Pre-concert lecture with Woo-Chan Lee, Ph.D Candidate in the Department of Music. Allegro moderato Scherzando: Allegretto Adagio Rondo: Presto

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Pre-concert lecture with Woo-Chan Lee, Ph.D Candidate in the Department of Music. Allegro moderato Scherzando: Allegretto Adagio Rondo: Presto"

Rose Matthews
6 years ago
Views:

1 The University of Chicago Presents Mandel Hall November 1, 2013, 7:30 PM CUARTETO CASALS with DENIS AZABAGIĆ, guitar Vera Martinez, violin Abel Tomás, violin Jonathan Brown, viola Arnau Tomás, cello Denis Azabagić, guitar Pre-concert lecture with Woo-Chan Lee, Ph.D Candidate in the Department of Music HAYDN String Quartet in C Major, Opus 33, No. 3 The Bird Allegro moderato Scherzando: Allegretto Adagio Rondo: Presto DEBUSSY String Quartet in G Minor Animé et très décidé Scherzo: Assez vif et bien rythmé Andantino doucement expressif Très modéré; Très mouvementé; Très animé Intermission THOMAS Out of Africa Call at Sunrise Morning Dance Zenith Evening Dance Cradle Song BOCCHERINI Quintet in D Major for Guitar and Strings, G.448 Fandango Pastorale Allegro maestoso Grave assai; Fandango String Quartet in C Major, Opus 33, No. 3 The Bird

2 FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau Died May 31, 1809, Vienna Haydn s 83 string quartets span nearly his entire career, but rather than being written continuously, they appeared in bunches. When the six quartets of his Opus 33 were completed in 1781, they were his first quartets in nine years, and Haydn offered handwritten copies of the manuscripts to wealthy patrons, advertising them as having been written in a quite new, special manner. Exactly what he meant by this has been the source of some debate, and cynical commentators have felt that Haydn s enthusiasm for the novelty of these quartets was merely a sales pitch. But these quartets do show some new features: Haydn experiments with sonata-form first movements based on only one theme, replaces the minuet movements with scherzos, and uses rondo-finales in all six quartets. Two of the Opus 33 quartets have become well-known, and both of these have nicknames: No. 2, The Joke and No. 3, The Bird. The latter takes its nickname from the chirping grace-notes that decorate so many of its themes, but even more distinctive in this music is the utter ease of the writing: this graceful music soars and sings happily. While Haydn is usually credited with liberating all four voices in the string quartet, The Bird is largely dominated by the first violin, which remains firmly in the spotlight throughout. Over steady accompaniment from the middle voices, the first violin announces the main theme of the Allegro moderato. During these years, Haydn had grown increasingly interested in building sonata-form movements on just one theme, and when the second theme-group arrives, it reveals itself as a variation on the opening melody, complete with chirping grace-notes. Haydn dispenses with a minuet in this quartet, replacing it with a movement he marks Scherzando. This is not the sort of scherzo that Beethoven would write a generation later, but it is faster than minuet tempo, and surprising accents give the melodic lines unusual weight. The outer sections remain in the lowest registers of all four instruments (someone noted of this movement that C major has never sounded so dark as it does here), and the trio section offers several surprises: a duo for the two violins only, it brings back some of the bird-music of the opening movement. The Adagio belongs almost entirely to the first violin its simple opening melody grows florid and complex as the movement unfolds while the finale is a rondo. Reportedly based on a Slavonic folk tune, this movement aptly marked Presto zips along with unflagging energy. Seldom has there been more gloriously apt writing for string quartet, and seldom has there been more cheerful music than this graceful romp, which rushes right to its close and, like smoke, disappears silently and effortlessly. String Quartet in G Minor CLAUDE DEBUSSY Born August 22, 1862, Saint Germain-en-Laye Died March 25, 1918, Paris Early in 1893, Debussy met the famed Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaÿe. Debussy was at this time almost unknown (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun was still a year in the future), but he and Ysaÿe instantly became friends though Ysaÿe was only four years older than Debussy, he

3 treated the diminutive Frenchman like his little brother. That summer, Debussy composed a string quartet for Ysaÿe s quartet, which gave the first performance in Paris on December 29, Debussy was already notorious with his teachers for his refusal to follow musical custom, and so it comes as a surprise to find him choosing to write in this most demanding of classical forms. Early audiences were baffled. Reviewers used words like fantastic and oriental, and Debussy s friend Ernest Chausson confessed mystification. Debussy must have felt the sting of these reactions, for he promised Chausson: Well, I ll write another for you... and I ll try to bring more dignity to the form. But Debussy did not write another string quartet, and his Quartet in G Minor has become one of the cornerstones of the quartet literature. The entire quartet grows directly out of its first theme, presented at the very opening, and this sharply rhythmic figure reappears in various shapes in all four movements, taking on a different character, a different color, and a different harmony on each reappearance. What struck early audiences as fantastic now seems an utterly original conception of what a string quartet might be. Here is a combination of energy, drama, thematic imagination, and attention to color never heard before in a string quartet. Debussy may have felt pushed to apologize for a lack of dignity in this music, but we value it today just for that failure. Those who think of Debussy as the composer of misty impressionism are in for a shock with his quartet, for it has the most slashing, powerful opening Debussy ever wrote: his marking for the beginning is Animated and very resolute. This first theme, with its characteristic triplet spring, is the backbone of the entire quartet: the singing second theme grows directly out of this opening (though the third introduces new material). The development is marked by powerful accents, long crescendos, and shimmering colors as this movement drives to an unrelenting close in G minor. The Scherzo may well be the quartet s most impressive movement. Against powerful pizzicato chords, Debussy sets the viola s bowed theme, a transformation of the quartet s opening figure; soon this is leaping between all four voices. The recapitulation of this movement, in 15/8 and played entirely pizzicato, bristles with rhythmic energy, and the music then fades away to a beautifully understated close. Debussy marks the third movement Gently expressive, and this quiet music is so effective that it is sometimes used as an encore piece. It is in ABA form: the opening section is muted, while the more animated middle is played without mutes the quartet s opening theme reappears subtly in this middle section. Debussy marks the ending, again played with mutes, As quiet as possible. The finale begins slowly but gradually accelerates to the main tempo, Very lively and with passion. As this music proceeds, the quartet s opening theme begins to appear in a variety of forms: first in a misty, distant statement marked soft and expressive, then gradually louder and louder until it returns in all its fiery energy, stamped out in double-stops by the entire quartet. A propulsive coda drives to the close, where the first violin flashes upward across three octaves to strike the powerful G major chord that concludes this most undignified and most wonderful piece of music. Out of Africa

4 ALAN THOMAS Born in Atlanta, Alan Thomas received his training at Indiana University and the University of California and since 1996 has been based in England. On his website, the composer has provided a program note for Out of Africa: It was in the spirit of Karen Blixen s classic book (and subsequent beautifully realised film) that I wanted to use the title Out of Africa for this suite for solo guitar. I m a big fan of many of the different strands of African music-making, but was afraid of copying or appropriating African music in a sort of ethno-tourist way. This is not African music, but rather music which is inspired by my distilled memories of particular African styles of singing, for example, or the use of additive rhythms, irregular metric groupings and pentatonic or pandiatonic scales. I also try to pay homage to two great plucked-string instruments of the African continent: the kora (in mvt. 2) and the oud (mvt. 3). Needless to say, these pieces barely scratch the surface of the musical traditions and languages of Africa, but they do attempt to bring at least a bit of this rich heritage under the guitarist s fingers. The suite consists of five different movements, which are played in two different groups without pause (movements 1-2 and movements 3-5). To give the different pieces a sense of unity and direction, I decide to programmatically chart the course of a day, from sunrise to sleep. The music s day begins with a Call at Sunrise, a melody presented in canon which gradually develops into a vibrant ostinato and vocalic melody. The second movement, Morning Dance, is again built on an ostinato bass line, and has an exuberance and feel typical of South African popular music. By using cross-string scalar patterns (in which notes ring over each other in what guitarists call campanella, I tried to evoke the sound of the kora. Though this instrument comes from a different part of Africa, the crossbreeding of different musical traditions is precisely what I was aiming for in this piece. The heat of mid-day is depicted in Zenith, which draws on North Africa/Arabic music in its central and final sections. Particularly in the middle section, the sound of the oud (arguably the guitar s great-great-grandfather) is evoked, including microtonal inflections facilitated by detuning the guitar s third string. The final section builds to a climax via an exploration of the guitar as a percussion instrument. A transition then leads to the fourth movement, Evening Dance, which in turn transforms at its end into the final movement, Cradle Song. This gentle lullaby brings the day to a serene close, drawing on musical material from the first movement to create a cyclical return to the next morning. Alan Thomas Quintet in D Major for Guitar and Strings, G.448 Fandango LUIGI BOCCHERINI Born February 19, 1743, Lucca Died May 28, 1805, Madrid During his forty-year tenure as court composer in Madrid, Boccherini appears to have been charmed by the exotic life of his adopted country, and in his compositions he sometimes

5 included non-musical sounds he heard around him in Spain. One of his quintets, full of the sound of hunting horns and bird-calls, is nicknamed the Aviary, and another work subtitled Nocturnal Music of the Streets of Madrid makes use of church bells and bugle calls from the military garrison. This attention to the native sounds of Spain appears as well in the series of guitar quintets that Boccherini composed during the 1790s, late in his life. In the Guitar Quintet in D Major, he expands the range of Spanish sounds in his music by including two of the most Spanish instruments of all, guitar and castanets. These late guitar quintets were not new compositions, but rather arrangements for guitar and string quartet of music Boccherini had originally composed some years earlier for string quintet. In the present case, Boccherini borrowed the first two movements from a quintet composed in 1771, the final two from another composed in Boccherini was not so much concerned in this music with sonata form and developing his materials rigorously as he was with writing pleasing melodies and agreeable harmonies, and this guitar quintet is full of enjoyable tunes and bright rhythms. In the relaxed Pastorale, Boccherini mutes the strings and has the guitar provide a rippling accompaniment to their flowing, silken melodies; several times he reminds the performers to play dolcissimo. In the vigorous Allegro maestoso, Boccherini lets the strings take the lead, with the guitar content to repeat their themes or provide chordal accompaniment; this movement makes striking use of cello harmonics. The final movement is in two parts: it opens with a slow introduction marked Grave assai, but then leaps ahead at the Fandango. A fandango is an old dance of Latin origin in which the tempo gradually accelerates; the accompaniment is usually by castanets or guitar. Boccherini achieves a rather full sonority from his players in this movement, and the writing sometimes featuring long cello glissandi is imaginative. He brings all these elements together in the exciting and colorful conclusion to this quintet, where the tempo gradually eases ahead and then rushes to the close, pushed ahead by explosive interjections from the castanets. Program notes by Eric Bromberger

3. Berlioz Harold in Italy: movement III (for Unit 3: Developing Musical Understanding)

3. Berlioz Harold in Italy: movement III (for Unit 3: Developing Musical Understanding) Background information Biography Berlioz was born in 1803 in La Côte Saint-André, a small town between Lyon and Grenoble