balanchine/Stravinsky works of the 1930s and 40s, like Orpheus and Jeux des Cartes. These are pieces that don’t
exactly tell a story, but that imply one; with that wonderful flexibility of mood, speed, and timing that those
pieces have. I concocted a scenario in which Quartet A
is one ‘tribe,’ and Quartet B is another. They sit not all
together, but separated on the stage facing each other
on a half-angle to the audience.
Dona Nobis Pacem. The piece ends with a frame of the
very beginning: the two gangs know and respect each
other now, and while they may never completely reconcile, there is harmony between them.”
Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20
composed in 1825 — 30 minutes
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
Before he became famous as a prolific composer and a
conductor who returned the long-forgotten works of Johann Sebastian Bach to the standard repertoire, Felix
Mendelssohn was one of music’s great child prodigies.
Grandson of the Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), young Felix had a remarkably rich
childhood. His father, Abraham, was a successful banker
in Hamburg when Felix was born. A year later, the family
moved to Berlin to escape Napoleon’s invasion of Germany. There, Felix’s mother, Lea, maintained a lively salon
that was frequented by some of the finest minds in all of
German-speaking Europe, including Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe, who was fascinated with the precocious Felix. When Felix and his equally talented older sister Fanny (1805–1847) were still young, Abraham and his wife
converted from Judaism to Christianity, and changed the
family name to Bartholdy in order to assimilate into
German society. Felix went by Mendelssohn Bartholdy for
the rest of his life, but he privately resented the change.
“The piece is in three big sections. It’s completely abstract, in that there’s no real ‘story,’ but it has a scenario nonetheless. Each quartet is a ‘tribe,’ or a ‘gang’
with its own sonic identity and its own way of acting
and reacting. Quartet A is Apollonian, to a certain extent, and Quartet B is Dionysian: the former is cool,
well-disciplined, thoughtful, ‘neoclassic,’ while the latter is a bit rougher: hedonistic, swaggering, governed
by the senses. Each of the two quartets has its own
musical language: the various chords and scales that
are used for Quartet A are different from the materials
used for Quartet B.
“Part I is all about introducing the players, first as
separate quartets and then with individual solos: it
consists of a lot of connected short sections, about a
minute each — just long enough to get one set of
dancers into the wings while the next one skips on,
though it begins and ends with both quartets in full
sail. The individual ‘showoff’ solos for each quartet are
preceded by swirling introductory music, with a sort of
‘your turn’ feeling, as one quartet cedes the floor to the
other. Part II is a ‘challenge;’ a standoff between the
groups. Quartet A plays chordal music, but Quartet B’s
first violinist decides to strut his stuff with a big cadenza. This happens twice, until it appears that Quartet B will win the day, but then Quartet A begins a
slow, barcarolle-like motion that is emotionally contained, but nonetheless is very sad. Within a minute or
two, all eight of them are rocking together on that boat
— and after the climax (actually quite Romantic), the
groups re-separate and leave the way they came. Separate, but equal.
Like most children of his station, Felix studied the piano
and the violin, and later took composition lessons from
Carl Friedrich Zelter. The director of the Berlin Singakademie chorus, Zelter was a musical traditionalist who introduced Felix to the music of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and
Mozart. From age twelve to fourteen, Mendelssohn composed a series of twelve String Symphonies in the classical style. These were never published during Mendelssohn’s lifetime, but were performed by a private orchestra
in his family’s home. His first published work was a quartet for piano and strings, which he had written when he
was only thirteen years old. At fifteen, Mendelssohn composed his First Symphony, in a Beethovenian style, and
published it as his Opus 11. The next year, he would compose one of the most significant chamber works of his
career.
“Part III is the actual fight; a sort of ‘rumble of the
quartets’. The gangs take turns being the aggressor,
and a hint of the choppy chords of Dances des Adolescents from Le Sacre du Printemps appears. The music
is cast as a big tarantella with side trips, and both
groups are feverishly trading off material throughout.
There’s a tragic highpoint to all this fast-and-furious
fun, though, and it leaves us in the dust unable to
move. Gradually, though, we do move, and a song begins, rising slowly from the depths with a cantus firmus of Gregorian chant sounding in the violins, over
and over. The source-tune quoted here is the original
fourth century music for the Latin Mass to the words
Mendelssohn was only sixteen when he wrote his famous
Octet, which would be published seven years later as his
Opus 20. Originally intended as a birthday present for
Mendelssohn’s close friend, violinist Eduard Ritz (1802–
1832), the Octet had few musical precedents. The string
ensemble functions not as a pair of opposed quartets, as
in earlier octets, but as an integrated whole. Essentially,
the piece is a symphony for reduced forces — albeit one
with a prominent first violin part, written for Ritz himself.
The first movement, marked allegro moderato ma con
fuoco, puts the violin on display right away with a soaring
solo melody. The muted, stepwise second theme in the
movement’s sonata form, introduced by the fourth violin
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and first viola, brings us down to earth. These two themes
are plunged into murky darkness in their development,
only to emerge triumphant before the end. The andante
movement that follows serves as a calm interlude; set in a
closely related minor key, its tonal palate is generally
subdued. With the third movement, we get something
truly special: even at an early age, Mendelssohn had an
obvious gift for composing scherzos, and here is one of
his finest examples. In place of Haydn’s rusticity or Beethoven’s biting satire, Mendelssohn gives us a shimmering allegro leggierissimo movement that practically floats
on air. This seems to have been the very image the composer had in mind, in fact, as from his sister, we know
that the scherzo was intended to evoke the supernatural
flight described in the Walpurgis Night Dream scene from
Goethe’s Faust. The presto finale opens like a vigorous
fugue, but goes on to recall themes from earlier movements and even includes an oblique reference to Handel’s
“Halleluiah” Chorus. By its dizzying close, which drops
tantalizing hints of Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one might be forgiven for forgetting that this is the work of a sixteen-year-old.
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