Series Concert IV
Variations writ large
Sunday, September 15
Program notes by Timothy Summers
Sunday, September 15
Program notes by Timothy Summers
Johannes Brahms — String Sextet No. 1 in B-Flat Major, Op. 18
Balanced though it may seem from the outside, with two violins, two violas, and two cellos, the string sextet can become dangerously unbalanced, because cellos are large. The most organic balance for stringed instruments, seen both in string quartets and symphony orchestras, is to have two violin voices, and one each for violas and cellos (roughly the Soprano/Alto/Tenor/Bass scheme for chorus). String quintets, with notable exceptions, usually are written for two violas, and can build on soloistic roles for the viola, especially. But a string sextet can sound weirdly thick. Two cellos is too often too many.
Johannes Brahms wrote two fantastic string sextets. Why they work as well as they do is hard to describe, but it certainly arises from Brahms’s ability to keep his architecture evident (a bit like the George Washington Bridge in New York — all the more beautiful and light for its exposed beams). His tunes, light though they may seem, are never merely tunes, but always shadows, mirrors, permutations and extensions of one another. There is not only drama, but also a kind of weight-sharing in the interplay of voices. So there is a kind of symphonic lightness in both of the sextets — especially the B-flat Sextet, which bears a close resemblance to the serenades he wrote for orchestra — and that makes them enormously interesting to play. A particular strength lives especially in the grand variations of the slow movement, whose simple contour resembles the bass-driven form of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Everyone has structural elements in this work; everyone lifts, everyone lifts the piece to powerful, encompassing warmth.
Ludwig van Beethoven — 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120
The Diabelli Variations are perhaps too large for a program note. These 33 variations have so much content — they cover such a wide technical, emotional, compositional and even social range — that it seems futile to try to write efficiently about them, or to attempt to circumscribe them in a few paragraphs. Even the word ‘variations’ doesn’t seem sufficient: Beethoven himself changed their name to ‘Veränderungen’, or ‘transformations’, which frees them from the connotation of being a mere melody changing its stripes.
One source of their ultimate scope may be the casual modesty of their origin. The publisher Anton Diabelli sent out a simple theme to composers throughout the Austrian Empire, planning to publish them as a collection whose proceeds would benefit widows and orphans of the Napoleonic Wars. The theme is light, and even slightly annoying, and the patriotic intention of the volume, which was entitled Vaterländische Künsterlerverein (roughly: ‘Artists’ Association of the Fatherland’) didn’t seem promising for probing treatment. It would be a sort of Reader’s Digest version of the state of Austrian music techniques. But Beethoven, perhaps even to his own surprise, ended up taking this theme as far as he ever took any work. Ultimately, Diabelli’s commercially-oriented scribble itself seems to have escaped into the explicitly metaphysical last movement of Beethoven’s last sonata, Op. 111. The variation form, which brings along the most basic principles of musical and melodic memory, is here at full power. Diabelli set out to publish a light meta-musical survey of local composers; Beethoven created a vast meta-musical survey of compositional possibility.
Balanced though it may seem from the outside, with two violins, two violas, and two cellos, the string sextet can become dangerously unbalanced, because cellos are large. The most organic balance for stringed instruments, seen both in string quartets and symphony orchestras, is to have two violin voices, and one each for violas and cellos (roughly the Soprano/Alto/Tenor/Bass scheme for chorus). String quintets, with notable exceptions, usually are written for two violas, and can build on soloistic roles for the viola, especially. But a string sextet can sound weirdly thick. Two cellos is too often too many.
Johannes Brahms wrote two fantastic string sextets. Why they work as well as they do is hard to describe, but it certainly arises from Brahms’s ability to keep his architecture evident (a bit like the George Washington Bridge in New York — all the more beautiful and light for its exposed beams). His tunes, light though they may seem, are never merely tunes, but always shadows, mirrors, permutations and extensions of one another. There is not only drama, but also a kind of weight-sharing in the interplay of voices. So there is a kind of symphonic lightness in both of the sextets — especially the B-flat Sextet, which bears a close resemblance to the serenades he wrote for orchestra — and that makes them enormously interesting to play. A particular strength lives especially in the grand variations of the slow movement, whose simple contour resembles the bass-driven form of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Everyone has structural elements in this work; everyone lifts, everyone lifts the piece to powerful, encompassing warmth.
Ludwig van Beethoven — 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120
The Diabelli Variations are perhaps too large for a program note. These 33 variations have so much content — they cover such a wide technical, emotional, compositional and even social range — that it seems futile to try to write efficiently about them, or to attempt to circumscribe them in a few paragraphs. Even the word ‘variations’ doesn’t seem sufficient: Beethoven himself changed their name to ‘Veränderungen’, or ‘transformations’, which frees them from the connotation of being a mere melody changing its stripes.
One source of their ultimate scope may be the casual modesty of their origin. The publisher Anton Diabelli sent out a simple theme to composers throughout the Austrian Empire, planning to publish them as a collection whose proceeds would benefit widows and orphans of the Napoleonic Wars. The theme is light, and even slightly annoying, and the patriotic intention of the volume, which was entitled Vaterländische Künsterlerverein (roughly: ‘Artists’ Association of the Fatherland’) didn’t seem promising for probing treatment. It would be a sort of Reader’s Digest version of the state of Austrian music techniques. But Beethoven, perhaps even to his own surprise, ended up taking this theme as far as he ever took any work. Ultimately, Diabelli’s commercially-oriented scribble itself seems to have escaped into the explicitly metaphysical last movement of Beethoven’s last sonata, Op. 111. The variation form, which brings along the most basic principles of musical and melodic memory, is here at full power. Diabelli set out to publish a light meta-musical survey of local composers; Beethoven created a vast meta-musical survey of compositional possibility.