American String Quartet 

 

PROGRAM NOTES

 

Ludwig van Beethoven: Quartet in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2 (1799) Beethoven: a life-long innovator - but no composer springs fully-armored from Zeus’s brow. Young Ludwig’s aim in composing his first quartets was to please and inveigle wealthy amateur players who might become patrons. And this he did by emulating the music by the composers they enjoyed – Haydn and Mozart. Everything from their turns of phrase to quotes to movement structures can be found in the Op. 18 quartets, but it is in the Quartet in G Major Op. 18 no. 2 that we find the most explicit homage. 

 

Beethoven was a famously poor student of Haydn, thrown out after his second lesson with the old master, but he pursued his studies by more prudent means: acquiring and copying out by hand the scores to several Haydn quartets, and the results are plainer in 18/2 than in any other from that opus. 

 

The first movement opens with the polite teasing which Haydn raised to a high art, and the development seizes on a structural sleight-of-hand which was also one of Haydn’s. After only a few measures of development we hear what seems to be a premature recapitulation, but not only does it come far too soon, it’s in the wrong key. And by movement’s end, proper order has been restored - albeit masked by some dramatic dynamic effects. 

 

But it is the second movement which rewards study of the score, side-by-side with that of the finale of Haydn’s very forward-looking Op. 54 no. 2, also in G Major. Slow and solemn is followed by skittish and ticklish. An introduction to a fast movement? In the Haydn one might expect that, but then [in both works] solemn returns, tolerates a recurrence of the fast material, and ends solemnly. To be sure, this is not plagiarism, but homage, and the main difference is that the older composer was brave enough to end with such a movement. 

 

Over the course of Haydn’s many quartets he wrote minuets before switching to scherzos and then, with poetic license, returning to the name Minuet in the late quartets even though they were still as fast and as funny as Scherzos. Here Beethoven calls what sounds like a minuet a scherzo. And the finale manages to mesh wit with humor, Haydnesque virtues both. 

 

Maurice Ravel: String Quartet in F Major (1903) Of this work no comment could be more apropos than Beethoven's "Tastes differ." Naturally he was not speaking of this piece, but Ravel himself said of it: "[it] reflects a preoccupation with musical structure, imperfectly realized, no doubt, but which appears much clearer than in my previous compositions." It was dedicated to Gabriel Fauré, who took over as director of the Paris Conservatoire in the wake of the scandal which attended Ravel's elimination from the competition for the coveted Prix de Rome. Fauré, however, never acknowledged Ravel's dedication. Ravel was, in fact, thrown out of Fauré's class, but continued to attend as an auditor during the time he was writing this quartet. But let us ignore the opinions of Messieurs Ravel and Fauré. In the opinions of quartet-players and audiences around the world, this masterpiece entered the repertory in 1903, and has been heard hundreds of times each season since then. Why? Because it is perfectly crafted; its structure is lean - there is not one superfluous measure in the work; its part-writing is grateful - each instrument is given lovely things to say in registers that flatter it; and its suave sensuality charms listeners from start to finish. One of the plainest definitions of a "classic" is a work which bears repetition, and this one surely qualifies. 

 

Our natty little French friend began as a revolutionary and ended up as the establishment; his musical tastes included the Spanish, Russians, Balinese, and the "jazzers" - and his idea of what a quartet should do in F Major awaits you. Our advice: sit back and enjoy, thinking instead of Debussy's note to Ravel: "In the name of the gods of music, and in mine, do not touch a single note of what you have written in your quartet."   

 

 

Antonín Dvořák: String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op.96, “American”   Antonin Dvorak was someone you would have liked to meet. Affable, humble, pious, he was a short, round fellow with wide eyes, a thorough beard, and a good heart. After his family and his music, his loves were trains, homing pigeons, and beer. And like many enlightened composers, he played the viola. 

 

During his three years in America Dvorak unintentionally caused a furor by suggesting that composers here stop imitating European models and develop a national music; with his Quartet in F major, Op. 96, “American”, he showed how that might be done. 

 

Dvorak spent the summer of 1893 in the Czech community of Spillville, Iowa, relaxing, playing the organ at St. Wenceslas church, walking all over, and listening. What he absorbed was new to him: Indian songs and chants, Negro spirituals, New World bird calls - and how these colored his music can be heard in Op. 96, the first work he sketched in Spillville. While forward-looking in some ways, this quartet provides Dvorak’s dependably rich harmonies with a trim classical structure, and its unabashed tunefulness has ensured its popularity from the day of its premiere (given by the Kneisel Quartet in Boston, 1894). And his fifteen other quartets aren’t bad either.  

 

As with most nicknames, this one was not given by the composer (he intended to call it “Spillville”), but in its openness, its variety, and its optimistic energy, it is as American as kolache. 

 

 

~ Program notes by Daniel Avshalomov