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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 1 “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 2 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. 3