Program Notes, 2010
by Durrell Bowman
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July 7 – Wednesday Upbeat!
Schumann – Märchenerzählungen
Schnittke – Piano Quintet
Dvořák – String Quintet in G major
Robert Schumann
German composer and music critic Robert Schumann (1810-56) was profoundly influenced by literature and by an arduous battle for the love of his life. However, he also increasingly suffered from mental problems, attempted suicide in his early forties, and spent his final years in an asylum.(Program notes for other concerts of this Festival provide additional information about Schumann's life and works. See the Table of Contents .)
Schumann's late works (1851-53) include the:
- Violin Sonata No. 2 in D minor (performed on July 26)
- Märchenerzählungen
Märchenerzählungen (Op. 132, 1853)
Despite their evocative title, these "Fairy Tales" do not present an actual story. However, the four movements are linked by a recurring, two-part musical motive. Although the work is relatively light-hearted, it builds in its degree of agitation. The upper part can be played by violin or by clarinet, with clarinet being the composer's original intention. The work was one of Schumann's last, just before the final stages of his mental illness and his attempted suicide. The first movement ("Lively, not too quickly") includes a smoothly-stated, upward-moving musical idea that is first heard in the viola. This material is then contrasted by detached and downward-moving ideas. In the early parts of the second movement ("Lively and very marked") the recurring motive is rhythmically distorted, but the middle section is then more sophisticated. The slow, third movement ("Calm tempo with delicate expression") uses the work's motive in a lyrically-expanded way. The fourth movement ("Lively, very marked") begins strongly and provides further variations of the work's main motive.
Alfred Schnittke
Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-98) was born to German Jewish parents, but he became a Christian mystic. He believed that his works translated ideas from a divine place somewhere outside of himself. In his late teens he lived in Vienna, but he then attended the Moscow Conservatory, where he later taught instrumentation (1962-72). In the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Schnittke composed prolifically, including film music, orchestral music, concertos, ballets, choral/vocal works, several operas, and chamber music. His works have been frequently recorded, and he became highly influential in the West starting in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he lived in Hamburg, Germany.
Piano Quintet (1972-76)
This work is a highly personal one, for Schnittke wrote it in honor of his mother, who died in 1972. It was central to his emerging style, but at first he could not complete the work and abandoned it for about three years. He did not continue to work on it for four years. He found it too difficult to reconcile "imaginary space" with the "excruciating pain" of "psychological space." By 1975-76, he had established a way of composing that was both starkly personal and darkly claustrophobic, and he could thus complete this piece. The first movement ("Moderately," the opening is shown) is the only one completed shortly after his mother's death. The second movement ("In a waltz tempo") is a slow waltz inspired by the wedge-like B-A-C-H motto. (H in German notation is the note B-natural, and B is the note B-flat). This is not just any arrangement of notes, for many composers have used the "Bach motif" to indicate a religious and/or harmonic depth for which J. S. Bach was the exemplar. Why else would Schnittke do the same? In fact, he had already recently used it in his Quasi Una Sonata (1968). The third and fourth movements ("In a walking tempo" and "Slowly") are the most personal. They are mainly static and meditative (and atonal), but they also sometimes cry out in grief. The fourth movement ends by "melting down" to a single note. The fifth movement ("Pastorally moderate") is largely based around a theme that is repeated in the piano a number of times. However, the movement also recalls material from the earlier ones, and it ends with the composer's instruction for the abandoned pianist to play "without tone." Heartbeat sounds (tapping on parts of the piano that do not produce notes) are clearly present in several movements. However, if one such instance (e.g., in the fourth movement) depicts the actual death of Schnittke's mother, then what do the several other occurrences depict? It is possible that they are meant to represent various stages of Schittke's own "heartbreak" over his mother's death. However, he actually said very little about this work, so the legend that it is meant to depict his mother dying of a stroke or heart attack in the streets of Moscow—with no-one coming to her aid—is quite speculative.
Antonín Dvořák
Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) had a flair for memorable tunes and orchestrations. He also succeeded in combining Western Classical forms with Bohemian nationalism and folk-like melodies. He is best known for his orchestral works (such as Symphony No. 9, "From the New World") and for other large-scale works (such as his Cello Concerto and Czech language operas). However, he also wrote a large number of chamber works, including fourteen string quartets, the Piano Trio in E minor ("Dumky," performed on July 28), the Quintet in A major for Piano and Strings (July 30), and the String Quintet in G major. The son of a butcher, during his early career Dvořák earned some income as a violist and organist in Prague. He then won a prestigious government grant and, later in his career, taught at the University of Prague. By the time he visited the US in the early 1890s, Dvořák was already considered a major international composer.
String Quintet in G major (Op. 77, 1875)
This work was composed in 1875, with the exception of an Intermezzo Nocturno that Dvořák derived from an earlier, unpublished string quartet. The composer then later reworked that same movement a second time, as a Nocturne for string orchestra. Thus, the originally-published version of the quintet excluded the Intermezzo (which had initially been placed as the second movement) and also has a misleadingly-late opus number (op. 77). In fact, the work gives a good sense of the composer's early firm rejection of his youthful enthusiasm for Wagner's experimental and comparatively over-wrought version of Romanticism. It is thus modeled more after the time-honored forms used in similar works by Mozart and Schubert. Indeed, the first movement ("Quickly, with fire") is in sonata form, the Scherzo ("Quickly, with life") features a light, contrasting trio section, the slow movement ("A bit slowly") is in ternary form, and the finale ("Quite fast") is in rondo form. However, the work also gives a sense of Dvořák's melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic influences from his Bohemian/Czech national context.