Download Artaria String Quartet 2015-16 Program IV Conscientious Objections

Artaria Chamber Music Series 2015-16
Music in the Shadow of War
Program IV: Conscientious Objections
Conscientious objection has long played a role in artistic expression. For Benjamin Britten it was ardent
enough to drive him from his English homeland to America and to compose such works as his War Requiem
in which two soldiers of opposing forces are portrayed in conversation from their graves. While Mozart’s
conscientious objection may be more subtle, it is nevertheless a lasting one. It was Mozart who consolidated
the Classical style that Beethoven would culminate and direct toward Modernism. In other words, he
profoundly affected the direction of Western music and its freedom from the rules of earlier eras. His
monumental Requiem of 1791, composed in the year of his own death at the age of thirty-five, was
performed recently in a memorial concert for Palestinian and Israeli victims in one of the many Middle
Eastern conflicts.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756(1756-1791)
String Quartet in G Major, K. 387
Allegro vivace assai
Minuetto: Allegro; Trio
Andante cantabile
Molto allegro
ABOUT THE COMPOSER: Mozart was so impressed with Haydn’s Op. 33 quartets that he
undertook the composition of six string quartets (K. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464, and 465), which he dedicated to
his hero. He sent them to Haydn on September 1, 1785 with a letter, addressed to “My dear friend Haydn,”
referring to them as his “sons.” After hearing the quartets, Haydn made his famous comment to Mozart’s
father, quoted in a letter from Leopold Mozart to Maria Anna Mozart in 1785, saying that he considered
Mozart the greatest composer known to him.
Mozart’s bow to Haydn in the six quartets he dedicated to him reveals much about the genius of
both Haydn and Mozart as well as the complexity of the string quartet form itself. Essential to Mozart’s
admiration of Haydn’s quartets was the older composer’s integration of musical ideas that extended far
beyond simple sonata form and his equal treatment of all four instruments. Mozart, in turn, took these
principles and applied his own singular genius to them. Thus we have, in Mozart, the building of melodies
from kernel phrases followed by the expansion and reintegration of them in ways far more complex than any
composer had done before. This concept would lead to Beethoven’s highly developed use of the motto in his
great canon of string quartets and even to what Arnold Schoenberg would call the “developing variation” in
Brahms. Nor let us omit the ultimate effects on Bartók and Shostakovich. In other words, what Mozart
recognized in Haydn and recreated in his own way was essential to the development of Western music, and
specifically the string quartet, from the 18th century to the present and presumably beyond.
That Mozart, by his own admission, struggled with the string quartet form is not evident in his six
quartets dedicated to Haydn. The first three were composed between December 1782 and July 1783 and the
second three between November 1784 and January 1785.
ABOUT THE WORK: The opening movement of the K. 387 Quartet reflects Mozart’s new found
joy, confidence, and clarity with the string quartet form. There is a certain ease about it not heard in the
earlier quartets. Contrast is also evident between the spaciousness of the first subject and the tightness of the
second.
The second movement Minuetto pushes the dance form well beyond its traditions. It opens with a
rising chromatic scale that alternates between loud and soft. The first theme is artfully passed around to all
four instruments. The first violin presents the second theme over an accompaniment from the other
instruments. A third theme is introduced and briefly developed before Mozart concludes with an integration
of all three. Next he introduces a forbidding Trio section in G minor with strong unison playing. The
movement concludes with a return to the Minuetto.
The lovely third movement Andante cantabile is one of the most serene and contemplative moments in
all of Mozart. Here, rather than traditional development, he uses the returning motto much in the way
Beethoven would do it and Brahms a century later. All comes to a quiet close.
Artaria Chamber Music Series 2015-16
The last movement is remarkable in its composition. Not only do we have a complex fugue
developing from a simple four-note theme, but also a cheerful dance melody treated in counterpoint.
Juxtaposed to the complicated counterpoint is a straightforward melody with Mozart moving comfortably
back and forth between the two. A recapitulation recalls two of the fugal themes but this time intertwined.
The movement ends with a brief coda that includes references to some chromatic snippets from the
development and to the first fugue.
Benjamin Britten (1913(1913-1976)
String Quartet No. 2 in C Major, Op. 36
Allegro calmo senza rigore
Vivace
Chacony: Sostenuto
ABOUT THE COMPOSER: Benjamin Britten’s stature as one of the great composers of the 20th
century is confirmed by his operas Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice. His
monumental War Requiem also attests to this, but so do his three string quartets and his youthful Phantasy
Quartet of 1932. His place in English music is unique because of his experimental style that reflected the
works of Bartók and Schoenberg rather than what might be perceived as the softer traditions of his
compatriots. Nevertheless his political loyalties were thoroughly English even though his pacifism led him to
leave his beloved England for America in 1939 with his famous partner, tenor Peter Pears. He returned home
in 1942 and remained there to compose much of his most important work and, with Pears, to launch the
famous Aldeburgh Festival in 1948. In the 1950s he developed an interest in Eastern music. The 1960s
brought strong relationships with Russian musical figures such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Sviatoslav Richter,
and Mstislav Rostropovich for whom he wrote his remarkable cello works.
In the last year of his life, Britten was granted a life-peerage and became Baron Britten of Aldeburgh,
the first British composer to be thus honored. He is buried beside Peter Pears in the churchyard of
Aldeburgh Parish Church.
ABOUT THE WORK: If Benjamin Britten’s string quartets are ever overlooked, it is not because
of any lack of beauty, profundity, and power but because of the virtuosic demands they make on players and
the attention demanded of the audience—as exemplified in the String Quartet No. 2 of 1945. In an attempt
to tap the inspiration for this masterpiece, we can look to Britten’s 1945 tour of Germany where he and
Yehudi Menuhin performed for concentration camp survivors. The String Quartet No. 2 followed that tour.
Yet even if one removed such real life connections from the Quartet, the music itself is profoundly
disturbing—perhaps another reason for its lack of regular performance.
The first movement, Allegro calmo senza rigore, honors sonata form, but this hardly explains its
effectiveness. That lies more in its elusively solemn opening that soon intensifies but retains its edge of
sadness. Then Britten introduces a lyricism for all four instruments, not just for the first violin as expected.
The cello is notably dramatic and beautiful as part of the close alignment and intense conversation that ensues
among the instruments.
The alarming Vivace races by but not without its own particular effectiveness. This brief second
movement is fleetingly brutal in its impact.
The Chacony, on the other hand, is a long and fully developed movement unique in many ways and as
emotionally gripping as music can be. By definition, a chaconne is a series of variations over a continually
repeated bass phrase (basso ostinato), but again, form alone does not explain the powerful effectiveness of this
movement. Nor are the extreme virtuosic demands made on all four players the only key. The agonies of this
movement can best be associated with Benjamin Britten’s reaction to the agonies of World War II. In its
powerful conclusion, we sense one ray of hope.
© 2015 Lucy Miller Murray
Lucy Miller Murray is the author of Chamber Music: An Extensive Guide for Listeners published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2015.