UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA LIBRARIES KISLAK CENTER
Music in the Pavilion
Béla Bart k in New York, 1927. Daedalus Quartet December 9, 2016 Music as Translation
www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/music_series.html
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18 No. 1 I. Allegro con brio II. Adagio afettuoso ed appassionato III. Scherzo: Allegro molto IV. Allegro
Béla Bart k (1881-1945): String Quartet No. 3 Prima parte – Seconda parte – Recapitulazione della prima parte – Coda
Intermission
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in C# Minor, Op. 131 I. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo II. Allegro molto vivace III. Allegro moderato – Adagio IV. Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile – Pi mosso – Andante moderato e lusinghiero – Adagio – Allegretto – Adagio ma non troppo e semplice – Allegretto V. Presto VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante VII. Allegro ,~ w..1,, , I ~ ~ D
Page from the manuscript of Bart k’s Tird String Quartet (1927). Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts Music as Translation Béla Bart k and the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia
Tristan Paré-Morin
Beethoven and Bart k have sometimes been paired together, but few writers have described their connection in more elegant terms than the French musicologist Pierre Citron: “If the music of the late Beethoven and of Bart k is beautiful, it is not because it seeks to please, but because it translates, without trying to gratify the ear, the internal intensity of visionaries.” Tere are various ways of thinking about translation in music, between languages, between mediums, or even between performances. We may think about works that translate visual or poetic images into sounds (as with Beethoven’s Op. 18 No. 1, second movement); or we may consider how musical themes are translated into diferent arrangements, as in a theme and variations (Beethoven’s Op. 131, fourth movement). However, tonight’s program invites us to think about translation in broader terms, along Citron’s lines. How are musical works translating the inefable, that is, the aesthetic “visions” of their composers? And how are composers translating the ideas developed by earlier composers into new musical works? — in other words, how did Bart k translate Beethoven’s innovations in his music?
At the center of tonight’s concert is Bart k’s Tird String Quartet, one of the most technically challenging pieces written by the Hungarian composer. Tis concert presents it between two of Beethoven’s quartets—one early, the other late—allowing not only Bart k’s modernism, but also his debt to the Viennese master, to appear in a new light. Moreover, by hosting the concert at the location where the original manuscript is currently preserved, we are honoring the work’s historical connection with Philadelphia, and more specifcally the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, which organized a chamber music competition in 1928 in which Bart k’s quartet shared the frst prize with a Serenata by Italian composer Alfredo Casella. (Documents relating to the competition, including Bart k’s original manuscript, are on display this evening.) Te Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia
Te Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia was founded in 1820, and is today the oldest continuing musical organization in the United States. Its purpose was “the relief of decayed musicians and their families, and the cultivation of skill and difusion of taste in music.” In addition to presenting a concert series with the Society’s orchestra, the Musical Fund Society founded a musical school to foster local talent, and, in 1824, built a concert hall that quickly achieved an international reputation for its acoustics. Due to declining revenue and increasing cost of maintenance, the hall was sold in 1924. After having become a storage warehouse in the 1940s, plans to restore it as a performance space in the 1960s were unsuccessful, even if for some years (1974-1989) the building was designated National Registered Landmark. Today, its façade is still standing on Locust Street near Washington Square.
Highlights of the Society’s early history included the frst American performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberf te in 1841, some of Marian Anderson’s earliest performances in 1916-17, and many other musical frsts. But the Musical Fund Hall itself also welcomed political meetings and social events such as the Republican Party’s frst convention in 1856, commencements of the University of Pennsylvania, and even basketball games. Te Society’s orchestra moved to the Academy of Music in 1868 and fnally merged with the Philadelphia Orchestra when that organization was founded in 1900. Almost two hundred years after its founding, the Society continues its activities to this day, following its original purpose of “difusion of taste in music,” of which the 1928 chamber music competition is a notable milestone.
“Will Tey Bring Forth New Haydn or Beethoven”
Te competition, announced in 1925, attracted a lot of attention worldwide, especially in regards to its three prizes totaling $10,000. One newspaper described the prizes as “far larger than have ever been ofered before in the hundreds of competitions which have taken place all over the world in the last few years.” According to this newspaper, there had never before been a prize exceeding $1000. Because of the hefty sum of $10,000 (divided into prizes of $5000, $3000 and $2000), the expectations were high: it was projected that the “leading composers of the world” would enter the competition. One reporter of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article titled “Will Tey Bring Forth New Haydn or Beethoven,” in which he stated that “the Musical Fund Society, if it is to get its money’s worth … must raise up a Haydn or a Schumann.” We will see that for many critics, such hopes to discover the new “genius” of the twentieth century were not met at the premiere performance of the winning pieces. Tose critics exposed the gulf that already existed between the audience’s expectations for accessible music in the same vein as the “classics” (Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann) and the state of new concert music in the 1920s. When the contest was announced, and again three years later when awards were given to the winners, many critics expressed a lack of faith in the artistic value of modernism. For instance, the San Francisco reporter wrote that if Mozart were to participate, he would win it easily, “unless—and that’s the hope—even now there is a Beethoven waiting to emerge from some garret.” When the competition closed on December 31, 1927, no fewer than 643 compositions had been received by the Society (one of which was indeed a string quartet dedicated “to the memory of Beethoven”). Te frst prize went jointly to the Italian composer Alfredo Casella for his Serenata, Op. 46, and to the Hungarian composer Béla Bart k for his Tird String Quartet. Two other prizes went to Harry Waldo Warner (violist of the London String Quartet) and Carlo Jachino (from Italy).
Bart k in Philadelphia
Bart k completed his Tird String Quartet in Budapest in September 1927. Two months later, on December 18, he arrived in America for a nationwide concert tour, his only visit to the USA prior to his immigration to the country in 1940. Te tour, which lasted until February 29, 1928, began with concerts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and then with the Philadelphia Orchestra. It is interesting to note that Bart k was in Philadelphia on the day that the competition of the Musical Fund Society closed. Te composer could have submitted his newly-composed string quartet in person while in town, perhaps at the urging of some local musicians. More arresting, however, is the fact that the conductors leading the orchestras during Bart k’s tour, Willem Mengelberg (in New York) and the Hungarian Fritz Reiner (in Philadelphia and in Cincinnati), were both on the jury for the chamber music competition. It is tempting to ponder the risk of a bias in favor of Bart k’s quartet when the two most eminent members of the jury were familiar with the composer’s latest works performed during his tour (including the American premiere of the First Piano Concerto). Tey would undoubtedly have been able to identify the distinctive style (and handwriting) of the author of a “String Quartet in C#” despite the fact that all entries needed to be submitted under aliases. Te four prize-winning compositions were frst performed at a special concert at the ballroom of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel on December 30, 1928. Casella’s Serenata, with its melodic profusion, short movements and lively rhythms, was received with “immense applause, the most spontaneous and sincere of the concert.” Bart k’s quartet, on the other hand, fared less well. Te music critic of the Evening Public Ledger acknowledged that Bart k’s quartet “is one of the most difcult compositions ever put down on paper.” Nonetheless, the work was “an excellent specimen of ultra-modern composition, showing all that knowledge of musical composition which Bart k possesses to so great a degree. If composition proceeds upon the lines which the ultra-modernists believe it will, this quartet will take a very high rank some day. If not——.”
On the other hand, there were numerous critics for whom the competition was a failure. In the Evening Bulletin, one could read: “Certainly, there was little in the works ofered … to hold forth much promise for the future, musically speaking, either of the composers or the times in which they live.” Te reviewer did not spare his invectives: “A string quartet by Bart k had threatened to empty the ballroom before it reached its dreary end. Te composer alleged his work is in the key of C-sharp minor. Possibly it was. It might have been in any key. It droned along with that curiously vague and boresome efect which appears to be the outstanding achievement of the school of writers who have forsaken scales and passed beyond the borders of tones and semi-tones as we know them. Before Bart k’s piece was fnished a goodly portion of the company had defed tradition by walking out.”
Tis harsh review seems to have been the norm rather than the exception in a city where Bart k’s music remained almost unknown before the 1940s, even despite the composer’s visit in 1927. A review of the New Year concert that Bart k gave in Philadelphia during his tour employed terms akin to those used by the Evening Bulletin to describe the Tird Quartet’s premiere: “Te Foyer was flled to overfowing, and there was a great scrambling around to fnd extra chairs for latecomers who were wedged into every conceivable crevice. Te rush to get in, however, was only exceeded by the rush to get out after Yelly d’Aranyi, Hungarian violinist, … had wrung and wrested cries of anguish from her forlorn fddle in Bart k’s Sonata for Piano and Violin, No. 2, with the composer aiding and abetting the tonal torture at the piano. … Te String Quartette, No. 2, Opus 17, which immediately followed it, and closed the programme, … was entirely too long, and was delayed further by a late start.”
Considering this sampling of reviews (and there are more!), one might wonder how a work like Bart k’s quartet could appeal to the members of a jury who selected a much “easier” piece as co-winner. One feels that the jury might have been as divided as the critics at the premiere. Is it possible that the conductors Willem Mengelberg and Fritz Reiner, alongside with the music editor of the Public Ledger (whose review is cited above) were in favor of granting the Hungarian composer the frst prize, while the other three members (including the president of the Musical Fund Society) were all in favor of the more tuneful Serenata by Casella? To this day, opinions are still divided between those who think that the work sounds like “awful sound- impressions” (Jeno Platthy) and others who argue that it is “one of Bart k’s greatest works” (Paul Wilson).
Bart k’s Tird String Quartet
Te frst three of Béla Bart k’s six string quartets show the gradual evolution of the composer’s style from his early, late-Romantic idiom, to his integration of folksongs into avant-garde music, to the abstract, expressionist, and at times percussive style characteristic of his Tird String Quartet. Te Tird Quartet is divided in four parts performed without break. A slow frst part leads into a brisk second part, which is then followed by a free recapitulation of the frst part and a vigorous concluding coda. Unlike classical quartets, in which the recapitulation reprises the frst part, Bart k’s recapitulation merely alludes to the material of the frst part. Similarly, the coda can be thought of as a free recapitulation of the second part.
Even though Bart k indicated on the manuscript the tonic of C# for his quartet, this pitch should be understood only as a focal point since the work adopts an atonal style that favors dissonant combinations of pitches rather than the consonant use of triads. For instance, in the opening phrase of the quartet, Bart k employs all twelve chromatic pitches over a sustained C# played by the cello. Yet, other passages refect Bart k’s interest in folk music. Near the end of the frst part, the second violin and viola play together a modal melody (again above a sustained C# in the cello) that evokes the outline of a folk song while also transforming and expanding the chromatic material from the quartet’s opening, efectively working as a sort of “synthesis” of Bart k’s modernist idiom and folk infuences.
Te second part opens with another allusion to folk music with a lively new theme based on an ascending scale introduced by the cello on plucked strings (see manuscript opposite). Te rest of the quartet develops this theme with constantly renewed rhythms, registers, and a vibrant exploration of timbre , .,. ____..- ;t~. • I b ~ I ~ l !, 11 " • 1 • u J "__.·o 4,v o _ ~---ro - 'p"~ ,,,.-:,,J:,;...:.. -- " -·" - 0--- , .... "I' ,,...-ii ~ J _..j-_ -1- ...... _ I ,.._ J ( r- 1-..j._j .... ·t . ~ +-r:f 7..- through the prominent use of extended instrumental techniques. In some passages, the musicians are asked to play col legno (with the wood of the bow rather than the hair), sulla tastiera and sul ponticello (at the fngerboard and at the bridge, in other words, anywhere but at the regular position), or glissando (sliding on the strings, as heard prominently at the end of the quartet).
Despite its modernist style, some of the innovations of Bart k’s Tird String Quartet can be traced back to Beethoven’s late quartets, and most particularly, to the quartet Op. 131, also performed tonight. Indeed, the unique layout of Op. 131 seems to have paved the way for Bart k: it comprises seven movements played without interruption, of which the outer movements are written in the key of C# minor, the same pitch used by Bart k in his Tird String Quartet. But analogies between the two composers’ techniques go beyond these structural similarities: both include complex fugal writing as part of larger movements, both prefer to develop short motifs rather than lyrical melodies, and both unify their works by reusing material from earlier movements in later ones. As musicologist Pierre Citron put it: “Bart k’s six [quartets] are, since the sixteen (or seventeen) of Beethoven, the only signifcant series of quartets. Both series nearly cover the entirety of their author’s career and almost sufce to represent the evolution of their style. … Almost everything [in Bart k’s quartets] comes from Beethoven, or extends it, without transition.”
Two Quartets by Beethoven
Beethoven’s Op. 131 has been described as “the culmination of his signifcant efort as a composer ever since going to Vienna” (Joseph Kerman). Completed in July 1826 but printed in June 1827, three months after the composer’s death, it is one of Beethoven’s last pieces, and arguably one of his most original in terms of form and content. Te frst movement is a serene fugue (completed shortly after the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133) based on a four-note motif (G#-B#-C#-A) focused on a rising semitone (B#-C#). Tis motif reappears transformed as a descending scale in the last movement (C#-B#-A-G#), thus unifying the whole quartet despite the work’s apparent fragmentary nature. Beethoven himself wrote to his editor in 1826 that his new work was “patched together from stolen bits of this and that.” Indeed, the internal movements of the quartet do not show the same tight structural consistency as the outer ones. Te short second movement is a lively dance in a lighter style that contrasts with the solemn mood of the opening fugue. Te third movement, even shorter, is nothing more than a transition leading to the central movement, by far the longest and most intriguing movement of the quartet. Tis movement is a theme and variations in which rather than varying the melody or harmony of the theme as in classical variations, Beethoven develops some of its smaller elements, fragmenting their contours into “bits of this and that” that are then reconstructed into variations in which the main theme is at times barely recognizable. Te scherzo-type ffth movement is followed by a short melancholic movement that transitions into the fnale, a forceful movement in sonata form that brings us back to the opening key of C# minor. Tis movement’s second theme, a delicate major-mode phrase, is eventually outdone by the hammering of the main theme that brings the quartet to a vigorous close.
Te late quartets of Beethoven show just how far the composer had reached in his exploration of form, harmony and melody since his earliest quartets. Te opening piece of tonight’s concert, Op. 18 No. 1 in F major, was completed almost thirty years before, in 1799, and then thoroughly revised for publication in 1800. As with all of Beethoven’s early quartets, it employs the classical string quartet ordering in four movements: allegro, adagio, scherzo, allegro. Of those four movements, the second (Adagio afettuoso ed appassionato) is most notable for having been inspired by the tomb scene of Romeo and Juliet, as reported by his close friend Karl Amenda, to whom the composer sent the frst version of the quartet. Indeed, in the manuscript, Beethoven marked some of the musical phrases with references to Shakespeare’s play: “he fnds the tomb,” “despair,” “he kills himself,” and “the last sighs.” Te movement’s opening aching line introduced by the frst violin is operatic in character—like a phrase of an Italian aria—, whereas the accompaniment in the lower strings gives the allure of a somber threnody, whose dramatic silences translate Romeo’s fatal pain at Juliet’s tomb. As in his late quartets, or even as in Bart k’s expressionist works, Beethoven had a strong aesthetic vision that he fulflled through his relentless and defant explorations of the genre of the string quartet. Daedalus Quartet Matilda Kaul Min-Young Kim Tomas Kraines Jessica Tompson
Praised by Te New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. Since winning the top prize in the Banf International String Quartet Competition in 2001, the Daedalus Quartet has impressed critics and listeners alike with the security, technical fnish, interpretive unity, and sheer gusto of its performances. Te New York Times has praised the Daedalus Quartet’s “insightful and vibrant” Haydn, the “impressive intensity” of their Beethoven, their “luminous” Berg, and the “riveting focus” of their Dutilleux. Te Washington Post in turn has acclaimed their performance of Mendelssohn for its “rockets of blistering virtuosity,” while the Houston Chronicle has described the “silvery beauty” of their Schubert and the “magic that hushed the audience” when they played Ravel, the Boston Globe the “fnesse and fury” of their Shostakovich, the Toronto Globe and Mail the “thrilling revelation” of their Hindemith, and the Cincinnati Enquirer the “tremendous emotional power” of their Brahms.
Te Daedalus Quartet has won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music, most notably the compositions of Elliott Carter, George Perle, Gy rgy Kurt and Gy rgy Ligeti. Te Quartet has also collaborated with some of the world’s fnest instrumentalists: these include pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Awadagin Pratt, Joyce Yang, and Benjamin Hochman; clarinetists Paquito D’Rivera, Ricardo Morales, and Alexander Fiterstein; and violists Roger Tapping and Donald Weilerstein.
Te award-winning members of the Daedalus Quartet hold degrees from the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Cleveland Institute, and Harvard University. Te Daedalus Quartet has served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. Music in the Pavilion
he University of Pennsylvania's Music Department and the Kislak Center Tfor Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts are proud to present a jointly sponsored music series for the 2016-2017 year. Te series showcases an array of professional and international musicians, performing not only gems from standard concert repertoires, such as the piano works of Chopin, but also premiering works found only in the wealth of materials—print and manuscript—held in the Kislak Center's collection.
UPCOMING CONCERT SCHEDULE All concerts will be held in the Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, Van Pelt- Dietrich Library, sixth foor on Fridays at 7pm and are free of charge. Join us at 6:15pm for a discussion led by Penn faculty and graduate students prior to the concerts.
Les Canards Chantants February 10, 2017: "Sex, Drugs, and Madrigals"
Matthew Bengtson April 7, 2017: "A Music Salon in Nineteenth-Century Paris"
Series Directors: Music Dept: Mauro Calcagno and Mary Channen Caldwell (faculty members) Kislak Center: William Noel (Director) Penn Libraries: Richard Griscom (Director of Collections & Liaison Services)
We are especially grateful to: Elizabeth Bates, Special Project Manager, Kislak Center Andrea Gottschalk, Exhibit Designer and Coordinator, Kislak Center Maryellen Malek, Coordinator, Music Dept. Tristan Paré-Morin, PhD candidate, Music Dept. John Pollack, Library Specialist, Kislak Center Anna Weesner, Chair, Music Dept.
www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/music_series.html