Danish String Quartet: Program Notes

Notes on the Program

By Aaron Grad String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2 [1772] FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN Born March 31, 1732 in Rohrau, Austria Died May 31, 1809 in Vienna, Austria Haydn was one of the first composers to write for a chamber ensemble of two violins, viola and cello, and his efforts were pivotal in establishing the string quartet as a chamber music mainstay. His first ten examples date from the early 1760s, with some maybe even predating his hiring in 1761 by the wealthy Esterházy family. After a gap, Haydn issued a burst of quartets in 1771 and 1772, organized into three sets of six works each, and all labeled as Divertimentos. The last group, published in 1774 as Opus 20, represented his most advanced quartets yet, achieving new heights of independence and individuality for the four voices. Haydn was not responsible for the nickname of this collection—known as the “Sun Quartets” ever since a 1779 edition printed a sun design on the cover—but it was a fitting designation for these works that truly represented a new day for the string quartet.

In earlier practice, the lowest line of a Divertimento would have been given the generic label of bass, meaning that it could be played by cello, double bass, harpsichord, or any other number of bass instruments, alone or in combination. (This was a holdover from the Baroque practice of basso continuo). But Haydn called specifically for cello, and it’s clear from the first phrases of the String Quartet in C Major (Op. 20, No. 2) that he knew exactly how he wanted to use the instrumental colors available to him. The first melody, marked dolce (sweet), appears high in the cello’s tenor range; the second violin harmonizes below the cello, and the viola functions as the bass voice, taking advantage of its resonant C-string. Even when the first violin takes over its customary melodic role and the cello drops into the bass register, all four parts remain equally weighted, shifting constantly through varied partnerships and dialogues.

Influenced by other art and theater of the period, Haydn was in the midst of his Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”) phase when he wrote this quartet, leading to some of his most emotionally charged music in minor keys. The slow and operatic second movement is a prime example, starting with a stark unison declamation in C minor. When a plaintive melody enters, it once again falls to the cello to give the first statement. At the end, a final chord hangs unresolved, setting up a pivot back to C major for the palate-cleansing Minuet.

Three of the six quartets in Opus 20 end with fugues, including this masterful Fuga a 4 Soggetti (“Fugue with 4 Subjects”). Even amid all the contrapuntal wizardry, it maintains a dance-like lilt, merging the ornate density of old Baroque practices with the bright and balanced effervescence of new Classical trends.

String Quartet No. 1 (Ten Preludes) [1973] HANS ABRAHAMSEN Born December 23, 1952 in Copenhagen, Denmark Coming of age among a generation of composers who rejected the complexities of midcentury modernism, Denmark’s Hans Abrahamsen developed an approach to composition rooted in time-honored techniques and radical clarity. “My imagination works well within a fixed structure,” he once wrote; “The more stringent it is, the more freedom I have to go down into detail. Form and freedom: perhaps much of my music has been an attempt to bring the two worlds together.”

Abrahamsen’s breakthrough work, composed at the age of 20, was his String Quartet No. 1, subtitled Ten Preludes. “It consists of ten short pieces,” he wrote, “or maybe beginnings written in a new simplistic (or minimalistic) and polystylistic style.” His lasting fondness for the quartet led him to create an orchestral version in 2010, titled Ten Sinfonias, and similar structures have cropped up in some of his most important works, including the 10 Studies for piano (1984-1998) and Schnee (2008), a massive set of ten canons for nine instruments.

A prelude usually signifies a short, exploratory piece that precedes something else, as in the 48 preludes and fugues of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. The idea of assembling a set of standalone preludes is most closely associated with Chopin, who wrote his own cycle that, like Bach’s, touches all the major and minor keys, starting with C major. In his ten continuous preludes, Abrahamsen chose to progress from a “rather turbulent nontonal start in the first prelude” to an arrival in C major for the final prelude, expressed with carefree music in the spirit of Haydn.

String Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 (“Razumovsky”) [1806] LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 1770 in Bonn, Germany Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria When the young Ludwig van Beethoven published his first six string quartets in 1800, he was still working under the long shadow of Joseph Haydn. After those early years spent mastering the established style, Beethoven attained a new level of refinement and independence with the works from his “middle period,” including five string quartets.

The first three, composed in 1806 and published together as Opus 59 in 1808, are still known by the name of the man who commissioned them: Count Andreas Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to the imperial court in Vienna. Just as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 from 1804 set a new standard for how substantial and rigorous a symphony could be, the “Razumovsky” Quartets pushed the limits of the string quartet genre, especially the first two, each lasting in the range of 40 minutes.

We tend to think of Beethoven’s “middle period” style as one in which the motives are reduced down to bare essentials (the four-note “fate” motive of the Fifth Symphony being the prime example), but the initial theme of the First “Razumovsky” Quartet is actually quite sweet and tuneful, appearing in matched phrases from the cello and first violin over simple pulses from the middle voices. Later that theme breaks into fragments for Beethoven’s typical process of rigorous development.

The Scherzo is more representative of Beethoven’s radical evolution as a composer in those years. Here the primary motive is stripped of all melodic shape, appearing simply as a four-measure rhythmic pattern.

The third movement, marked “Very slow and sad,” is the longest portion of the quartet, constructed in a full-figured sonata form instead of a simpler pattern usually found in slow movements. Rather than reaching a stable resolution in its key of F minor, it lands on an unresolved chord that moves without pause into the finale. In a nod to the Russian patron who commissioned the quartet, Beethoven built the closing movement around a Russian folksong he found in a printed songbook. © 2018 Aaron Grad.