The program notes of the upcoming concert:
MECCORE QUARTET
Haydn's Quartet in C major, Op. 50, No. 2
Op. 50 No. 2 is the second of six quartets that Haydn wrote in 1787 for the King of Prussia, an amateur cellist for whom Mozart had composed a set of quartets; both composers garnished the scores with cello solos to honor the royal bowman. Two years earlier, Mozart had dedicated six quartets to Haydn, who expressed delight in and admiration for them.
Mozart influenced the older man in several ways. First, Haydn simply stopped writing operas and piano concertos. Here are his words to a publisher in a 1787 letter: “…you asked me for an opera buffa….I should be risking a great deal, for scarcely any man can brook comparison with the great Mozart…..How inimitable are Mozart’s works, how profound!....It enrages me to think that this incomparable Mozart is not yet engaged by some imperial or royal court. Forgive me if I lose my head, but I love the man so dearly.”
However, Haydn wrote nearly two dozen quartets after Mozart’s 1785 set, apparently feeling he could ‘compete’ with Mozart in chamber music. Although some musicologist profess to find Mozart’s influence pervading these works, others find them consistent with Haydn’s normal independent development. What one chooses to believe, Haydn’s late quartets are significant additions to a matchless output of chamber music.
-Craig Leman (1984)
Mozart influenced the older man in several ways. First, Haydn simply stopped writing operas and piano concertos. Here are his words to a publisher in a 1787 letter: “…you asked me for an opera buffa….I should be risking a great deal, for scarcely any man can brook comparison with the great Mozart…..How inimitable are Mozart’s works, how profound!....It enrages me to think that this incomparable Mozart is not yet engaged by some imperial or royal court. Forgive me if I lose my head, but I love the man so dearly.”
However, Haydn wrote nearly two dozen quartets after Mozart’s 1785 set, apparently feeling he could ‘compete’ with Mozart in chamber music. Although some musicologist profess to find Mozart’s influence pervading these works, others find them consistent with Haydn’s normal independent development. What one chooses to believe, Haydn’s late quartets are significant additions to a matchless output of chamber music.
-Craig Leman (1984)
Karol Szymanowski's Quartet No. 1 in C Major, Op. 38
Karol Szymanowski was born into a wealthy, aristocratic Polish family that had settled in the Ukraine after the partition of Poland. His father played cello and piano, and started his son on piano lessons when he was 7. The boy was beset by infections of his leg, which required numerous operations, so that he could not attend school and required tutors at home. At age 10 he was well enough to begin piano lessons with Gustav Neuhaus, whose son Heinrich became his close friend, and later a renowned piano pedagogue, teach of Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter.
In 1901 he (Szymanowski) moved to Warsaw to study composition and soon became the leader of a group of young musicians called “Young Poland in Music.” His early works were songs, piano, and violin music, influenced by Scriabin and Richard Strauss. He traveled widely in Europe and North Africa, gradually developing his own unique style of composition, incorporating elements of Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky. Just before World War I he was living in Paris. He managed to get back to the family estate, which dis integrated during the Russian Revolution. Financially insecure thereafter, he lived most in the mountainous Tetra district of Poland, sometimes teaching at the Warsaw Conservatory, occasionally touring America and Europe as a compose-performer with his lifelong friend Artur Rubenstein.
His first string quartet was written in 1917, but only performed in public in 1924. It is from his somewhat experimental middle period, most notably using a different key signature for each instrument in the second movement, as well as writing only three movements instead of the customary four.
–Craig Leman 2006 (last paragraph added by A. Carlson)
In 1901 he (Szymanowski) moved to Warsaw to study composition and soon became the leader of a group of young musicians called “Young Poland in Music.” His early works were songs, piano, and violin music, influenced by Scriabin and Richard Strauss. He traveled widely in Europe and North Africa, gradually developing his own unique style of composition, incorporating elements of Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky. Just before World War I he was living in Paris. He managed to get back to the family estate, which dis integrated during the Russian Revolution. Financially insecure thereafter, he lived most in the mountainous Tetra district of Poland, sometimes teaching at the Warsaw Conservatory, occasionally touring America and Europe as a compose-performer with his lifelong friend Artur Rubenstein.
His first string quartet was written in 1917, but only performed in public in 1924. It is from his somewhat experimental middle period, most notably using a different key signature for each instrument in the second movement, as well as writing only three movements instead of the customary four.
–Craig Leman 2006 (last paragraph added by A. Carlson)
Schumann's Quartet in A minor, Op. 41, No. 1
Having spent the early years of his compositional career creating piano works, Schumann in 1838 wrote his fiancée Clara that he was thinking of writing string quartets. He received what some would now call a classic put-down: “So you’re going to write quartets! …Are you then thoroughly acquainted with the instruments? I’m very much delighted with your plan. Only, please compose right clearly.” It is not surprising that, in the face of such wild enthusiasm from his beloved, Schumann put this project on the back burner, till they were safely married.
Not till 1842 did he really get with it, and here is what he had to say about quartet-writing at the time: “The quartet has come to a standstill. Who does not know the quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven? …..It is no good sign that the later generation, after all this time, has not been able to produce anything comparable.” 1842 started as a hard year for the Schumanns. Clara went off on a concert tour, leaving Robert babysitting and brooding over their separation. Too depressed to compose, he wrote, “A miserable life! The parting has made me poignantly feel my strange and difficult position.” They considered a two-year concert tour in America, “…but the abyss is just too monstrous that would separate one there from the homeland.”
When Clara returned, he was waiting “like a bridegroom, at once happy and anxious.” At once, he set to work on the quartets and soon wrote in his diary, “I have been busy in a new field and have nearly finished and written out two string quartets.” By June he added the third, complete Opus 41, his life-time output of string quartets. For his wife’s birthday he arranged a private home performance of all three, causing her to write “My respect for his genius, for his intellect, altogether for the whole composer, grows with each work…Here everything is new and at the same time lucid, finely worked out, and always in the quartet idiom.”
Five years later Schumann wrote his publisher, “My quartets which you brought out have regained fresh significance for me through the death of Mendelssohn to whom they are dedicated. I still regard them as my best work of the earlier days and Mendelssohn often spoke to me in the same sense.”
-Craig Leman (1982)
Not till 1842 did he really get with it, and here is what he had to say about quartet-writing at the time: “The quartet has come to a standstill. Who does not know the quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven? …..It is no good sign that the later generation, after all this time, has not been able to produce anything comparable.” 1842 started as a hard year for the Schumanns. Clara went off on a concert tour, leaving Robert babysitting and brooding over their separation. Too depressed to compose, he wrote, “A miserable life! The parting has made me poignantly feel my strange and difficult position.” They considered a two-year concert tour in America, “…but the abyss is just too monstrous that would separate one there from the homeland.”
When Clara returned, he was waiting “like a bridegroom, at once happy and anxious.” At once, he set to work on the quartets and soon wrote in his diary, “I have been busy in a new field and have nearly finished and written out two string quartets.” By June he added the third, complete Opus 41, his life-time output of string quartets. For his wife’s birthday he arranged a private home performance of all three, causing her to write “My respect for his genius, for his intellect, altogether for the whole composer, grows with each work…Here everything is new and at the same time lucid, finely worked out, and always in the quartet idiom.”
Five years later Schumann wrote his publisher, “My quartets which you brought out have regained fresh significance for me through the death of Mendelssohn to whom they are dedicated. I still regard them as my best work of the earlier days and Mendelssohn often spoke to me in the same sense.”
-Craig Leman (1982)
Chamber Music Corvallis receives support from the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the State of Oregon.
