ROMANTIC STRING QUARTETS

i. Andante molto
ii. Allegretto, mit zarten Vortrage
iii. Leidenschaftlich schnell

Clara and Robert Schumann moved to Düsseldorf in early 1853, and found a house where Clara could practice and compose without disturbing her husband. She made the most of their improved circumstances and wrote several new pieces during the summer of 1853, including the Three Romances dedicated to Joseph Joachim, a close friend of both Robert and Clara. These character pieces, of which the third is much the longest, are among the last pieces Clara composed: Robert’s mental health took a turn for the worst the following year and he was moved to a sanatorium where Clara was only allowed to visit when it was clear that he was dying in 1856. After his death, she composed almost nothing, concentrating on playing the piano and overseeing Robert’s musical legacy.

Nigel Simeone 2014

Adagio–Allegro
Andante cantabile
Menuetto. Allegro
Allegro molto

In 1785 the Viennese publisher Artaria issued a set of six string quartets by Mozart, the title page of which reads: ‘Six Quartets for two violins, viola and violoncello. Composed and dedicated to Signor Joseph Haydn, Master of Music for the Prince of Esterhazy, by his friend W.A. Mozart.’ This was a most unusual dedication for the time: composers nearly always dedicated works to the aristocrats who supported them financially, not to fellow musicians. The Artaria edition of the six ‘Haydn’ Quartets includes a long dedicatory epistle dated 1 September 1785, and headed ‘To my dear friend Haydn’. The quartets, he writes, are ‘the fruit of a long and laborious study,’ but that Haydn himself had told Mozart of his ‘satisfaction with them during your last visit to this capital. It is this above all which urges me to commend them to you … and to be their father, guide and friend!’

This admiration was mutual: after hearing these quartets, Haydn told Mozart’s father that ‘your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.’ Mozart’s ‘long and laborious study’ included a detailed examination of Haydn’s Six Quartets Op.33, which had been composed in 1781. Though Mozart’s music is very much his own in this magnificent set of quartets, it is interesting to note that the scholar David Wyn Jones has found striking parallels between the two sets of quartets, including the slow movements of Op.33 No.1 and K465.

The ‘Dissonance’ Quartet K465 is so called because of the extraordinary slow introduction to the first movement, described by Maynard Solomon as ‘an alien universe’ in which ‘reality has been defamiliarized, the uncanny has supplanted the commonplace.’ In this introduction, Solomon writes that ‘Mozart has simulated the transition from darkness to light, from the underworld to the surface.’ It is a passage of the most extreme chromaticism, but it reaches, finally, the simplicity of C major with the arrival of the main Allegro. The slow movement has parallels with the slow movement of Haydn’s Quartet Op.33 No.1, but it is also a magnificent movement in its own right. The Mozart biographer Otto Jahn waxed lyrical, calling it ‘one of those wonderful manifestations of genius which are only of the earth insofar as they take effect upon human minds, and which soar aloft into a region of blessedness where suffering and passion are transfigured.’ The Minuet has a darker central section in the minor key while the finale is unclouded apart from the occasional surprising twist of harmony – another subtle tribute to the genius of the work’s dedicatee.

Nigel Simeone 2014

Allegro ma non troppo
Andante
Menuetto – Allegretto – Trio
Allegro moderato

Schubert finished his Octet on 1 March 1824 and the A minor Quartet was completed just a few days later. By the end of the same month he had not only written a handful of songs but also the ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet. In the space of little more than a month, he had composed three chamber music masterpieces, each of them highly distinctive. The A minor Quartet was given its first performance at the Musikverein in Vienna, played by the Schuppanzigh Quartet which went on the following year to give the premieres of Beethoven’s Op.127, Op.130 and Op.132 quartets. Most of Schubert’s chamber music (including ‘Death and the Maiden’) was only published after his death, but the A minor Quartet – optimistically billed as the first in a set of three – was published by Sauer & Leidesdorf in September 1824, with a dedication from Schubert ‘to his friend Schuppanzigh’.

For much of the time, the mood of this quartet is one of almost numbing melancholy. The first movement opens with a bleak accompaniment figure, the cello introducing a tremulous rhythm, over which the first violin enters with a drooping melody of infinite sadness. This sets the tone for much of what follows. The slow movement is a reworking of one of the entr’actes from Schubert’s Rosamunde music, giving the quartet its nickname. The wraith-like Minuet also draws on an earlier source, the song Der Götter Griechenlands D677, composed in 1819 and setting the words: ‘Schöne Welt, wo bist du?’ – ‘Beautiful world, where are you?’ The mood of quiet restraint is even maintained in the finale but here the clouds seem to lift, at least for a moment, and the music ends with a strong cadence in A major.

Nigel Simeone