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mikrokosmos · 5 years ago

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Brahms - Piano Quartet no. 1 in g minor (1861)

It is a cold autumn evening so I have been listening to more “darker” music, and one of those is this intense quartet. It was written when Brahms was a young man, and it received a lot of negative criticism. Even his close friends, Joseph Joachim and Clara Wieck Schumann told him that there were issues with it that he should edit out. However, after trying to revise it, he throw the revisions away and put his full faith in the original. Strange to think because it, along with his other chamber works, is hailed as a masterpiece. Even so it isn’t often played, and part of that has to do with its complexity. It is hard to talk about the work moment-by-moment, so I will generalize the first movement: the entirety of this movement is built out of fragments of the main opening theme, a ghostly melody in cold octaves, suggesting g minor but quickly modulating elsewhere with the entrance of the strings. This melody is fragmented, both pitch-wise and rhythm-wise, and undergoes metamorphosis into a dense symphonic thunderstorm. It’s amazing to listen to and catch how each little gesture is a repurposing of the shape of the melodies. This is something that made Brahms unique; while what he was doing came from the tradition of Mozart and Beethoven, the way he did it put more focus on rhythmic displacement, and had more concentration on every note being important to the overall “architecture” of the work. This is probably the reason that Arnold Schoenberg was so obsessed with the work; small fragmented motifs used like cells, keeping the same shape but changing intervals and harmonies. I think this is why Brahms is sometimes dismissed as “too academic”, but the result is very dense passionate music. The second movement is a dark scherzo over a rapid but quiet pulse in the cello. The instruments skip around over this beat and grow into something more lyrical, part of it is made ambiguous with one of Brahms’ favorite devises; the hemiola, 3:2 rhythms. The slow movement has a lovely chorale in the strings as the piano plays out a strong, well paced accompaniment walking up and down the keyboard like waves. This soon gets more impassioned with arpeggios and louder, stretching chords up the chromatic scale. A trio-like section feels like a military procession, a charming little march. But its repeat is much louder and grander, notes slamming or scratching. The last movement is a rondo nodding to Brahms’ love of “Gypsy” music, and so we get a rabid dance that spits fire. Despite the heaviness and intensity of the earlier movements, this heavy-handed finale feels more lighthearted and fun. Especially the “B” section that has the piano playing a perpetuum mobile under plucked strings giving off a capricious character. There is a slower section like a wailing song, but we come back to the wild opening soon. The coda has some fun canonic voices, and then we even get a little piano cadenza recreating the texture of a cimbalom. Finally we are thrown into the wild final bars with large chords.

Movements:

1. Allegro

2. Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo - Trio animato

3. Andante con moto

4. Rondo alla Zingarese

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yourmusicquestions · 7 years ago

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Sounding Together #28: F.J. Haydn, Symphony #104 in D major, “London” (1795)

We’ve come to the end of another symphonic career. This is the last symphony Haydn was known to have written, and though it doesn’t have quite the dramatic weight of some other final symphonies on this list (Beethoven’s and Mahler’s come to mind), there is definitely something to be said about this particular final symphony. It’s unlikely the Haydn knew this would be his last symphony. Composers often don’t know that sort of thing. But Haydn probably had an idea that this was going to be the peak of his considerable career. He was in his sixties, on his second London tour, and getting about his big a reception as he was ever likely to get. His old employers, the Esterhazys, no longer had much interest in court music, and wouldn’t have near the level of appreciation necessary for Haydn to put more than a cursory effort into his music. So this was it. This was Haydn’s chance to lay it all out on the field.

Already, he’d made a huge impression with his first eleven of the London symphonies, but interestingly enough, this is the only symphony to actually have the nickname “London” specifically attached to it. It’s hard to say for sure why this was, but I tend to think that it was because this was the culmination of his work in London. Everything he had learned in his considerable length of experience was brought into this work.

Just as his penultimate symphony began with an attention-getting drumroll, this symphony also immediately commands your attention with a unison D, jumping to an A, outlining the perfect fifth of the key of this symphony, though as of yet, with no specific mode attached to it. The slow introduction is actually keyed in D minor, though the symphony itself is in major. After a brief trip to the relative F major, the introduction settles on the A dominant chord, and the allegro begins in D major.

The opening theme--and actually one we’ll hear in this particular sonata--is typically lively and cheerful. The exposition goes on the usual way, with a relatively short transition, and then with the main theme repeated in A for a second theme group, bringing us into the codetta and concluding what, for Haydn, is a relatively straightforward exposition. The development section, though, is where things get interesting. Haydn develops the theme, of course, but not quite in the way you might expect. Instead of developing the recognizable opening measures of the theme, he actually begins with a heavy development of the SECOND two measures of the theme, a motif simple enough that he is able to layer it over and over again, and build a complex musical structure around it. He also develops the closing measures of the theme, but the next time we hear the opening measures is the beginning of the recapitulation. The repeat of the theme in the recap is then carried by the high winds, creating a nice color contrast that we’ll hear a few more times throughout the symphony. Haydn clearly enjoyed having wind instruments in his orchestra, and often made use of their unique colors in his later symphonies. The recap, of course, remains in D, but now we get a little extra development of the opening measures of the theme, as though realizing to late that they were left out of the development. A codetta later, and this reasonably simple sonata comes to a close.

In the second movement, in G, Haydn returns to something of a combination of two of his favorite second movement forms: a three-part form with minor in the middle, and the theme and variations. The main theme starts us off, a quiet and very refined melody, which visits some relative minor tonalities in the second section before returning to G. The next section does something similar, but with a minor mode visiting some major modes, and then the rest of the movement stays in G major, and varies the background rhythmic patterns, featuring some triplets, dotted rhythms, and sixteenth notes pattering underneath. Simple, but effective, showing Haydn’s love of color and different sounds that can be created by the orchestra.

In the third movement minuet and trio, Haydn plays around with keys, establishing D major for the minuet, and then shifting into the relative B minor and dominant A major for the second section. He also plays with beat perception with some well-placed hemiola in the lower instruments. The trio, then, uses the final D of the minuet to pivot to the non-related key of B-flat major. Indeed, the trio begins with just D and F, making it unclear whether we’ve moved to the parallel D minor until the continuation of the trio puts us in B-flat major. The second half of the trio also dives into the relative G-minor, and there is a necessary extension at the end so the key wind its way back to the dominant A for the repeat of the minuet. Not as simple as it seems.

The finale is one of my favorites, both for the music itself and also for a memory associated with it. When I was taking music history, and we had a listening exam (where a piece of music would be played at random, and we would have to identify it, name, composer, etc.), the finale to this symphony was one of the pieces on the listening list, and in a study session, the device they came up with to remember it was “headbanging bunnies in a mosh pit.” The finale actually starts with a unison drone, indicating the rustic, folksy background this music comes from, Haydn calling back to his roots in his final symphony. The melody (the “bunnies”) dances along in D, until the hammering chords (the headbanging in a mosh pit) signal the beginning of the transition, the opening dancing melody continuing play in various guises. The transition plays through some motifs that will make appearances in the development of the movement, before finally settling down into a quieter second theme group. Interestingly, though the transition sets up the dominant key of A major, the first chord is an f-sharp major chord, doubly deceptive, making its way through the chords before settling back into A major where it belongs. The codetta plays a strong theme in unison before falling back to the drone for the repeat.

The development section starts with the opening theme, falls into some playfulness around some different keys, before playing through the transition theme, pausing, and then falling into a development of the second theme, now set up for the relative minor, which transitions nicely into the drone that leads back into the recapitulation. This time, we only hear the opening bunny theme once before the mosh pit comes in, extended a bit, as though it’s a bit more dramatic just to stay in the initial key of D major this time. The second theme group continues to be doubly deceptive, this time starting on B major before winding its way back to the home D major. The codetta is now extended, making this a proper finale, including a number of returns of the opening theme, including one with just the wind color again, before the raucous finale comes to a close. The finale, it should be noted, is much more involved than the opening movement, continuing Haydn’s trend of weighting his finales more heavily. It’s a more fully developed sonata. Decades earlier, the two movements might have been reversed, but this movement acts as not only an intellectual sonata, but an exciting finale to one last symphony from the master of the form himself.

Haydn would continue to compose for the next decade or so, but he wouldn’t compose anything on this scale again. Most of the compositions for the rest of his career would be chamber music, as Haydn would develop an interest in the string quartet in particular. And perhaps that was best for him after this tour: a quiet life composing quiet music at the end of a phenomenal career.

#symphonies #classical music #London Symphonies #symphony no. 104 #symphony in d major #franz josef haydn

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