This topic finds particular resonance at MIT, where the Music program and faculty were established in the School of Humanities by a German émigré after World War Two, Klaus Liepmann (albeit not via the California cohort), and where award-winning film music historian Martin Marks extols the virtues of these composers, and more, for all to hear.

Needless to say, this topic and this repertoire, even for the great chamber music, are far larger than we can cover even in one BCMS season. As it is, we began our presentation of the music with the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony on our December concert, and will end in February with the playing of Dahl’s Concerto a Tre. We have selected the most enticing of rare gems through which to tell the story in song text, forum, and concert. (For audio clips of the pieces on our program click here.) We are grateful to Martin Marks for his January Independent Activities Period (IAP) subject on Film Noir that is complemented by regularly scheduled DVD screenings of entire films with music by many of these composers and more. The class also is scheduled to visit Harvard’s Sackler Museum to see the work of visual artists from this cohort. In February, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts will have a film complementary series. You can find information for all the surrounding events here.

We hope you will also find time to participate in our BCMS Trivia Quiz on Facebook focused on the lives, contributions and achievements of this extraordinary group of composers. We hope as well that you will find their chamber music to be among the finest, and worthy of the traditions that we continue.

Sincerely,

Marcus

Two of our composers, Bach and Handel, were revered by everybody’s ‘composer of the month,’ Ludwig van Beethoven. (He turns 241 on December 16!) Beethoven came to the attention of Viennese audiences and musicians with his superb playing of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. He was known to have been an avid collector and student of Bach’s works, asking his publishers to send to him as many as possible.

In Beethoven’s last year of life, he warmly received a special gift from a friend named Johannes Andreas Stumpff. He wrote:

“My pen is unable to describe the great pleasure afforded me by the volumes of Handel’s work which you have sent me as gift–a royal gift…”

Cellist Peter Stumpf will be making a welcome visit after a long absence and career as principal cellist of the LA Philharmonic to open our program with Beethoven’s Twelve Variations for Piano and Cello on ‘See The Conqu’ring Hero Comes,’ from Handel’s Oratorio, Judas Maccabæus. This piece, which also welcomes the season of lights called Hanukkah (starting this year on December 20), will be the least challenging encounter with ‘variations’ that afternoon!

The most challenging may be in the most familiar piece on the program: Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Cello in A minor, Op. 114 by Johannes Brahms. It was premiered on December 12, 1891, 120 years ago! Why is such a gorgeous and listenable piece so challenging in terms of its use of variation? Perhaps because the ways in which its themes are derived and developed are so artfully hidden! To quote analyst Donald Francis Tovey:

“Where a melody has marked features of rise and fall, such as long scale passages or bold skips, the inversion, if productive of good harmonic structure and expression, will be a powerful method of transformation. This is admirably shown in Bach’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations, in the fifteenth fugue of the first book of his Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues, in the finale of Beethoven Sonata, op. 106 and in the second subjects of the first and last movements of Brahms’s Clarinet Trio.”

Fortunately, we can enjoy this work for its harmonies, sentiments and colloquy without being aware how every note and following phrase are specifically derived from the contours of rising arpeggio and falling scale that open the first movement.

That is just how Schoenberg would want his own music to be heard and enjoyed! He closely identified with Brahms’s working process and use of theme shape. He devoted a chapter of his book, Style and Idea, to describing how Brahms’s use of “continuing variation” influenced his own development. When I conducted the full fifteen-instrument version of the Chamber Symphony Op. 9 in Kresge Auditorium many years ago, a colleague remarked that he could recognize the influence of Brahms in my reading. The Piano Quintet version, arranged for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano by his student Anton Webern, will continue our series of Piano Quintets and introduce the first of the composers whose lives and work are the subject of our third upcoming January Winter Festival–Exiled to Hollywood: Outcast Artists in Southern California. This version has been in our BCMS repertoire since our first season 29 years ago, and repeated in 1988, 1989 and 2002!

For any ticket holders, students and the Goethe-Institut Boston newsletter subscribers interested in having a close encounter with the musicians and discussion of the piece, on Saturday, December 10 at 4 p.m. we will be hosting an open rehearsal and discussion of the Schoenberg at the Goethe-Institut Boston in Back Bay. Please see Goethe-Institut’s website or call BCMS for further information.

The Schoenberg will be preceded on the second half by Bach’s Trio Sonata from the “Musical Offering.” The Trio Sonata scored for flute, violin and keyboard is an island of sublime composition amid a sea of fugues, canons and other variations that comprise the larger work based on a theme given to Bach in person by His Majesty the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great.

Enjoy!

Marcus

The Haydn Piano Trio in C major is one of three dedicated to Therese Jansen, wife of his engraver Bartolozzi, and an apparently virtuosic former private student of Clementi. In the days before sustaining a public reputation, and before women were allowed to appear on stage, her musicianship and virtuosity inspired compositions from many composers. The trios of this set date from the time of Haydn’s years in England (1791-95) following Mozart’s death. We may recall that the latter two of three piano quartets commissioned from Mozart were cancelled by the publisher after the first quartet was delivered because the piano writing was deemed too virtuosic for home use in 1786 Vienna. In writing his second piano quartet for different publisher Mozart proved undeterred by the perceived local standard. For Haydn, the encounter with private greatness and public admiration beyond his national boundaries and expectations led to the creation of many of his greatest works including a few more sonatas for Jansen. This trio ends with one of Haydn’s greatest displays of humor, both in catchy tune and off beat accent.

Serenade for String Trio by Dohnányi has the distinction of being one of the most performed works for that combination after those of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Like the divertimenti and serenades of Mozart and Beethoven, it breaks the four-movement classical mold, employing instead five movements, the outer two using music for a march just like Beethoven’s Serenade in D major for String Trio. Where divertimenti and serenades of the past were often heard as background music intended to stimulate conversation, the Dohnányi was clearly written to be a show-stopper for three virtuosos who could not be denied. It is also the work of one who was to become an émigré from Hungary to Florida to teach at Florida State University following the war. Dohnányi is revered among musicians for his public stand against Nazi persecution of the Jews. His work is thereby the first of those by émigré composers we will be hearing this season as the focus of our Winter Festival.

Ernest Bloch’s Two Pieces for String Quartet were dedicated to the famed Griller String Quartet, with whom William Primrose recorded all the Mozart Viola Quintets as second violist. Since Bloch had already written two major string quartets and was soon after to write a third, it is possible these pieces were intended as encores adding spice and drive to their programs of classics, and as introductions to his longer quartets for presenters considering re-engagements.

As a young violin student growing up in the South Bronx in the 1950’s my first encounter with chamber music was seeing and hearing a telecast of the Schumann Piano Quintet played by the Budapest String Quartet with a pianist I cannot now recall. (It could have been Rudolf Serkin!) The most lasting visual image was of chiseled face of Boris Kroyt, the violist, turned outward over his viola toward the audience. The most lasting musical image was of the depth of feeling contained in the slow movement.

Four images of the Budapest String Quartet performing in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress. The lower left photo shows the image of Boris Kroyt similar to the 1950’s telecast mentioned above.

After many years of studying, performing, teaching and hearing the piece, I’m not surprised how popular it remains with audiences. It is still regarded as the first work successfully combining piano and string quartet by a major composer. It also marks the collapse of the social divide between the private and public concerts that was to allow chamber music be heard beyond the inner circle of performers and friends by a wider audience.

Schumann’s ideal for how to write chamber music was summed up in a review where he wrote: “no instrument dominates, and each has something to say.” However, he was to recognize in works by Mozart and Mendelssohn the need to strike a new balance between musical substance and virtuosic display; between the needs of adept amateurs playing at home and recitalists such as his wife, Clara and Felix Mendelssohn; and between orchestral textures with unison doublings and independence of parts in response to the growing demand for public performances in larger spaces. These factors helped make this quintet the perfect crossover.

This is the piece that made chamber music popular!

Enjoy!!

Mozart’s Piano Trio in B-flat major, written in 1786, is the mature work of a young composer whose life was to end much too soon in 1791.

The Four Poems for low voice, viola and Piano by Charles Martin Loeffler are among his earliest published works, Op. 5. The instrumentation easily evokes thoughts of the two songs, published late in life for the same forces (albeit for lower voice), by Johannes Brahms–his Op. 91–in 1884.

The Fantasy Pieces (1849) of Robert Schumann (1810-1856) are late works performed by a new young star in the cello firmament, Narek Hakhnazaryan, with BCMS pianist Mihae Lee. Narek won the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Cello Competition last summer in Moscow and will be making his BCMS debut in his first Boston appearance since winning.

Sofia Gubaidulina (so-FEE-a goo-bye-DOO-leen-ah), one of today’s most celebrated composers, will turn eighty on October 24. Her Piano Quintet in C major dates from 1957 when she was just 26. Although considered a student work, it is praised for its mastery of form, clarity of texture, and wit. As if being a great composer at an early age were not enough, she was the pianist at the premiere in 1958 in the small hall at the Moscow Conservatory.

Enjoy!

Marcus

It is hard to contain the excitement we feel about the music we’ll hear, the artists we’ll experience and the ideas we’ll explore throughout the rest of the season. Our mission, to present insightful performances of the finest chamber music by many of today’s most exciting players, continues with a balance of the familiar and the new in every concert, masterworks of every period placed to honor creators and creation.

Our anniversary honorees this year include Charles Martin Loeffler, Sofia Gubaidulina, Ingolf Dahl, and Anton Arensky. The April performance of Janáček’s Violin and Piano Sonata coincides with the anniversary of its premiere in April 1912! Sofia Gubaidulina, one of the world’s leading composers, turns eighty during the week we play her early piano quintet to kick of the series of piano quintets to follow on every concert. Her close connection to Shostakovich during the years it was composed make the introduction of her piano quintet to Boston audiences compelling and necessary!

Our November concert contains a rare gem. To those who love rich string quartet textures the Bloch Two Pieces will be a revelation even as they resonate the same C major tonalities heard earlier in the Haydn and Dohnányi trios. Building from three players, to four, and then five, the program concludes with the first really important work for piano and string quartet, the ever-popular Schumann Piano Quintet.

In December we move from Harvard’s Sanders Theater to MIT’s Kresge Auditorium in time to acknowledge the passing of Hanukah with Beethoven’s Variations for cello and piano on a theme from Handel’s oratorio, Judas Maccabeus. In that program we also play the piano quintet arrangement of Arnold Schoenberg’s early Chamber Symphony, the first of the many such works by Jewish composers who were or would be exiled from Europe by World War Two to a life in Los Angeles of unprecedented creativity in music for film, concert hall, and in teaching the public about music.

The story of how great artists uprooted from their native soil make a new life and world for themselves and others is better known through painting, literature, dance, film and symphonic music than it is in chamber music. The range of the contributions by consummate masters of chamber music such as Korngold, Eisler, Toch, Castelnuovo-Tedesco will be the subject of our third annual Winter Festival and Forum at MIT’s Kresge in January flanked by the works of two other exiles, Schoenberg and Dahl, on the December and February programs.

The extraordinary personal achievements of our recent and future visitors and guests will also add to the excitement this year. Among them are the new principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony, the new principal flutist of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the former principal cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the new concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony and the winner of the Gold Medal in cello at the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow! We are grateful as well for visits from friends who are leaders and members of other local ensembles including the Boston Symphony, Boston Musica Viva, and Marlboro Music.

All of this has been made possible by your continued generous support and from the wise guidance and dedication of our Board. We remain continually grateful and look forward to beautiful music making this year.

Musically speaking,
Marcus A. Thompson

Mozart’s first of three quartets for flute and three strings contains some of his most exuberant and virtuosic writing for chamber ensemble. As busy as the viola part is in the last movement, the most memorable feature of the piece is the slow movement, which has a winsome, yet languorous, flute solo accompanied by all three strings playing pizzicato. The effect is very similar to flute playing with harpsichord muted by the lute stop, and that of the Arioso from Bach’s Cantata No. 156 for which the string accompaniment to an oboe solo is often played pizzicato these days. The slow movement closes on an uncertain harmony, one that suggests Mozart intended it to be introductory to the last, and not to be excerpted or played independently. 

The most striking variation is the way in which Mozart re-harmonizes the repetition in measure 8 of the opening phrase–to slither downward into a key-relationship we call the Neapolitan in measure 11. More important than what it is called, is its emotional effect (it’s afekt) on the listener, aware or unaware: to turn one’s gaze more inward. 

Mozart Flute Quartet in D, K. 285, Movement 2

The Saint-Saëns Fantasie for Violin and harp, Op. 124, calls to mind the caricature of Saint-Saëns by his student Gabriel Faure, that appears, among other places, in the Saint-Saëns article in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. The drawing may be a sly commentary on Saint-Saëns growing preference for the thin sonorities of the harp in his late works and the elimination of the piano from his chamber works. Fantasie is in one movement with many sections. The first sounds we hear are harp arpeggios under the notes G and F, repeated. When the violin enters, it is given an embellishment on these two notes that spans the interval of a perfect fourth. That interval is the framework around which the melodic material is woven and varied.

Saint-Saëns Fantaisie, opening

In a later section that interval is even more obvious as the outline of an ostinato in the bass (think Pachelbel’s Canon, or Vitale’s Chaconne!) with the notes, repeated over and over with increasingly florid variations added in the violin part above. At times it reminds me of a kind of Spanish Dance, or Salsa. Olé!

Saint-Saëns Fantaisie, ostinato

Keeril Makan is a young award-winning composer who is a teaching colleague at MIT. In 2008 the Harvard Musical Association commissioned from him a Trio for flute, viola, and harp that we performed for the first time last December at the Association’s Beacon Hill venue. During the same month as the commission Keeril was awarded the distinguished Rome Prize that allowed him residency in Italy for a year of composition. At the December concert he told the audience that this trio was intended to be performed as a companion piece to the Debussy Sonata for the same combination. Keeril says that he intentionally did not look at or listen to the Debussy in order to avoid its influence.

According to Keeril the title, Nothing is More Important, refers to issues related to the craft of composition: how to present material where all elements have equal importance by exploring mechanisms for establishing importance such as duration, register, ordering and repetition of events. In this piece he says “ all attempts at expression are of equal importance.”

Perhaps the earliest inspiration for the piece came from the painting Presentation of Jesus in the Temple by Vittore Carpaccio, in the Galleria Accademica of Venice. In it the traditional means of establishing the focal point by placement of figures turned inward, the overhead designs, color choices, juxtaposition of youth and age, and the relative sizes of the principal figures all assist in establishing the importance of the child. The presence of three angelic figures playing a flute, viol, and lute adds that extra intangible to the scene.

Keeril’s music has a simple transparent texture. It may be described as minimalist and repetitive with small, subtle changes (i.e., variations) occurring in each part within each cycle. The effect of cumulative change can be experienced as both hypnotic and meditative. Our first reaction on putting it all together last December was “wow”!

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is celebrated throughout Christendom as the Feast of the Epiphany, or as the Purification of Mary. According to the Biblical account written in the Gospel According to Luke, the High Priest, Simeon, was reported to have uttered words that have since been set to music as the Nunc Dimitis.

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy Word,
for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people.
To be a Light to light on the Gentiles And to be the glory of Thy people Israel.

In musical settings these words often appear as a separate movement after the Magnificat (the Hymn of Mary in which the Virgin expresses humility, astonishment, and thanks to God for the news of her conception). Taken together they frame that most important period in the church year (and in painting) that observes the Annunciation, Birth (Christmas!), and Circumcision. For observant believers Nothing Is More Important.

The Chausson Piano Quartet in A major is a later and more complex piece than the Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet that closed last season. My colleagues and I have always made light of the theme’s resemblance to a popular commercial from a few years back that I will not quote here.

Every commentator I have read makes much of Chausson’s relationship to and influence by Wagner, Franck, and Debussy. Once you get past the strangeness of the opening theme the harmonies and colors attest to the influences. The thematic material as expected is very useful in creating the kind of cyclical work associated with Saint-Saens, Franck and other contemporaries, where material heard early on makes welcome and varied cameo appearances in later movements.

Chausson’s most famous piece, Poeme for Violin and Orchestra, has some of the most transcendent music every created by anyone. His colleagues were quick to recognize this, and to say so. His early death as a result of biking accident left all feeling as though the world had been robbed of an especially gifted spirit.

So, if you are wondering how this work relates to the explicit or implicit use of plucking, you will need to go back to the theme to realize that it is based on a pentatonic mode commonly associated with Chinese music played on the Guzheng, or Chinese harp:

C–D–E–G–A–c–d

Note how these notes sound when placed in the A Mode at the beginning, and how they sound in the C Mode (as printed above) at number rehearsal number 5.

Chausson Piano Quartet in A, Movement 1, opening

To this listener Piano Quartet in A major by Chausson is the place where the combination of Wagnerian chromaticism and the use of Chinese pentatonic mode gave birth to the harmonic language of Giacomo Puccini’s operas Madama Butterfly and Turandot!

Enjoy!

We, however, allow the tables to be turned by presenting works by two recent and leading Hungarian classical composers, György Kurtág and György Ligeti, who have written pieces for two of the same well-known piano trio combinations as have Schumann and Brahms. Their trios honor the spirit and literary figures that informed Schumann and Brahms, but also to extend in their own ways that classical tradition of making sounds and creating forms that touch us at our deepest places.

Our program concludes with the Sextet by Ernst von Dohnányî, an Hungarian master from the early twentieth century, whose work not only incorporates players of all the trios, but stirs deep memories of Brahms with explicit references to his use of variation in the Piano Trio in C Major and B minor Clarinet Quintet. This piece is beloved for its high drama, virtuosity, and for a crude joke he tries to play on the audience at the end! Of course, our audience would not allow themselves to be taken in by that. Or, will they?

Our 2011 BCMS Winter Special Event, also jointly presented by the MIT Music and Theater Arts Faculty, focuses on musical and visual works created to accompany ballets presented by Ballets Russes and Ballets Suédois as well as on song collections by Ravel and Poulenc first seen and heard in Paris just before, during, and soon after the First World War. The concept for this program began with a search for music and visual images intended to complement each other. From there the project broadened to explore examples of collaboration and dialogue between the arts, and among artists of equal stature, where the result was a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

It is probably not an accident that we ended up with works from a place and time—in Paris at turn of the twentieth century—when strongly held views were loudly advanced through one kind of anti-establishment ‘ism’ or another. As political systems failed, war and epidemic raged, science and technology questioned certainties and the whole world seemed to be asking fundamental questions about recreating ourselves—for artists and poets it was a time to re-imagine and re-create the world.

As the longtime refuge for political and intellectual émigrés, Paris had also become the place for literary, theatrical, and musical artists to encounter modernist thought, and to form creative and protective alliances for an assault on the citadels of French tradition and taste in the interest of the new. In the minds and hands of its boldest artists the act of creation was inseparable from that of demolishing the status quo. This assault by the avant-garde took as many forms as there were talented people with ideas: as special events, public spectacles, scandale, factional demonstrations at openings and exhibitions, and in the withering criticism to follow.

Writers and poets, who turned the lofty language of the Symbolists into irony, burlesque or everyday conversation, pursued the exotic in Nature, natural histories and creation mythologies, or sought to capture a “walk-on-the-wild-side” through the shabbier quartiers of Paris, its cafés, popular theaters, and dens of iniquity. Visual artists were equally occupied with Nature and the nature of everyday reality–shattering both effete decorum and perspective, boldly juxtaposing colors, modeling the geometry of African and Oceanic forms, and embracing modern mechanical developments from industry and war.

Musicians were as active in their pursuit of the ‘new’ in Paris. They had the greatest impact through music for ballet, an art form long associated with lofty and spiritual ideals of the French aristocracy. Under the leadership of Sergei Diaghilev, in collaboration with leading writers and visual artists, and amid the successes of exotic émigrés of the Ballets Russes and Ballets Suédois, musicians sought a means of realizing comprehensive collaborations among artists that had historically been regarded in the theater with a mystical faith as holding the greatest promise for artistic rebirth. The popularity of Richard Wagner’s operas among French audiences in Paris during the 1890s and early 1900s made Wagner’s realization of Gesamtkunstwerk (complete art work in which he created the story, poetic libretto and music) an artistic achievement to be envied, assaulted, and surpassed by the avant-garde for reasons artistic and nationalistic.

We can only imagine what the seventy-eight year old Saint-Saëns must have been thinking when he reportedly left the audience on May 29, 1913 during the premiere of Stravinsky’s “great insult to habit” called Le Sacre du printemps (Scenes of Pagan Russia). Debussy, reacting at age 51 to its brutal and irregular rhythms, called Le Sacre “an extraordinary, ferocious thing… primitive music with every modern convenience.” He is known to have performed the bass part of the four-hand piano version at sight with Stravinsky on the upper part without apparent difficulty.

For twenty-four year old poet Jean Cocteau, Le Sacre was not only a view of the primitive, filled with “savage sadness” and “noises of farm and camp” with “little melodies that arrive from the depth of the centuries.” As spectacle it fulfilled the theatrical ideal of “an alliance of all the arts uniting in a common object… [as the] perfect and…only true work of art.” (Wagner)

Uniquely poised between the separate worlds of the Ballets Russes, and of Post-Impressionists, Symbolists, Fauvists, Cubists, Orphists and Surrealists, Cocteau realized that were he able to corral and cajole into a common project Picasso (whom poet Guillaume Apollinaire had celebrated among the Cubists) and Satie (whose simplicity of musical texture had impressed him), he would he have the answer to Diaghilev’s only requirement for a new ballet: “Astound me!”

In creating the scenario for Parade, and successfully recruiting Picasso, Satie and Massine to the cause, Cocteau was able to extend the tradition that had drawn Toulouse-Lautrec to the popular music halls and Picasso and his friends to the Cirque Médrano. Parade was premiered in 1917 and created yet another scandale. However, success by scandale, even at the Ballets Russes, did not guarantee acceptance as an artist among the avant-gardists he courted. In those circles Cocteau was regarded as little more than a prodigious opportunist. History has since recognized his mastery as poet, novelist, dramatist, film-maker, portraitist, and designer of posters, pottery, tapestries, mosaics, neckties, jewelry: someone in whose real life the arts were united.

By1918 Jean Cocteau had moved on to further collaborations, this time by naming and promoting the works of six composers as ‘Les Six.’ Among them were Erik Satie, whom he had selected to create music for Parade, and Darius Milhaud, with whom he was to collaborate in his next stage work, Le Boeuf sur le toit, in 1920.

Cocteau’s example can certainly be felt in La Création du monde with the coming together of poet Blaise Cendrars, painter Fernand Léger, and composer Darius Milhaud. In 1923 Cendrars, who with fellow poet Guillaume Apollinaire, had assaulted the ideals of the Symbolist poets, published his study of ancient theories regarding the creation of the world as understood among African peoples. Naturally, these theories would challenge the Judeo-Christian account of creation and inspire Cendrars to propose a wordless scenic narrative as a ballet to a rival company working in Paris, the Ballets Suédois. The success of Ballets Suédois’ productions was said by Georges Auric (another one of ‘Les Six’) to rest on their ability to attract “no longer just the elite or the snobs, but the general Paris public.” The choreography was by Jean Börlin, who three years earlier had performed one of his first and most original compositions in recital, Sculpture nègre. For that performance and for La Création du monde he had studied documentary films of black African dancers. As a result, La Création du monde became the first European ballet to be derived from African dance.

In 1922 Fernand Léger published an article in which he said “modern man lives in preponderant geometrical order.” He was soon drawn into creating cutting edge Cubist costumes and sets after studying recently published catalogs of geometric African masks. Like many of the larger African masks, these costumes obscure the human identity and movement of the wearer in favor of projecting that of the animal or deity. Léger produced many studies for the sets and was never satisfied that his masks were scary enough. Darius Milhaud, who had recently returned from two years in Brazil and been exposed to music of the tropical forest, also heard jazz for the first time on trips to London and New York’s Harlem. The juxtaposition of urban jazz and tropical sounds in the musical score has remained better known than the story or the visuals.

It is very likely the high quality of the visual images by Toulouse-Lautrec (1899) and Pierre Bonnard (1904) of Jules Renard’s Les Histoires naturelles (1896) drew Ravel to undertake song settings of poems about local birds and farm animals. The poems, witty, unsentimental but affectionate, ascribe human characteristics and foibles to the animals. Renard, who admitted to an ignorance of music, expressed little interest in the effort and did not attend the premiere of Ravel’s Histoires naturelles (1906). The songs were greeted with public outrage and outcry over their choice of subject, accompanying harmonies, and a syllabification of the French language that polite society associated with cafés and music halls.

By contrast, Francis Poulenc’s song settings of six poems from Giullaume Apollinaire’s Le Bestiaire ou cortège d’Orphée were regarded then and since as highly sensitive, insightful and predictive of the reputation he would earn as the greatest musical interpreter of French poetry. Apollinaire’s spiritual identification with Orpheus, as inspired guide, charmer of stones, tamer of beast and men is consistent with his expressed desire to unite music, the visual arts, and poetry to give form to an inner life that would create a whole new universe. The collaboration between Apollinaire and Dufy that produced Dufy’s first published illustrations yielded one of the most celebrated illustrated books of the new century.

At age eighteen, and as the youngest of Cocteau’s ‘Les Six’, Poulenc was drawn into Apollinaire’s creative circle by his intuitive interpretation of poetry. If his music was to show any revolt or rejection of the status quo, it was to be against intellectual fads and ‘isms’ in favor of finding his own true lyrical voice. Poulenc’s first published songs (under the guidance of Georges Auric) were to follow. In time, Poulenc’s fruitful and somewhat Orphic collaboration with Apollinaire would yield settings of thirty-five poems following Apollinaire’s early death from influenza.

The four-hand piano versions of the ballets scores and the song collections were each heard for the first time in the intimacy of the chamber, studio, or salon. That intimacy of idea and action, mind and hand, are challenge, inspiration, and opportunity to those of us who play chamber music.

Sonata in G minor, Op. 65 (1845-7) for cello and piano is a late work, which Chopin premiered with cellist Auguste Franchomme the year before he died at age 39. As a composer and virtuoso pianist living in Paris, he was known primarily for his inventiveness in short or stand-alone character pieces that evoked an expatriate’s memories of his native Poland. Chopin struggled for many years creating the sonata because it presented several challenges—moving from essay to epic proportions, finding an appropriate chamber music balance between the two instruments by reining in the virtuoso piano writing for which he was famous—all without sounding too influenced by the Germanic traditions.

Chopin well understood that great oaks grow from small acorns. The underlying three-note motif from which the piece springs is first heard twice in the piano introduction (as G-F#-G and D-Eb-D), but really exposed and echoed by the cello’s first breathless utterance (A-Bb-A).

Chopin Cello Sonata in g, Movement 1, opening

Thereafter, it appears in one variation or another at the beginning of each movement and is not only a source of connection, but also a resource for further chromatic creation and expansion.

Chopin Cello Sonata in g, Movement 1, second theme

Chopin Cello Sonata in g, Movement 2, opening

Chopin Cello Sonata in g, Movement 3, opening

Chopin Cello Sonata in g, Movement 4, opening

For me the Sonata is collection of delicious sounds and ironies. With all Chopin’s efforts to show mastery of a large multi-movement work without sounding Germanic, his gorgeous third movement Largo is excerpted as an independent, short piece and performed more often than the entire Sonata. The underlying harmonies of its piano accompaniment are taken verbatim from the chords introducing Beethoven’s First Symphony transposed from C major to B-flat. On top of these chords, within the oboe part from first to second and second to third, are the notes E-F, F-E, or E-F-E, the motif for the entire sonata. That chromatic motif gave birth to harmonies like those of the second theme in the first movement, mentioned earlier, and is recognized today as a source of the harmonic language for many who followed: Liszt, Wagner, and especially, Richard Strauss, all of whom had a profound effect on the sound of Germanic music for generations to come.

Chopin Cello Sonata in g, Movement 1, second theme

Alfred Schnittke’s String Trio was commissioned to commemorate the 100^th birthday of Alban Berg in 1985. Schnittke, who has been recognized as spiritual heir to Dimitri Shostakovitch, has said that the music of Alban Berg is dearest to him “above all others.” Schnittke’s working processes and expressive qualities closely resemble those of Alban Berg in the way motifs are transformed to the point of disintegration, and tonal and atonal elements are used side by side.

Born in the Soviet Union in 1934 Schnittke moved with his family to Vienna just after World War II where he began his musical training. Schnittke was profoundly affected by the decay and disintegration of the world that had invented and supported the musical traditions he inherited. Much of his music consists of abruptly juxtaposing fragments and quotes of earlier and contemporary music and/or styles in an idiom known as Polystylism. (Other terms that might apply are Eclecticism and Collage.)

The String Trio, relying more on juxtaposing styles of music rather than quotes of actual pieces as he did in the first string quartet, takes the act of recollection and remembrance onto a whole new scale. Rather than quoting a pre-existing piece, he ‘inhabits’ a work that is regarded as one of the greatest musical memorials ever conceived: Violin Concerto (1935) by Alban Berg. The concerto was written in Berg’s 50^th year to memorialize the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius. (It was premiered in Barcelona by Louis Krasner, father of a long-time BCMS subscriber.)

The String Trio is in two movements, as is the concerto. When tonality appears at the beginnings and ends of movements, it tends to hover around or to introduce G minor. The G minor triad is at the root of the twelve-tone row that Berg carefully arranged to allow him to move between tonality and atonality. (The triads, arranged as interlocking tonic and dominant, are the tonal elements; the whole-tone scale at the end of the row, the atonal.)

Berg Violin Concerto tone-row diagram

Schnittke String Trio, Movement 1, opening

Schnittke String Trio, Movement 2, opening

The prominent use of the whole-tone scale we associate with the music of Debussy is really one of the least explored territories within major and (natural minor) scale.  Berg’s quotation in the Violin Concerto of Bach’s harmonization of the opening whole- tone phrase of the chorale ‘Es ist genug’ still has the power to shock.

Berg Violin Concerto, Poco piu mosso, ma religioso, Es ist genug

Berg Violin Concerto, Movement 2, ending

Schnittke String Trio, Movement 2, ending

Schnittke includes other references to music with which he has deep connection:

Just when things seem to be wandering and hopeless we are confronted with the repetitive certainty of a Philip Glass or Steve Reich- type minimalist episode.

Schnittke String Trio, Movement 1, #15-17

As Schnittke was a convert to Christianity we are also witness to Russian Orthodox chant played in a screechy voice that is achieved by playing on the bridge:

Schnittke String Trio, Movement 1, #26-27

One way in which we experience Schnittke’s connection to Dimitri Shostakovitch is in the way Schnittke spells out the name of Bach  in the same way Shostakovitch spelled his own name:

DSCH = D, Eb, C, B natural

Shostakovich String Quartet in c, Op. 110, Movement 1, opening

BACH = Bb, A, C, B natural

Transposed to begin on F# becomes:

F#, E#, G#, G natural

And embellished, it is:

Schnittke String Trio, Movement 1, ending

Schnittke achieves a richness of texture that is rare for string trios by requiring players to play many double note passages, i.e., more that one note at a time, thereby creating a texture one might hear from at least twice as many people.

This same idea of adding double stops to his inner part writing for purposes of enriching or thickening a texture is also employed by Brahms in String Quintet in F major, Op. 88 (1882). Adding a second violist to the standard string quartet as did Mozart six times, Mendelssohn twice, and the cello by Schubert and Boccherini, has the immediate effect of shifting the tonal spectrum of the entire ensemble to the darker side. In this work Brahms goes even farther by choosing the key of F that guarantees the continued resonant use of the lowest pitches (the C strings) on viola and cello every time he passes the tonic and dominant chords in the outer movements.

Brahms considered this quintet his most beautiful work. It is certainly among his most melodic, nostalgic, and inventive.

Brahms Quintet in F, Op. 88, Movement 1, opening

Instead of the standard four-movement scheme, Brahms adapts the form of the second movement to take the place of two: by combining a slow section based on an earlier Sarabande, and a quicker section based on an earlier Gavotte as a variation. Making it all work required the unusual step of beginning the movement in one key (C-sharp major/minor) and ending in another (A major), each a major third away from the F major key of the piece. Moving from C-sharp major/minor (a black-note key) to A major, a white-note key with more open string resonance has the effect of moving tonally from darkness to light.

The quintet ends with one of the most vigorous fugatos (fugue-like textures) in the literature that is both spirited and spiritual heir to the finale of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 59 #3, complete with loud chords as harmonic pillars!

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 59 No. 3, Movement 4, opening

Brahms Quintet in F, Op. 88, Movement 3, opening

Enjoy!

We will have more to say in future postings about the rest of the season’s firsts (Keeril Makan’s Nothing is more Important, coming in April, Schnittke’s String Trio next month, Ligeti’s Horn Trio Homage to Brahms in March) and the rarities (Hindemith’s cantata on love poems, Die Serenaden, in time for Valentine’s Day) as they come along.

We also want to alert you to our all-Beethoven concert in December, with three of his greatest works published the same year, and our ‘Winter Special’ at MIT entitled “An Artistic Menagerie: collaborations in Mind, Hand and Imagerie.”

This special Saturday afternoon event will feature pre-concert presentations on art work and music associated with three ballets and two song collections from early-twentieth century Paris featuring, of course, Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. The ballet scores will be played in four-hand piano score by our pianists, Randall Hodgkinson and Mihae Lee. They will each be joined by baritone, David Kravitz, in songs by Ravel and Poulenc.

In my contact with each of the pieces for this opening concert I am struck by the many ways in which the music of Mozart has proven to be decisive in their creation and realization. In the case of the Beethoven, we observed last season how Mozart’s six-movement Divertimento for String Trio in E-flat served as a model for Beethoven first string trio in E-flat, both in number of movements and phrase structure.

The D major string trio, the fourth (counting the Serenade) and perhaps the least performed of the five Beethoven trios, was written before Beethoven wrote string quartets. It seems to show an awareness of Mozart’s melodic string quartet writing and occasional high scoring for the cello. Some of what he learns ends up in his own string quartets.

Clip: Beethoven String Trio in D, Op. 9 No. 2, Movement I

Clip: Beethoven String Quartet in F, Op. 18 No. 1, Movement IV

Clip: Beethoven String Trio in D, Op. 9 No. 2, Movement IV

Clip: Mozart String Quartet in B-flat, Movement II

Clip: Mozart String Quartet K. 575, Movement IV

The Martinů Three Madrigals for Violin and Viola was written after Martinů heard Joseph and Lillian Fuchs’ performances of the two duos by Mozart. Anyone who remembers their performances of the duos, or the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, will recall the unanimity in inspiration and perfect execution that made this brother and sister team a legend. With his early training and mastery of the violin and a significant career as composer behind him, Martinů was well prepared to write a piece that has remained as popular with players as the Mozart Duos.

Martinů’s use of the madrigal title in several other chamber works reminds us his early contact with early vocal chamber music of the Medieval and Renaissance. One popular compositional technique from that time that uses the quick mimicry of small motifs among performers is perfect for light banter between two parts. It is called hocket. Among the great composers it appears more in Beethoven’s quartet writing than others and adds drama and brilliance.

Clip: Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 131, Movement V

Clip: Martinů Three Madrigals, Movement I

The slow movement seems to be evocative of night in the manner of a Bartok slow movement with muted trills buzzing away at first like so many cicadas.

Clip: Martinů Three Madrigals, Movement II, opening

When the harmonic and melodic elements are slow enough to form chords we are reminded of the harmonic sonorities that arise adding richness and the feeling of something greater that those present.

Clip: Martinů Three Madrigals, Movement II, ending

Saint-Saëns was recognized as a music force to be reckoned with from an early age. A pianist with prodigious gifts spanning the time of such as Chopin, Liszt and Paderewski, Saint-Saëns was spoken of as the French Mozart. Indeed he studied the music of earlier masters as had Mozart, especially Bach, and publicly performed all the Mozart Piano Concertos.

The Piano Quartet, Op 41, his second, comes to us as his part of his effort to revive interest in serious French music among the French public. That effort, undertaken by a group of composers who came together as the Société Nationale de Musique to present recent music, had a tendency to neglect chamber music in favor of orchestral works. According to Saint-Saëns “the committee did not receive enough duets, trios, and quartets.” The result is a work that contains four strikingly different attitudes that Saint-Saëns reconciles by bringing back the chorale theme from second movement and chords and arpeggios from the opening of the first to close the last.

The first movement opens with solid chords in the strings that become increasingly arpeggiated and harp-like with generous piano sonority.

Clip: Saint-Saëns Piano Quartet in B-flat, Movement I, opening

The second movement is sonically and rhythmically more severe with a chorale tune set against a dramatic, virtuosic introduction and background. Any chorale setting in instrumental music since Mozart’s Masonic Temple scene in Magic Flute is bound to invoke a sense of reverence, duty, and high purpose.

Clip: Mozart Magic Flute

Clip: Saint-Saëns Piano Quartet in B-flat, Movement II

The third movement has been compared to his own Danse Macabre, set in minor and with a devilish kick to its Scherzo-like rhythm. It contains more than one cadenza and at each return of the theme adds speed to speed.

Clip: Saint-Saëns Piano Quartet in B-flat, Movement III, opening

Clip: Saint-Saëns Piano Quartet in B-flat, Movement III, violin cadenza

The Finale opens with an aura of Schumann with chordal doublings shared by strings and piano. At its heart we hear a quiet quote of the chorale theme, and start to recognize other material reconciling their difference in a parade cameo appearances all giving the sense that a cycle has been completed.

Enjoy.

Marcus