Creating “Progressive” Communities through Programmatic Chamber Music

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Sumner Lott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
String Quintet ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Musical Sounds ◽  
Political Scene

This chapter examines three programmatic works for strings, each with a different relationship to the cultural and political scene of its day: George Onslow's string quintet “The Bullet” deals with a hunting accident; Niels Gade's string quartet “Willkommen und Abschied” (Welcome and departure) interprets a Goethe poem; and Bedřich Smetana's string quartet “From My Life” provides a politically charged autobiography in tones. In all three cases, the composer has addressed a particular group of performers or listeners by using musical style and the written word to create a narrative that would resonate with a shared experience or identity. As such, these three works demonstrate the range of possibilities for programmaticism throughout the nineteenth century, as well as different points along the spectrum of depiction, from “characteristic” works that narrate a series of events with mimetic devices to more abstract works that attempt to translate a poetic ideal into musical sounds.

The Social Worlds of Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Sumner Lott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
Social History ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Niche Markets ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Romantic Music ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Dynamic Relationships

This book examines the music available to musical consumers in the nineteenth century, and what that music tells us about their tastes, priorities, and activities. The book's social history of chamber music performance places the works of canonic composers such as Schubert, Brahms, and Dvořák in relation to lesser-known but influential peers. The book explores the dynamic relationships among the active agents involved in the creation of Romantic music and shows how each influenced the others' choices in a rich, collaborative environment. In addition to documenting the ways companies acquired and marketed sheet music, the book reveals how the publication and performance of chamber music differed from that of ephemeral piano and song genres or more monumental orchestral and operatic works. Several distinct niche markets existed within the audience for chamber music, and composers created new musical works for their use and enjoyment. The book revises prevailing views of middle-class influence on nineteenth-century musical style and presents new methods for interpreting the meanings of musical works for musicians both past and present.

Michael Berkeley: recent world premières and CD releases

Tempo ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 57 (225) ◽  
pp. 39-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Conway
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
Joint Commission ◽  
String Quintet ◽  
String Trio ◽  
The City ◽  
Clarinet Quintet

Michael Berkeley's choral and operatic successes have tended to obscure his accomplishments in the field of chamber music, which include a serialist String Trio (1978), two String Quartets and a Clarinet Quintet from the 1980s and the string quartet Torque and Velocity (1997). His latest essay in the genre, Abstract Mirror, for string quintet, was premièred on 11 February 2003 at Bishopsgate Hall by the Chilingirian Quartet, with cellist Stephen Orton. The work was a joint commission by the players and the City Music Society.

scholarly journals Schubert’s Large-Scale Sentences

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin G. Martinkus
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Franz Schubert ◽  
Common Type ◽  
Piano Sonata ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
String Quintet ◽  
Large Structures ◽  
Formal Expansion

In this article, I share findings from analysis of first-movement sonata forms composed by Franz Schubert from 1810 to 1828. This work builds on prior studies of nineteenth-century sentences (e.g., ".fn_cite($baileyshea_2002).", ".fn_cite($bivens_2018).", ".fn_cite($broman_2007).", ".fn_cite($vandemoortele_2011).", and ".fn_cite($krebs_2013)."), offering an in-depth investigation of Schubert’s use of expanded sentence forms. I theorize the typical qualities of Schubert’s large-scale sentences and highlight a particularly common type, in which the large-scale continuation phrase begins as a third statement of the large-scale basic idea (i.e., a dissolving third statement). I present four examples of this formal type as representative, drawn from the C Major Symphony (D. 944/i), the C Minor Piano Sonata (D. 958/i), the C Major String Quintet (D. 956/i), and the D Minor String Quartet (D. 810/i). My analytical examples invite the reader to contemplate the negotiation of surface-level paratactic repetitions with deeper hypotactic structures. These large structures invite new modes of listening; exemplify the nineteenth-century shift away from the relative brevity of Classical precursors in favor of expanded forms; and problematize facile distinctions between inter- and intrathematic functions. This formal type would eventually flourish over the course of the nineteenth century, underpinning many composers’ strategies for formal expansion.

Glazunov and the String Quartet

Tempo ◽  
1965 ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Gerald Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Russian Music ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The Russian string quartet has a considerably longer history than the Russian symphony; Alyabiev wrote his first string quartet in 1815, to say nothing of the three quartets by a certain Taneev—possibly an ancestor of one or both of the two late-nineteenth-century Taneevs—published by Breitkopf at the end of the eighteenth century, of which the last traceable copies seem to have been destroyed in the Dresden holocaust of 1945. Yet the quartet has never achieved the importance in Russian music that it enjoys in other countries; numerically there are plenty of quartets but they are the stepchildren of Russian music. The Balakirev circle was in its early days actively hostile to chamber music, though Borodin eventually conquered his friends by his two fine compositions. Tchaikovsky's three are not as bad as seems to be commonly supposed but they can hardly be reckoned among his masterpieces, and the world would be little poorer if it were for ever deprived of the quartets of Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov. The only nineteenth-century Russians who took the quartet seriously enough to write a whole series of them were Glazunov and S.I. Taneev (whose unrelated or only distantly related namesake, A. S. Taneev, also produced three respectably written but very lightweight quartets), and their only twentieth-century successors have been Myaskovsky and Shostakovich.

The Diversity of Dvořák’s String Quartet Audiences

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Sumner Lott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
Music Culture

This concluding chapter analyzes how the diversity of Antonín Dvořák's audiences affected his string quartets. The strain of satisfying the disparate expectations of diverse audiences while attempting to establish himself as a composer of “universal” music in the tradition of German Classicism is most evident in Dvořák's string quartets. These works demonstrate his shrewdness in reading the musical climate and responding to it with appropriate stylistic choices that address not only the desire for exotic signifiers or their absence but also the types of engagement that listeners and performers would enjoy in different performance settings. The chapter then illuminates the features of Dvořák's earlier string quartets that indicate the composer's engagement with pervasive nineteenth-century string quartet traditions and his successful navigation of the rapidly changing chamber music culture in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Beethoven's String Quintet in C major, Op. 29, and Brahms's String Sextets: A Wallflower Blooms

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
William Horne
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
Johannes Brahms ◽  
Close Friend ◽  
Chamber Works ◽  
String Quintet ◽  
Joseph Joachim ◽  
Formal Design ◽  
Similar Elements

Beethoven's String Quintet, Op. 29, has been described as a ‘wallflower’ work that, without enough suitors, remains on the sidelines of the string chamber music repertoire. But in the nineteenth century it had a prominent champion, Joseph Joachim, whose performances of the quintet must have attracted the attention of his close friend, Johannes Brahms. The opening theme of Brahms's String Sextet, Op. 18, is clearly reminiscent of the beginning of Beethoven's quintet. Evidence from Donald Francis Tovey's recollections of Joachim, Joachim's correspondence with the Brahms biographer Max Kalbeck, and the manuscript of Op. 18 shows that Joachim influenced an important revision that aligns the beginning of Brahms's sextet closely with the opening of Beethoven's Op. 29 also in terms of texture and formal design. The striking tremolo opening and virtuosic scale passages in the finale of Beethoven's quintet prefigure similar elements in the last movement of Brahms's Op. 36 sextet. But the deeper relationship between these movements lies in certain shared formal elements: a common emphasis on sound, texture and sharp contrasts between agitato and pastoral elements as defining features of the overall form – and several distinctive similarities of contrapuntal strategy, form and tonal design between the substantial fugatos that dominate the development sections of both movements. It is often observed that Brahms wrote chamber works in pairs. Scholars have often posited that his two string sextets form such a pair, but the separation of four years in their inceptions and his extensive use of Baroque-style materials composed in the 1850s in the later sextet have made this argument tenuous. It now emerges that an unusual pairing feature of Brahms's string sextets is that both works respond to Beethoven's ‘wallflower’ masterpiece.

Santa Anna and the Gómez Farías Administration in Mexico, 1833-1834

1974 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-50
Author(s):  
A. L. de Sta. Anna
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Political Scene

Despite numerous biographies, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna remains one of the most enigmatic characters to have emerged in nineteenth century Latin America. Often dismissed by his many detractors as an unprincipled opportunist in the worst military caudillo tradition, he nevertheless dominated the turbulent and often chaotic Mexican political scene in the thirty years between independence and the Reform. His life has naturally been subjected to close scrutiny by both his contemporaries and more recent historians but his genius for political manouevre and equivocation have left many episodes in his career obscure and subject to doubt. Perhaps nowhere is this more the case than in his first presidency from 1833-1834 and in particular in his relations with his vice-president Gomez Farias' administration. This article seeks to examine his activities and ambitions in these years, and to suggest reasons, which hitherto have been overlooked or at least not given sufficient attention by his biographers, why he chose to betray and destroy the liberals' first attempt at reform.

A Bibliography of British Travel Books on Argentina: 1810-1860

1959 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Samuel Trifilo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Travel Books ◽  
The World ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Source Of Information

Books of travel and books inspired by travel have probably been more popular in Great Britain than any other literary form, with the exception of novels.This was especially true in the nineteenth century, when travel, owing to the lack of today's facilities, was reserved for the relative few. During that period, photography had not yet replaced the written word, as is happening in our own generation. The nineteenth-century Englishman wandered through the medium of a travel book and not through newsreels, travelogues, and even full-length movies. Today, the Englishman, like the American, is able to sit in his living room and see the world on his television screen. He is not dependent on literature to the extent that his grandfather or great-grandfather was. For the Englishman of the nineteenth century, therefore, travel literature was very important. Often, these books furnished the only source of information concerning strange lands and strange peoples.

Symphonies Reframed

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gjertrud Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Chamber Ensemble ◽  
Educational Value ◽  
Chamber Ensembles ◽  
String Trio ◽  
Original Works ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Core Questions ◽  
First Time

Symphonies Reframed recreates symphonies as chamber music. The project aims to capture the features that are unique for chamber music, at the juncture between the “soloistic small” and the “orchestral large”. A new ensemble model, the “triharmonic ensemble” with 7-9 musicians, has been created to serve this purpose. By choosing this size range, we are looking to facilitate group interplay without the need of a conductor. We also want to facilitate a richness of sound colours by involving piano, strings and winds. The exact combination of instruments is chosen in accordance with the features of the original score. The ensemble setup may take two forms: nonet with piano, wind quartet and string quartet (with double bass) or septet with piano, wind trio and string trio. As a group, these instruments have a rich tonal range with continuous and partly overlapping registers. This paper will illuminate three core questions: What artistic features emerge when changing from large orchestral structures to mid-sized chamber groups? How do the performers reflect on their musical roles in the chamber ensemble? What educational value might the reframing unfold? Since its inception in 2014, the project has evolved to include works with vocal, choral and soloistic parts, as well as sonata literature. Ensembles of students and professors have rehearsed, interpreted and performed our transcriptions of works by Brahms, Schumann and Mozart. We have also carried out interviews and critical discussions with the students, on their experiences of the concrete projects and on their reflections on own learning processes in general. Chamber ensembles and orchestras are exponents of different original repertoire. The difference in artistic output thus hinges upon both ensemble structure and the composition at hand. Symphonies Reframed seeks to enable an assessment of the qualities that are specific to the performing corpus and not beholden to any particular piece of music. Our transcriptions have enabled comparisons and reflections, using original compositions as a reference point. Some of our ensemble musicians have had first-hand experience with performing the original works as well. Others have encountered the works for the first time through our productions. This has enabled a multi-angled approach to the three central themes of our research. This text is produced in 2018.

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