A 1789 miniature of Mozart (public domain).
2. String Quintet
By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
One Christmas in the 1990's my grandmother asked what I would like for Christmas. Inspired by this book, I asked for a CD of Mozart string quintets. The record store didn't have one, so she got me a terrific CD of Mozart string quartets instead. In the 2010's Rafi recommended the recordings of the Mozart quintets by the Griller Quartet with William Primrose playing the extra viola part. I bought that two CD set and loved it, but I haven't listened to these works for as many years as I have some of the other works discussed in this book. Media and economics help shape the music we listen to and appreciate.
Joseph Kerman wrote:
Years ago I floated an idea about Western music history, that it might be viewed as falling into millennium-long phases: initially an oral tradition, with people performing music from memory; then a period of literacy (a term Leo Treitler was using at the time), predicated on scores and partbooks to sing and play from; and now a new model determined by sound recording and the activity (or passivity) of listening. - Opera and the Morbidity of Music, pg. 85
As a musician in the 1980's I felt guilty about reading about music. Pianist Gary Graffman called his memoir I Really Should Be Practicing. Musicians sometimes looked down their noses at reading about music. Most of my professional musician friends have next to no interest in writers like Rosen and Kerman.
When I started taking ballet classes in 1990, my teachers explicitly told us not to practice ballet at home so that we would not practice wrong, since we really knew next to nothing about ballet at the time. Ballet class did reawaken my interest in classical music, so I reread Erich Leinsdorf's The Composer's Advocate in which he recommended Kerman's The Beethoven Quartets. I read that book and loved it and proceeded to read all of Kerman. Kerman raved about The Classical Style, so I read that, loved it, and read all of Rosen's books and listened to a bunch of Rosen's CD's.
11 comments:
This chapter illustrates the depth of my ignorance regarding classical music as I'd never heard of string quintets before. I recorded and mixed live several string quartets (one of them called The Sirius String Quartet playing with John Zorn), but never a quintet. I guess they've gone out of style. I listened to Mozarts C major string quintet as performed by Van Kuijk Quartet and Adrien La Marca playing second viola. Later in the chapter Rosen mentions String Trios, also unfamiliar to me.
I started to enjoy this C major quintet the second time I heard it though it feels a little like doing homework. The first time I listened while reading something. When the Van Kujik kids finished playing their Mozart, You Tube started playing another piece. I hadn't noticed the change, but then heard it sounding amazing. It was María Dueñas: Saint-Saëns - Introduction et rondo capriccioso, Op. 28. Dueñas appears an extraordinary violinist.
In the Mozart piece I noticed the strings played arco all the way through except for a few pizzacato notes from the cellist. I enjoy pizzacato playing on the higher strings thrown in from time to time as a dynamic. Maybe that wasn't a thing in Mozart's time. I haven't seen Rosen mention pizzacato playing.
Rosen writes "... musicology sometimes considers odd metaphysical questions." I also consider odd metaphysical questions like:
"Who's on first?
"That's right, who is on first"
"That's what I want to know, who is on first?"
"That's what I'm trying to tell you, who is on first" etc., etc.
(Abbott & Costello advertisement – it works better with sound)
Thank you for your comment. I don't think I'd ever heard of Mozart's string quintets before first reading The Classical Style back in 1991. Starting college during the "Me Decade" in 1979, chamber music did not seem a priority with the musicians I knew at Arizona State. Even my classical string player friends seemed mostly interested in solo literature and orchestral literature.
Proust mentioned Saint Saens' Violin Sonata Op. 75 as the model for the Vinteuil Sonata.
In the Western classical tradition, string players mostly play with the bow (arco). Beethoven's Harp Quartet earned that name because it had so much pizzicato. Rosen mentions the use of pizzicato in one of Haydn's piano trios in a later chapter.
I played "Who's on first?" for many classes over the years. When I showed it to third graders, they didn't get it at first, but some of them started to appreciate it on repeated viewings.
Rafi turned me on the Schubert's string quintet with two cellos played by an ensemble that included Pablo Casals. The film "Conspiracy" makes chilling use of that piece. I love love love that film. It deals with the Wahnsee Conference, a Nazi meeting which planned the Holocaust. The film stars Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, etc. Branagh plays Heydrich, and he runs the meeting a way that vividly reminds of a high school administrator under whom I used to work. Multiple other teachers have told me they too saw the similarity, one saying, "That's Robert."
I did previously know the G Minor string quintet, from big box set of Mozart's music, and I think it's a really good piece. I will commit to Eric that I will listen to the G Major one before we finish the week.
Oz is correct that Mozart's string get a lot more attention. I have listened quite a bit to the "Haydn" quartets.
I'm sorry, I meant to say the C Major string quintet that Rosen concentrates on, K. 515.
Thank-you, Eric for the explanation of pizzicato use in classical music. I will check out the Harp Quartet. A quintet with two cellos sounds interesting. Saint Saens now piques my curiosity.
"Who's On First" got played and mentioned fairly regularly by the Fake Sufis. It works for children of all ages.
I also started college in 1979 at the end of the "Me Decade" except this college existed of my own design. Touring with a bar band we had five days a week of only working four hours/day so I would check out a bunch of books from the library and attempt self-study. The college, called Space-Time U. attempted to give it a formal discipline, but with limited success. However, one book on contemporary, avant garde composers changed my life. It turned me on to John Cage. Learning about John Cage also involved learning about Zen and Cage's disdain for value judgements.
Thank you for your comments. Bartok's string quartets, influenced by Eastern European folk music, used a ton of pizzicato.
I love Joshua Bell's album "French Impressions" which includes that Saint Saens violin sonata, as well as the Franck sonata (another candidate for Vinteuil's sonata) and the Ravel sonata (which has cool use of pizzicato).
I remember seeing a documentary on John Cage in high school. Interesting fellow.
For some reason I put on the Monkees yesterday as I try to finish up my summer school grading. I do love their music.
I've been listening to Black Star, by Bowie, his last album a lot recently. It has a lot of lyrical references to his past work; almost as if artistically looking into a mirror with the reflection comprising his career rather than a physical visage.
I did listen to the C Major and G minor quintets last night. And I noticed in this chapter that Rosen recommended the sonata for violin and piano, K. 379 (e.g. no. 27), so I will try to give it a listen tonight. Rosen's recommendations seem very valuable to me.
I used to go to teacher inservices with two teacher friends. One of them rarely mentioned music, but he liked David Bowie. The other teacher, a musician, also liked Bowie. I would tend to put my three Bowie cd's in the car to listen to on way to inservices and back, so over the past decade I've come to associate Bowie's music with good conversation and terrible inservices.
Tom, Rosen's recommendations seem very valuable to me too. I love reading his books, listening to his recommendations (and especially to his recordings) and then returning to his books. A wonderful recusive metaprogram.
The strongest association of Bowie's music, for me: seeing him play live in 1983 on his Serious Moonlight tour.
I saw that tour too! Great show. 🛸👽🪐🖖🏏
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