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Borromeo String Quartet Candlelight Concert Society Presents BORROMEO STRING QUARTET Saturday, December 12, 2020, 7:30pm Broadcast Virtually WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Adagio and Fugue in C minor Adagio Fuga (Allegro) JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Prelude & Fugue in C# minor from WTC Book 1 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Grosse Fugue, Op. 133 Overtura: Allegro - Meno mosso e moderato - Allegro, Fuga - Meno mosso e moderato - Allegro molto e con brio String Quartet No. 13, Op. 130 Adagio, ma non troppo - Allegro Presto Andante con moto, ma non troppo Alla danza tedesca. Allegro assai Cavantina Adagio molto espressivo Finale: Allegro preludes and fugues have been transcribed for Program Notes dozens of other instruments and combinations ______________________________ thereof, including guitar, cello, saxophone quartet, and the Moog synthesizer. Arrangements also exist for a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) cappella vocal ensembles, most famous among which Adagio and Fugue in C Minor, K. 546 is perhaps the Swingle Singers, who included the One of the pivotal events in Mozart’s life occurred in Fugue in C Minor from Book I in their 1963 hit album, 1782, when he was engaged by the Viennese Jazz Sébastien Bach. nobleman and patron of the arts Baron Gottfried van Notes by Stephen Ackert Swieten to direct a series of Sunday concerts that the ______________________________ baron had underwritten. Mozart was given unrestricted access to the baron’s private library of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) musical manuscripts, which included numerous works Grosse Fugue, Op 133 by Johann Sebastian Bach. He spent many hours poring over these scores, fascinated particularly by A notice in the March 1782 issue of Magazin der Bach’s mastery of counterpoint. Inspired by Bach’s Musik, published in Bonn, Germany, reads as follows: example, Mozart included much more developed “Louis van Beethoven (sic), a boy of eleven years and counterpoint in his subsequent works, such as the of most promising talent, plays the clavier very Mass in C Minor (1782), his transcriptions of five skillfully and with power, reads at sight very well, and fugues from The Well-tempered Clavier, K. 405, and — to put it in a nutshell — plays chiefly The Well- the the Fugue in C Minor, K. 546, which he composed Tempered Clavier of Bach….Whoever knows this for two pianos in 1783. He did not include the latter collection of preludes and fugues in all the keys — work in his catalog, however, until 1788, when he which might almost be called the non plus ultra of our transcribed it for string orchestra and combined it with a freshly-composed Adagio. In its two-part structure, art — will know what this means.” Ten years later, the Adagio and Fugue belongs to the tradition of Beethoven was invited into the Vienna salon of the Viennese church sonatas found in the works of such same Baron Gottfried van Swieten whose Sunday composers as Johann Josef Fux and Frantisek Tuma. concerts and extensive library of music by baroque However, the sudden dynamic contrasts in the Adagio masters had inspired Mozart. Beethoven soon began and the jagged fugue theme are unlike anything that to acquire manuscript copies of Bach’s music that can be found in those sonatas. The fugue increases in came his way. In one of his letters from the 1820s, he intensity as it progresses through more and more referred to baroque composers “among whom only involved counterpoint, including inversion (turning a Bach and Handel had real genius.” theme upside-down) and stretto (entering with a new statement of a theme before the previous statement[s] In spite of his stated interest in and respect for the are finished). music of Bach, Beethoven produced no significant Notes by Stephen Ackert fugues in his early and middle periods. In fact, he was sometimes taunted by critics, who wondered why a ______________________________ composer who set new standards in almost every Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) other genre came up short when it came to fugues. Preludes and Fugue in C# minor from The Well- This criticism must have stung Beethoven, and in his Tempered Clavier, Book 1 late period (1812 to 1827) he appears to have set out in earnest to prove the critics wrong, most prominently Compiled late in his career by J. S. Bach, the two- in his Missa solemnis and his Ninth Symphony, both volume collection of preludes and fugues known as of which contain monumental fugues. The Grosse The Well-tempered Clavier represents the pinnacle of Fuge (Grand Fugue) first came into being in 1825, as baroque counterpoint. Study of these works has been the final movement of a six-movement string quartet a must for composers and performers ever since they (the Quartet in B-flat Major, op. 130). When the first were rediscovered and first published by Samuel performance of this quartet proved to be too Sebastian Wesley in 1766. Beethoven is reported to strenuous for both the listeners and the performers, have played the entire collection in 1781 at age Beethoven’s publisher persuaded him to replace the eleven, and Mozart published transcriptions of five of last movement with something simpler and republish the fugues in 1782. Though the title indicates that the the fugue as an independent work. Beethoven did not pieces were written with a solo keyboard instrument in finish reworking the fugue until November 1826, and it mind, some of them hint at Bach’s love for the other turned out to be his last work. He died on March 26, instruments he played - the organ and the violin. The 1827. Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony -- and then Like the Mozart Adagio and Fugue, the Grosse Fuge devoted himself exclusively to the creation of the five begins with an introduction that is not fugal, although it late-period quartets. does introduce the first and third fugue subjects. The String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 is a genial, When the fugue proper begins, Beethoven thrusts the well integrated and innovative work, and Beethoven listener abruptly into a world of violent rhythmic adds substance to it by extending its traditional four- clashes and dissonance that come across as brutally movement string quartet structure to six modern even after one hundred ninety-five years have movements. It is dedicated to Prince Nikolai Galitzin, passed. The fugue is not always aggressive, however. an ardent admirer of Beethoven's piano sonatas, who Its middle section, marked meno mosso e moderato had recently arrived in Vienna from Russia. The three (slower and more moderately), is quiet and Galitzin quartets (Op. 127, 130 and 131) were harmonious. This section ends with an intense unison completed during 1826-7. By his own account, passage and a brief quasi-comical scherzo, both of composing music was quite difficult for Beethoven in his final years. Nevertheless, he continued to produce which herald the return of the violence and one masterpiece after another during a time of chronic dissonance that marked the beginning of the work. illness, almost total deafness and constant personal The severity of the music is interrupted only once and financial problems. more, as an inconclusive cadence is followed by silence and another scherzo, during which the Beethoven had a special fondness for this composer seems to be unable to choose between quartet. Asked which of the late quartets he considered the best, he replied, "Each in its own way", order and chaos. There is a final rush, in what seems but then he added that in Op. 130 "...you will find a to be angry haste, to the last cadence. new manner of voice treatment, and, thank God, there is less lack of imagination than ever before." The question has puzzled musicologists for generations and still remains: why did Beethoven The opening movement is a study in contrasts. It write something so dissonant and angry, particularly in alternates from a serene Adagio to a vivacious its original position as the last movement of an Allegro, a persistent variation in tempo and mood that led novelist Aldous Huxley to describe it as "majesty otherwise lyrical and light-hearted string quartet? The alternating with a joke". After a short scherzo, the answer may lie in part in the state of Beethoven’s Presto movement provides a colorful and light-hearted health in the last few years of his life, when he was transition to the third movement, marked subject to severe attacks of stomach and bowel pain Andante. Here, in passages which are brighter and that lasted sometimes for weeks on end. The Grosse more lively than the title would indicate, Beethoven Fuge could be a howl of pain from a man for whom includes the direction poco scherzando to remind us composition was always an expression of his feelings. that the mood remains on the jesting side. The Another answer comes to mind when one remembers following movement is marked Alla danza tedesca. It that Beethoven’s revered model for fugue writing was is a light-hearted German country dance -- a form J. S. Bach’s Art of Fugue (also that composer’s final often to be found in the works of later German work). As Bach proceeded through the thirteenth and composers. It was originally intended for use fourteenth fugues of this series of contrapuntal elsewhere (as part of the Op. 132 string quartet). By moving it here, the composer sets up a dramatic essays, he introduced dissonances that were contrast with the following movement. Unexpectedly, unheard-of before his time. Since Bach left the we are transported from the simple innocence of fourteenth fugue unfinished, it remains for subsequent Beethoven's dance tune to the profundity of the generations to imagine what innovations he might yet Cavatina.
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