Contrapunctus I, Art of Fugue, BWV 1080
Johann Sebastian Bach
Unlike his cosmopolitan contemporary Handel, Bach never traveled much beyond central German territories. Bach scholar Christoph Wolff has commented aptly: “Bach’s life moved in far narrower confines than that of any other major figure in the history of music. All the more powerful do Bach’s achievements in isolation appear, and the incomparable consequences of his work, right up to our own day and across all frontiers.”
Current research suggests that Bach began to compose the Art of Fugue no later than 1740, probably in the late 1730s. Although the original composing score is lost, a first version exists, which contains twelve fugues along with two canons. All of the fugues are in D minor, and all are based on the same theme, or more appropriately, the same “subject.” Bach subsequently expanded and revised the work to prepare it for printing. It was mostly ready by the end of 1749, but by then, Bach was ailing. He was suffering from blindness, probably due to untreated diabetes, and he required the assistance of his sons to complete the project. Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach helped to correct proofs before leaving to assume a court position in January 1750. It appears that C.P.E. Bach then supervised the publication of the work, which at this point consisted of fourteen fugues, organized according to their level of complexity, and four canons. Bach, who died in 1750, did not live to see the work published in 1751. Moreover, the final quadruple fugue was unfinished, at least with regard to the written score, and the editors decided to compensate by adding an organ chorale.
The Art of Fugue is a monothematic work that explores a specific principle, and the work demonstrates contrapuntal mastery at its zenith. It is telling that Bach used the term “contrapunctus” rather than “fugue.” Theorists at that time defined “contrapunctus” as simply contrapuntal part-writing. Wolff observes: “[Johann] Mattheson defines contrapunctus…as ‘the adroit combination of several melodies sounding simultaneously, whereby manifold euphony arises conjointly.’ This formulation recalls Johann Abraham Birnbaum’s characterization of Bach’s concept of harmony (as stated in his defense of Bach written in 1738): ‘Harmony becomes far more complete if all the voices collaborate to form it. Accordingly this is not a failing but rather a musical perfection.’ We would therefore not go wrong in assuming that, at least in his conception of the early version, Bach was not concerned so much with the genre of fugue…as with a demonstration of ‘harmony’ as the essence of music, harmony conceived on the basis of contrapuntal writing and with the object of ‘musical perfection’ in mind.”
The Art of Fugue is a crowning achievement in Bach’s instrumental oeuvre, but the work was notated in open score, and no instrumentation was specified. Recently, music scholars have argued convincingly that it was Bach’s intention that the work be played on a keyboard instrument, most likely the harpsichord; however, because of the lack of conclusive evidence, for many years now, the work has been performed by string, wind and brass ensembles as well as by keyboard artists.
Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5
Anton Webern
Born in Vienna in 1883, Anton Webern was one of Arnold Schoenberg’s two most important disciples, the other being Alban Berg. The three composers became known as the Second Viennese School. (The First Viennese School consisted of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.) After World War Two, there was a particular interest on the part of many young composers in the music of Webern. He was seen to be more rigorous in his application of serial techniques than either Schoenberg or Berg. He also cast off more completely the vestiges of Romanticism, creating ascetic works of great concision and textural transparency.
Webern met Schoenberg in 1904. At that time, Schoenberg, who was only nine years older than Webern, was still composing in a late Romantic style. Webern became Schoenberg’s student and close associate during the years that Schoenberg explored atonality and eventually, around 1920, developed the twelve-tone method of composition. Webern was affected greatly not only by Schoenberg’s musical techniques but also by his aesthetics and the ideas of those around him. One of Schoenberg’s supporters was Gustav Mahler. In 1905, Webern was present at a social gathering at which Mahler expounded upon his aesthetic beliefs. In his diary, Webern recorded that Mahler remarked: “Just as in nature the entire universe has developed from the primeval cell, from plants, animals and men, beyond to God, the Supreme Being, so also in music should a large structure develop from a single motive in which is contained the germ of everything yet to be.”
Between 1906 and 1908, Schoenberg’s music evolved from works that maintained some relationship to a tonal center to works like the Op. 15 Georgelieder, begun in 1908 and finished in 1909, that eradicated tonal structures completely. Webern followed Schoenberg’s lead, composing, during the same period, fourteen songs, ten of which he published as his Opp. 3 and 4. These songs also were settings of texts by Stefan George and also were composed without reliance upon tonality. Shortly thereafter, in 1909, Webern composed his first purely instrumental, atonal composition, the Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5.
Op. 5 was performed publicly several times during the ten years following its composition, but when it was performed in Salzburg, in 1922, it incited a major scandal. As musicologist Hans Moldenhauer has written, part of the difficulty for the audience was the extreme brevity of some of the movements—the third movement, for example, lasts for only about forty seconds. Another issue was the degree of motivic concentration, which engenders a tightly woven and intricate fabric of sound that, for some, especially with Webern’s avoidance of repetition, was “aurally elusive.” The brevity was due, in part, to the fact that Schoenberg, Webern and their colleagues had yet to solve the problem of how to create coherent forms without the underpinnings of tonality. Schoenberg would later write: “The refusal to utilize traditional means of (musical) structure made it impossible, by definition, to deal with forms of a certain size, because these cannot exist without a precise articulation. It is for this reason that the only somewhat large works of this period are all compositions with text, where it is precisely the words that constitute the unifying element.” Nevertheless, the first movement of Op. 5 alludes to sonata form.
The Five Movements for String Quartet reveal some of the hallmarks of Webern’s style. The composer employs sharply contrasting bowing techniques in close proximity to each other and makes abundant use of harmonics and tremolos. Moldenhauer writes: “All these techniques assume importance as structural elements, and each tone thus becomes a building block within the tiny cells that make up the total texture. Among the chief characteristics of these pieces are highly individualized timbres and dynamic and rhythmic differentiation. The harmonic web presents a contrapuntal kaleidoscope, abounding in imitation and inversion. The motivic use of dissonant intervals adds to the sense of dramatic tension.”
Twenty years after the composition of Op. 5, Webern made an arrangement of the work for string orchestra.
Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 67
Johannes Brahms
Brahms waited until 1873, when he was forty years old, to publish his first two string quartets, Op. 51, Nos. 1 and 2. The composer had a keen sense of the formidable tradition of string quartet writing that had preceded him. The massive figure of Beethoven, in particular, loomed over his attempts to compose in this genre. Brahms told friends that he had composed and discarded twenty other string quartets before producing his Op. 51 Quartets. He also appears to have worked on Op. 51 from as early as 1865. Two years after the successful publication of Op. 51, Nos. 1 and 2, Brahms composed his third and last work for this medium, the Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 67.
The B-flat-major Quartet was written in 1875, during the same time period in which Brahms composed his First Symphony. He wrote it while on vacation in Zeigelhausen near Heidelberg. Unlike his earlier string quartets, and also the Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 60, which he had completed between 1873 and 1874, the Third Quartet evokes a sunny and relaxed mood. The work is also richly inventive. In a letter to Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann, the dedicatee of the Quartet, Brahms remarked: “Now this quartet resembles your wife a bit—very pretty—but ingenious!”
Malcolm MacDonald, in his book on Brahms, has observed, regarding the Quartet in B-flat: “Haydn and Mozart, rather than Beethoven and Schubert, seem to stand godfathers to the music now, and the work is so full of cheerful unorthodoxies that it is plain Brahms was enjoying himself throughout—to the marked benefit of his quartet style.” In The Music of Brahms, Michael Musgrave goes even further to suggest that, in this work, Brahms takes an almost detached look backwards at older styles: “Brahms seems, especially in the first movement, to maintain a stylistic distance from his model, almost to comment on it through romantic eyes in a way which differs from preceding compositions which reflect the past, and can be seen as anticipating an important aspect of subsequent music, especially associated with certain neoclassical works of Stravinsky.”
The Third Quartet opens with a sonata-form movement. The first theme begins with a ‘hunting-horn” motive, and many critics have noted the similarity to Mozart’s “Hunt” Quartet, which is in the same key. In this movement, the formal demarcations are rendered transparent. The distinguished Brahms scholar Walter Frisch has illustrated: “Formal and thematic structures are correspondingly lucid and often innovative. In the first movement, the sonata exposition is articulated not only by conventional harmonic and melodic procedures but also by metrical ones. The main theme is cast in a buoyant 6/8, the second in a more hesitant 2/4. The transition between them is made by a series of striking hemiolas.” Rhythmic complexity, for example the three-against-two cross-rhythms, typical of Brahms’s style, abounds in this movement and, in fact, throughout the work.
The slow second movement, in F major, has been described as “Mendelssohnian” in its serenity. Expectations here, however, are thwarted. MacDonald writes: “[It] begins like a conventionally lyrical ternary form in 4/4, but evolves a middle section in which neo-Baroque recitative and ‘Hungarian’ rhythmic freedom are magically blended, briefly distorting the meter in 5/4; and the return of the opening theme is preceded by an elaborate variation of itself, widely different in texture and tonality.”
Rather than a typical scherzo, the ternary third movement, which is in D minor and marked “Agitato,” features the viola in a songlike fashion, while the other instruments are muted. MacDonald comments: “This substantial yet shadowy piece is full of textural surprises—not least its Trio (so labeled), which begins on a real trio of two violins and cello, whose apparently self-sufficient music is revealed as a mere background pattern as soon as the viola re-enters.”
The culmination of the Third Quartet is the finale. Brahms, a great master of variation technique, had long had an intense interest in variation movements, but the finale of the B-flat-major Quartet signifies the first time he composed a variation movement as the finale. According to Musgrave, this finale brought together two aspects of Brahms’s earlier compositions, namely, his interest in variation movements and his preoccupation with making the finale the goal of the composition. The humorous and folklike theme of the movement often has been called Haydnesque in character. The finale also brings back the first theme of the opening movement, creating a cyclical structure for the Quartet. Frisch remarks: “After the sixth variation, the opening theme of the first movement returns suddenly and manages as if by magic to integrate itself into the variation structure. In the final bars it is combined with the original variation theme in seemingly effortless counterpoint.”
Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131
Ludwig van Beethoven
In 1822, the Russian prince Nikolai Galitsin asked Beethoven to compose several new string quartets. Beethoven had not written new works in this genre for over a decade. He already had been interested in writing more quartets and had made inquiries regarding their possible sale. The result of the prince’s commission was Beethoven’s last five quartets. The first three of these, Opp. 127, 132, and 130, were dedicated to Prince Galitisin. According to Beethoven’s younger friend Karl Holz, a highly skilled amateur musician who, at this time, was second violinist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet, the string quartets that were dedicated to the prince gave rise to new ideas “from Beethoven’s inexhaustible fantasy in such richness that he almost unwillingly had to write the C-sharp-minor[Op. 131] and the F-major [Op. 135] Quartets.”
The Quartet, Op. 131 was composed between 1825 and 1826. Dedicated to Baron Joseph von Stutterheim, this Quartet is the last of Beethoven’s string quartets in which he experiments with the overall format and structure of the medium. In his final quartet, Op. 135, Beethoven returns to the more conventional, four-movement format. The eminent musicologist Joseph Kerman has written that each of the late quartets “provides us with a separate paradigm for wholeness,” a “total integrity.” When Karl Holz asked the composer which quartet he felt was the best, Beethoven replied: “Each in its own way. Art demands of us that we should not stand still.” The composer, however, later avowed that Op. 131 was his greatest work in this genre.
The C-sharp-minor Quartet epitomizes Beethoven’s late period style. It reveals his deepened concern with a number of elements, including thematic variation, lyrical and folklike melodies, continuity—particularly blurring the lines of division between phrases, improvisatory qualities, fugal textures and new sonorities. The Quartet has seven movements, but it can be seen as an expansion of the four-movement plan. The various movements unfold like a narrative with harmonic and motivic connections.
Just as fugue is the point of departure for this concert, so it is for Beethoven’s Quartet, Op. 131. The relatively short first movement is a slow fugue. Beethoven marked it “molto espressivo,” and one of the most stunning aspects of this movement is its evocation of emotion. Richard Wagner called it “the saddest thing ever said in notes…” Harmonically advanced, it emphasizes the key of the Neapolitan, namely D, particularly toward the end of the movement, and it leads through its unison close on C-sharp directly to the D-major second movement.
The second movement is fast and is in an abridged sonata form that omits the expected second theme. Its main melody is simple and folklike. The third movement is very brief and has the improvisatory quality of an operatic recitative. This movement leads to the central slow movement, which is a theme and variations. The swift fifth movement functions as an expanded scherzo and trio, while the sixth movement is another slow and transitional movement. It is succeeded by a beautiful Allegro finale, which is in sonata form.
Program Notes by Darlene R. Berkovitz
