Chamber Music Society of Louisville University of Louisville School of Music

St. Lawrence String Quartet

April 24, 2016 Comstock Concert Hall

String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2 Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Moderato Capriccio. Adagio Menuetto. Allegretto Fuga a IV Soggetti. Allegro

Haydn’s six quartets, published as opus 20, have long been referred to as the “Sun Quartets” because of a lovely figure of a rising sun on the title page of an old edition. It also seemed a fitting designation for a set of works that marks the beginning of the string quartet as a genre. As such, according to Sir Donald Tovey, this opus is “one of the most important documents of music history.” In these works, Haydn worked to formulate the basic ideal of the classical string quartet, that is, to combine independent instrumental lines in the creation of a harmonic entity, one that was fit for tracing the dynamic curve of classical forms. In this quartet there is nothing of the kind of figuration found in an earlier baroque or rococo style. Every note belongs to the musical essential workings of its melodic line–the classical ideal. Even in this relatively early work Haydn’s treatment of the not-quite-classical forms in the second and fourth movements proceeded from a frame of reference that can only be understood as classical. The newest and most striking element in this C Major Quartet is Haydn’s treatment of the cello, and, to some degree, also the viola, as nearly equal voices in the ensemble. Already in the opening measure, the cello is heard with the main theme, dolce mf, The second violin, responding immediately to the cello’s initial interval of a rising fourth, harmonizes with pitches below the cello while the viola provides a steady eighth- note accompaniment, even lower, as a quasi bass line. With the conclusion of the first phrase, the first violin takes up the principal theme, the second violin again supplies the counter melody, and the viola continues its eight-note accompaniment. In the rest of the movement, indeed throughout all four movements, the instruments are constantly combined and re-combined, now two and two, or in various combinations of three. Even when all four instruments are engaged, there are most often trade-offs or imitations between pairs or threesomes.

The first movement is in sonata form. The rather leisurely exposition moves to the dominant with a phrase beginning with the rising fourth interval of the opening theme now in the second violin. Once stated the section moves to the dominant for the second key area and from there to the conclusion, ending the exposition with a series of whispy falling thirds, pp. When, suddenly f, the development begins, the cello again leads, and with a series of dramatic exchanges with the violin, moves from G Minor and arrives, surprisingly, on an A Major cadence. With sudden change to p dolce, comes the opening tune, this time in the viola, high in its range and imitated closely by the second and then by the first violin. This is not the last surprise for, as Haydn works his way back to the home key, he pauses ever so briefly in the wrong key (A Minor), then quickly regroups and makes his way to the dominant to usher in the recapitulation--again with the cello, mf dolce. In the last surprise, the composer prepares already in the second measure of the tune to be concise, and, cutting out 23 measures from the exposition, he moves purposefully to the closing passages. The second movement, a Capriccio in Haydn’s terms, is his “lingering farewell of all operatic forms” (Tovey, again). In the parallel key of C Minor, one of the most dramatic of the minor keys (one that in the early baroque was appropriate for the rendition of a Greek tragedy), Haydn begins with an angular gesture. The instruments, f and in unison, jump an octave and begin to fall–in fits and starts and with dotted rhythms and trills–all the way down, to the low G, the lowest pitch on the violins. The ensuing melodic phrase, a repetition of the opening line (now p in the cello accompanied only by somber repeated notes) brings forth a discursive “argument” in the first violin that is followed by yet another statement by the cello of the opening line– now in the minor dominant key. And here the conversation continues, but in a different vein and with a change of key (Eb Major), as the first violin redirects the mood with a soothing melody. Now and then counter figures in the second violin take over but only briefly, and the movement eventually comes to rest, pausing only a moment before the minuet begins, its sunlit melody lilting along on gentle syncopations. Listen for the short descending chromatic line in the violin when the second section begins--a foretaste of the falling chromatic line in the first subject of the fugue in the next movement--and enjoy the brief cloud that passes over with the Trio in the parallel minor mode. In the last movement Haydn reached back to an Italian styled fugal composition for a strong finish to what has been ably characterized by Tovey as an “extraordinarily romantic” work. The procedures for a fugue in the Italian manner have little in common with those of the German Baroque fugue, as the one rule is that the fugue is always “on”; in other words, there are no distinct expositions and episodes. With “Fuga a 4 soggetti” Haydn indicates that there is one major fugue subject with three counter subjects, and all are “game” for use throughout the movement. The clearly-defined subject is striking in character: starting on the tonic, with a couple of leaps, each followed by a fall, it ends well below its starting point. The first and second counter subjects are mild-mannered stepwise eighth-note melodic elements, but the last one is a little jiggle of six sixteenth-notes. Marked sempre sotto voce at the beginning, the whole movement works it way through a colorful choice of keys without recourse to anything other than these elements. After a rather dramatic hemiola-tinged run, and short bits of closely imitated exchanges, the dynamic shifts into f, and the coda begins– and a classic one it is! All parts in close imitation, eighth notes pacing and leaping up and down, rushing sixteenths interrupting–it is as Haydn notes at the very end: Laus. Omnip. Deo. Sic fugit amicus amicum. Praise to the omnipotent God. Thus one friend runs away from another.

String Quartet No. 2 John Adams (b. 1947) I. Allegro molto II. Andantino; energico

The following notes about John Adams’ Second String Quartet are found on his website, www.earbox.com:

Both of John Adams’ string quartets were composed with the St. Lawrence String Quartet in mind. But this latest work is actually the third he has composed for them. The original String Quartet (now likely to be known as the First Quartet) was written in 2007 and premiered January of 2008 at the Juilliard School, the work’s principal commissioner. The St. Lawrence Quartet went on to perform that work many times throughout the world and made the first recording of it for Nonesuch Records.

Adams followed several years later with a grander idea: Absolute Jest, a 25-minute work for solo quartet and orchestra based on fragments from Beethoven, primarily from the Opus 131 and 135 string quartets. Commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony to celebrate its centennial season, Absolute Jest was given its first performance in March of that year under that orchestra’s music director, Michael Tilson Thomas with the St. Lawrence String Quartet performing the solo parts. The orchestra has twice toured with Absolute Jest and has also recorded it for a forthcoming CD release. Adams and the SLSQ have performed the work together in London, Toronto and with the New World Symphony in Florida.

The Second Quartet is thus the third piece to result from this exceptionally fruitful relationship between a composer and his favorite chamber group. Speaking of their working relationship, Adams says, “String quartet writing is one of the most difficult challenges a composer can take on. Unless one is an accomplished string player and writes in that medium all the time—and I don’t know many these days who do—the demands of handling this extremely volatile and transparent instrumental medium can easily be humbling, if not downright humiliating. What I appreciate about my friends in the St. Lawrence is their willingness to let me literally ‘improvise’ on them as if they were a piano or a drum and I a crazy man beating away with only the roughest outlines of what I want. They will go the distance with me, allow me to try and fail, and they will indulge my seizures of doubt, frustration and indecision, all the while providing intuitions and frequently brilliant suggestions of their own. It is no surprise then for me to reveal that both the First Quartet and Absolute Jest went through radical revision stages both before and after each piece’s premiere. Quartet writing for me seems to be a matter of very long-term ‘work in progress.’”

Although not a string player himself, Adams admits to a lifelong absorption in the literature, having discovered the Beethoven, Mozart and Bartók quartets as a teenager. While still a teenager he often played clarinet in the great quintets by Mozart and Brahms, and during that formative time he attended what he called “life- changing” performances by both the Juilliard and the Budapest Quartets.

The new quartet uses the same tropes as Absolute Jest in that it, too, is based on tiny fragments—“fractals,” in the composer’s words—from Beethoven. But the economy here is much stricter. The first movement, for example, is entirely based on two short phrases from the scherzo to the late Opus 110 piano sonata in Ab major. The transformations of harmony, cadential patterns and rhythmic profile that occur in this movement go way beyond the types of manipulations favored in Absolute Jest.

Like the First Quartet this new work is organized in two parts. The first movement has scherzo impetus, and moves at the fastest pace possible for the performers to play it. The familiar Beethoven cadences and half cadences reappear throughout the movement like a homing mechanism and each apparition is followed by a departure to an increasingly remote key and textural region.

The second part begins “Andantino” with a gentle melody that is drawn from the opening movement of the same Opus 111 piano sonata. Here the original Beethoven harmonic and melodic ideas go off in unexpected directions, almost as they were suggestions for a kind of compositional “free association.”

The Andantino grows in range and complexity until it finally leads into the “Energico” final part of the piece, a treatment of one of the shortest of the Diabelli Variations. This particular variation of Beethoven’s features a sequence of neighbor-key appoggiaturas, each a half step away from each main chord. Adams amplifies this chromatic relationship without intentionally distorting it. Like its original Beethoven model, the movement is characterized by emphatic gestures, frequent uses of “sforzando” and a busy but convivial mood of hyperactivity among the four instruments.

String Quartet No. 1, Op. 112, in E Minor Charles Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) Allegro Molto allegro quasi presto Molto adagio Allegro non troppo

Camille Saint-Saëns was blessed with uncommon talent: musical memory and unerring pitch, intellect, talent, and abundant energy. A musical prodigy–the earliest date on a composition in the collection of the Paris Conservatory is 1839–he was 10 years old when he debuted as a pianist. Trained as an organist at the Conservatory, he served for 20 years at La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. On retirement he continued to develop a successful far-ranging career as a concert pianist and conductor. A prodigious composer of music in every genre, he also wrote poems, farces, and, as an amateur scientist, a couple of papers on botany and on astronomy, subjects for which he sustained life-long enthusiasm. It was Saint-Saëns’ destiny to be at odds with the musical trends in France a good deal of his life. Early on, he supported the new music of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner to the point of occasionally being called an anarchist. After the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, he helped found the Société Nationale de Musique, expressly to support new work by French composers. But when that group developed a strong adherence to Wagner’s methods, Saint-Saëns worried about the impact of this music and resigned in 1886. Somewhat later, his classical instincts for form put him at odds with what was for him the shapeless structure of musical impressionism. Thus, remaining faithful to his early ideals, at the close of his career he was “exactly as he was at the outset” (Calvocoressi). Romain Rolland commented a bit more poetically, “He brings . . . something of the sweetness and clarity of past periods, something that seems like fragments of a vanished world.” The first string quartet, the composer’s first chamber work without a piano, was composed in 1899 when he was 64 years old; it was dedicated to the famous Belgian violinist, Eugène Ysaÿe, whose quartet premiered the work. Saint-Saëns’ string quartets have received very little attention from authors. They are hardly mentioned–if at all–in studies of his music. I discovered two diametrically opposed commentaries about recordings of the First String Quartet; one praised it without reservation, the other condemned it in equal measure. It is quite a mix of old and new and while the composer’s ideals were derived from classical style, his harmonic language, rhythmic ideas and melodic style in the work are often comparable to that of a composer from the early romantic period. Saint-Saëns’ melodies can be fetchingly lyrical, but are, most often, rather square (four- and eight-bar phrases abound); many of them are very terse, short and repetitive. Or they outline scales or chords, and function as “clothing” for any number of varied rhythmic patterns. The first movement emerges from a single pitch on the first violin, a note that provokes a muted, ethereal chord from the other instruments. Once. Twice. Then an engaging melody begins the work with a lilting 6/8 meter. Sections of contrasting ideas follow, one after another. A slight detour into a contrasting area eventually leads to an agitated più allegro and once this is worked out, the harmony shifts into the relative major key; here the mood changes and settles down with an elegiac melody first heard in the cello. This last in the series of principal melodic ideas in the exposition, leads naturally into an extended development. Beginning with the theme from the agitated più allegro from earlier on, the composer moves through various contrapuntal and developmental treatments of earlier themes, while extended cadential passages add to the length of the movement. The very fast second movement follows the spirit of Schumann, in terms of both the formal structure and the rhythmic character. Its initial musical idea, a syncopated melody in the minor with an extraordinarily compressed compass, proves to be robust source for a full-blown scherzo; its repetition of whole segments brings to mind any number of like movements in Schumann’s music. The ideas come one after the other at terrific speed until a fugue is reached, settling things down a bit; however, this proves to be no less fertile in terms of ideas, providing adequate energy to initiate a recapitulation. Toward the end, a lyrical moment brings this robust movement to its end in a whisper. The pensive third movement, Molto Adagio, a welcome respite from the turmoil of the first two movements, features a passionate decorated melodic line in the first violin, surely composed with Ysaÿe in mind. Through the varied repeats of the segments of the ternary form, time and again Saint-Saëns stretches the accompanimental figures almost to the breaking point; now they are powerful and dramatic, next sweet and simple. The finale, Allegro non troppo, returns to the quick tempo, though not as driving as in the first two movements, for the action comes more from dancing rhythms. A number of closely-related thematic ideas play out, one after the other, or combined. They drive the movement eventually to a stopping point–one that might even seem to come in a moment of exhaustion. As the tempo begins to build again, the composer summons the important and memorable cadence and theme from the first movement to make a brief appearance before the virtuoso coda, molto allegro, draws this work to a climactic close.

The pre-concert discussion will be led by Dr. Rebecca Jemian, Professor of Music Theory at the School of Music. It will begin at 2 PM in room 130 and all are welcome to attend.