I'm writing today's diary as if addressed to the neophyte, rather than the expert, to people who either never heard chamber music or who never wanted to sit through and bother with it. Perhaps it is an acquired taste, eh? All the bombast and spectacle of a large three-figure sized orchestra with live cannons and fireworks going off (as often done during the 1812 overture, for instance) can make a work played by a few people who could fit into a closet seem rather puny by comparison. But it has its advantages. The small size of the performing group does not in any way indicate the seriousness or power or the complexity of the music. Many composers saved their best music for their chamber works. If you become stuck on orchestral music, you can miss some of the greatest music ever composed. Like Schubert's String Quintet in C major, which we'll hear the first movement of today.
Chamber music (so-called because it could be played in small drawing rooms rather than auditoriums) used to be popular with the public because they could play it at home with their families. I actually dated sisters who used to perform trios with their dad in their living room, for instance. If you really love Mozart, how much more fun to play it with your kids than to listen to it on a CD! Cozy. Because there was a market for it, music publishers needed new quartets and trios, and composers eagerly filled the market niche.
Even great composers like Beethoven, who was the symphonic rock star of his time. As prolific a composer as he was, as easy as it may have been to get his new symphonies performed, he devoted a huge amount of his time to chamber works like his quartets and sonatas, making them into mini-symphonies, some of them more striking, more complex, and deeply felt than his grandiose ninth symphony. So don't make the mistake of assuming (as I once did) that chamber works are the musical lesser children. Nope.
For a not-so-rock star composer, like Schubert, for example, chamber music also served as a good way to get their music performed; they didn't need the marketing and logistics involved in convincing an impresario to book an orchestra and a hall to present it. Easily sold to publishers, easily performed by a small group, it got their music out there. Some of Schubert's orchestral works, like his mighty (and expensive to produce) Ninth Symphony, weren't performed before the public until years after his death. So chamber music was one of the places where Schubert could at least get a chance of being heard.
What difference does the smaller ensemble make? A big difference is that each instrument has to play a unique part, unable to hide in a herd of twenty violinists all playing the same part. No fake-lifting allowed here! And the sound is different. With fewer instruments to paint tonal colors, the peculiarities of individual instruments come out and can be used, must be used, like the harsh screech that a solo violin can make and use to great deliberate effect, or the percussive effects of string-plucking (called pizzicato).
The smaller ensemble also means that the group itself usually has some inner social dynamic off-stage which we are not privy to. They know each other better than large orchestra members and have "stuff." "Oh but they're consummate professionals, that can't matter!" Really? What do you do for a living? I'm a programmer, and I can testify to the frictions of working in a small group can create. And I've known enough professional musicians, even within my family, to know they're definitely not more emotionally stable than programmers, yours truly admittedly not being the best example of the latter.
As the audience, we get to watch the individual performers. Because they're solo, their interpretation and performance of the music are theirs alone. That's very personal. And unlike with the herd of an orchestral performance, we get to watch their faces and their body language as they do it. Watch that today, the movements of the shoulders, the chair-dancing, the expressions of bliss and ferocity. It's not hamming. To be great performers, they need to get into the music. And because they are going to be watched and listened to so closely, with nowhere to hide, their best efforts are called upon.
SCHUBERT!
So let's talk just a little about Schubert the man, to get that out of the way.
As we know, Beethoven was manly and deaf, Mozart was perfect, Tchaikovsky was gay, Schumann was crazy... What about Schubert?
Schubert received little or no recognition during his life and grew in fame after he died. During his life, he was most famous for his lieder -- Viennese pop music, effectively. That the man composed nine symphonies almost went unnoticed.
Here's Schubert's lieder song, Roslein auf der Heiden, sung by Marlene Dietrich in a scratchy 1933 recording. You have to skip to the 2:55 mark to hear it.
Schubert is sometimes stuck in the category of Romantic composer. I was going to avoid him during this Romantic phase of the diary series, because I don't consider him Romantic myself. Let's compromise then and consider him a borderline case. His music is very passionate, and if that's your guide for determining Romanticism, then he's Romantic. But his music is not as narrative-driven, not even as much as Beethoven's. Schubert's works present you with huge chunks of pure complicated music that, when one is prepared for Romantic/ music, seem to not be headed in any particular direction, to have no dramatic purpose other than just being musical ideas, one after another, organized into their own architecture, but not trying to tell a story. With Beethoven and Schumann and Tchaikovsky, I pointed out the climaxes of the music. With Schubert, it's not easy to identify a climax, if any at all. It's just music. But what music. That's not a flaw, just a characteristic of his music -- and much of Mozart's as well.
His music is also not maniacally "thematically unified." Where Beethoven in his Fifth Symphony, or Tchaikovsky in his Sixth, or even Stravinsky in his Firebird, would have based everything on just one motif, Schubert seems to say, why limit yourself that way? He was certainly familiar with Beethoven's music, but he didn't emulate Beethoven that way. He gives us a proliferation of beautiful musical ideas, often unrelated to each other, so many and so complicated that it takes more than one listening and some attention to get it all and see how they interlock. A bitch to explain. Beethoven is so much easier. With Beethoven I can say, "It's all da-da-da-DAH."
In this way, Schubert can be an acquired taste. Unfortunately, he also composed a lot of mediocre dreck in his earlier years. It took him a while to get up to speed. His earlier quartets, for instance, sound light-years different in quality and tone than his later works. His symphonies the same. There's a clear course of progress in his musical development. The Quintet in C, which we are going to hear, is the last instrumental work composed during his lifetime. And such a long life. Mozart died so young at 35.
Schubert died at 31. Think about it! Jeez... All that music snuffed out. What if he had had 45 more years? What then?
The first movement: Its organization
Before we begin, let's get an overview. Is this going to be Sonata-allegro form? Oh, yes! -- with a few tweaks. Lucky us, we have my graphic that explains it:
... although it doesn't adhere to this format very strictly. The intro will be in C major, of course, but that quickly gives way to a very beautiful sort-of second theme which doesn't start very neatly in one new key. The music suddenly drops to the very alien key of E-flat major, then returning to C, then leaping to G major, the logical and usually expected second key (the dominant key), according to our cute graphic above. From another composer like Mozart or Beethoven, you might expect this E-flat-C-G thing to be the bridge passage to the more important G major second theme. Nope. It is more important than the C major music before or the G major music after. This "bridge passage" melody dominates the movement. And it is gorgeous in how it stands out. The sudden drop to E-flat calms the busy-ness of the movement and seizes attention with its sudden burst of lyricism.
Next week we'll do the second movement, which is the shining star of this quintet, and the part that is quoted frequently in films.
And here we go... The Schubert Quintet in C Major, D. 956, first movement Allegro Non Troppo, live at the Zagreb International Chamber Music Festival 2008
Susanna Yoko Henkel - violin
Stefan Milenkovich - violin
Guy Ben-Ziony - viola
Giovanni Sollima - cello
Monika Leskovar - cello
Schubert Quintet in C, D 956 - 1. Allegro non troppo from Zagreb kom on Vimeo.
Intro (0:00 to 1:10)
A lush, swelling chords start out the quintet. After gaining its bearings, it launches into the fast part of the movement proper.
First theme (1:10 to 1:57)
... And the fast part is characterized by a kind of rigid marching rhythm figure. Using my patented da-da-da method of musical transcription, we can describe it as "da-DA! da-DA! daDAdaDAdaDAda." It will return in other forms, later. It flirts with a minor key (D minor) but stays true to C.
Bridge passage thing (1:57 to 3:20)
And here we have the sudden drop (or rise) to E-flat major, like hitting an air pocket. It grabs our attention. The mood changes. The violins smooth things out and sing a song. From E-flat this melody goes back to C (3:06), although that change too is dramatic, and then from there to G major (3:20, the "logical" destination second key. Watch the faces the cellist in the center gives Susanna Yoko-Henkel.
Second theme(3:20(
The demarcation is actually fuzzy there, because the bridge passage IS the second theme. I admit If I'm pounding square pegs into round holes here, I'm doing it to try to give us a familiar roadmap. G major having been established, Schubert elaborates on the same lyrical theme with more ornamentation in all the parts. It soars angelically until it reaches a mini-climax (at about 3:49)
Codetta (4:05 to 5:05)
A new theme, based in part on the bridge-thingy seems to lead us to the end of the exposition.
At 4:33, a new rhythmic march figure helps in the wrapping up process. Watch the cellist's face again as he jerks his head to left and right with it! Susanna marches along with it with her shoulders. At 5:05 we get a very final sounding G chord, a little packaging bow to tie up the exposition with.
Development (5:06)
With an abrupt modulation to A major, we begin the development, and a long, complicated development it will be. The lyrical bridge-thingie-melody is back, but it quickly falls down the rabbit hole at 5:30 into darker territory. Going to F sharp minor, a little rhythmic figure from the lyrical bridge that we may not have paid much attention seizes control of things, angular and harsh. This is one of the areas where the starkness of solo strings in chamber music can stand out in a way they don't in symphonic music.
After this, we enter a new lyrical phase, with a beautiful new Schubertian musical idea in D-Flat major. Susanna on first violin gets a soaring part in it. I love watching her expressions here. If you listen carefully though, you can hear the previous angular/harsh rhythmic figure still being played on the second cello in the midst of this beauty.
At 6:33, angular/harsh makes its comeback, seizing control again. (C minor this time).
At 7:00, the new lyrical idea returns, but in a different form. The bearded violist that jerked and pounded his way through the angular/harsh section gets a nice part here. How interesting to see how his face changes with the change in music. And the seriousness on the central cellist's face during this section.
At 7:37, the angular/harsh rhythmic figure is back yet again. And can't we see by now how Schubert has used it to punctuate the development section? It separates these different, more lyrical passages, constrasting with their mood and moving the development forward to new keys, adding propulsion.
In this third and last appearance, it is changed, unstable, modulating upward again and again, traveling through many keys, setting us up for a climax of the development at 8:12 as it returns with great finality to the home key of C major. The drama tapers off and chills in preparation for the return of...
Recapitulation -- Intro (8:24)
Home again in C major, we hear the intro again. However, the first violin is still playing that rhythmic figure. To get really picayune (if you listen to this enough times, you will), that little figure has gone through an evolution from its first appearance in the bridge/passage thingy to the development-separator-thingy to now this hanger-on thingy, a little reminder of where and how far we have traveled.
Recapitulation -- first theme (9:10)
And here comes the first theme again, which should be in C major, like before, if Schubert were simple enough to follow usual formula. But here he pulls a familiar trick of his, his own preferred twist on sonata-allegro form: the first theme returns in the recapitulation NOT in the home key, but migrates downwards a fifth to the subdominant key of F major.
What's the fuck? Dumbo, you explained Sonata-allegro so many times, I thought I had it, and now you hand me this shit? I'm so confuuuuuused!
Patience. You had to learn algebra before you could handle calculus, didn't you? And it's not that more difficult. You've learned new vocabulary and concepts along the way, if you have been following the series. If not, go back to THE VERY FIRST DIARY IN THE SERIES, which explains Sonata-allegro form.
Sonata-allegro tradition, as we have seen many times now, says the second theme in the recapitulation has to be in the home key of C major, not G major, like it was in the exposition, because the return to the home key is just a central concept of all music, even modern pop -- it's only been dragged out for fifteen minutes in this case. '
What Schubert does here is, rather than change the bridge passage, he just moves EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE FIRST THEME downward a fourth so it all lines up at the end at C major, you'll see.
And so here, at 9:06, where we would expect the C major first theme to return just like before, we instead get a series of VERY dramatic chords which send us spinning down to F major, before resuming again.
How will we get back to C major! We miss C major! Have faith, my little ones.
And, oh by the way... For all of you people who, like me, usually can't tell one key from another without a tuning fork (or a guitar in my lap, in this case) is there any question that you can tell this F major version of the first theme from the second? Go back in the video and hear it again, if you really need to compare. But the nature of solo string instruments (remember, it's chamber music day, eh?) is such that when they go up or down a fifth or an octave, their whole sound can change dramatically, being out of its normal range, becoming more harsh or losing its edge. Even someone tone deaf can notice that kind of difference.
Recapitulation -- bridge passage
The beautiful, lyrical bridge passage / second theme is back. Where before, it had been in the alien key of E-flat major, now it's in, uh, the alien key of A-flat major! It has been moved down four notes. From A-flat it goes to F (where before it went to C) and then it goes to C (where before it went to G.)
And we are back home in C. Cute huh?
Because of the change, Schubert seems to give more of the music to the violas here, because it's closer to their natural range.
Recapitulation -- second theme (11:26)
Second theme, basically the bridge theme, ornamented, pretty much the same as the first time we heard it, but in C major.
Recapitulation -- codetta (11:54)
Same, but in C major now.
Coda 13:04
As the previous codetta tapers off, we begin the final coda, which sounds at first like the intro. We hear one final passage, a fragment based on the lyrical second theme, before the quintet ends very, very gently.
Purely gratuitous Pamela Tiffin pic.
NEXT WEEK:
Next week might not even be next week. It might be a Sunday GUERILLA edition of Thursday Classical Music Blogging. Kind of like the night Halloween stole Christmas. We'll see. But the next edition, anyway, will be the second, slow movement of the Schubert Quintet. And as wonderful as this, the first movement was, the slow movement is what really breaks hearts. You can find multiple versions of it on Vimeo or Youtube if you want to listen ahead without my patter to ruin it.