The complete idiot's guide to classical music (17 page)

The overall sound of an orchestra is a combination of many factors: the strengths and weaknesses of the individual players; the acoustics of the hall; and the kind of tone and resonance demanded by the conductor. They say that Stokowski could stand before an ensemble of teenagers, and within a few minutes this nonprofessional orchestra would have the “Stokowski sound”—rich, flowing, and resonant.

Some orchestras are especially noted for the lush quality of their strings, in others the winds are unusually precise, or the brasses give the performances an exciting thrust. There’s nothing right or wrong about these different sonic weightings, which is why each conductor has his ardent devotees and equally strident critics. It’s also why you should allow you own ears to be the judge. Forget about whether critic X loves conductor Y and hates orchestra Z; what do
you
like? What makes you sit up and take notice, what gives you the greatest listening satisfaction?

Buy two different recordings of the same piece, and compare their merits. Maybe listen to a third version on the radio. Soon enough you’ll recognize nuances that passed right by you before, and you’ll better appreciate the extraordinary diversity—not to mention the great commonality of enjoyment—that is the special province of classical music.

 

• A chamber orchestra is a small orchestra, usually about 40 players.
  
 

• A symphony orchestra has upward of 100 players.
  
 

• The conductor is necessary to keep all those instruments playing together with precision.
  

Chapter 9
 
How Does the Instrumental Garden Grow?

 

• When two play together
  
 

• Trios
  
 

• String quartets and others
  

Corn is tasty and lima beans are lovely, but mix them together and you have succotash, a whole new vegetable with its own distinctive flavor. It’s exactly the same way with musical instruments, so composers have long explored ways to create fascinating novel sounds, textures, and structural possibilities through the imaginative blending of the distinctive timbres of two or more instruments.

The animals came into the Ark two by two, and some of the most thrilling music in the world arrives via the four hands of two players. Sometimes, the twosome involves the same instrument. Bartok, for instance, wrote 44 duos for two violinists, while Mozart and Schubert contributed sonatas, marches, and all sorts of other pieces for two pianists, sometimes at a single keyboard. You’ll also come upon paired soloists in orchestral concerts: Bach wrote a
Concerto for Two Harpsichords
, Vivaldi has one for
Two Trumpets
, and Cimarosa came through with the
Concerto for Two Flutes
.

Put together two different instruments, of course, and the sonic possibilities expand greatly. Even when the match seems doomed from the start, a clever composer can preside over such unlikely musical marriages as cello and bassoon (Mozart), violin and guitar (Paganini), viola and clarinet (Rebecca Clarke), or guitar and organ (Chris DeBlasio). Even Beethoven wrote duos for clarinet and bassoon, viola and cello, and sundry other combinations.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
“I am not handsome,” Paganini admitted, “but when women hear me play, they come crawling to my feet.” Not that he minded. His “Duetto Amoroso” is in nine movements, with subtitles like “Entreaties,” “Consent,” and “Satisfaction,” and he also wrote a “Scena Amorosa” as a conversation between lovers, the man speaking on the G string, the woman answering on the E.

The most common partner for any string, woodwind, or brass instrument is the piano, which is logical enough, given its huge range of the keyboard and its capability to produce chords as well as melodic materials. In the baroque and early classical eras, the piano (or harpsichord) was often cast in the role of accompanist to the featured instrument. Mozart then turned the tables, using the fiddle as mere accompaniment in many of his early violin and piano sonatas (some of which he had earlier published as solo keyboard works). In his later works for the two instruments (Mozart wound up writing more than three dozen of them), he brought violin and piano into more even balance. It took Beethoven to level out the playing field completely, and thereafter, most composers were content to create their music duos for equal partners.

Every period of music has its wealth of works that fuse contrasting tones and timbres, so pick your favorite composer, and chances are you’ll find enough duets to fill a year of listening Sundays. Beethoven? There are ten violin sonatas, another five for cello and piano, and one for horn. Schubert? He wrote duets with flute, violin, and even a long-obsolete instrument called the arpeggione, for which the modern cello is the usual substitute. Hindemith wrote sonatas for violin, viola, and cello, but he also combined the piano with almost every wind and brass instrument in the book: flute, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, horn, English horn, trumpet, and trombone.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
The German violinist Ludwig Spohr wrote dozens of pieces for his own use, but when he married another violinist, he made her switch to the harp because he didn’t think it was dignified for a lady to hold anything under her chin in public. Spohr then proceeded to write a whole bunch of pieces for flute and harp, but since he also didn’t think it was dignified for a lady to tune an instrument on stage, he used to do it for her—with everybody looking.

Trios, as you undoubtedly figured out long before this, involve three musical partners. (Although the Baroque trio sonatas sometimes required four players, the accompaniment split between a low instrument like the cello or bassoon, which would line out the bass notes, while the harmonies were filled in by a harpsichord or other keyboard instrument.) Again, the combinations are almost endless. There are string trios (sometimes for two violins and viola, more often for violin, viola, and cello); wind or brass instrument threesomes; and pieces that combine members of two or even three musical families, such as Martinu’s “Promenades” for flute, violin, and harpsichord.

As in duos, the piano is the most often called-upon trio partner; in fact, the phrase “piano trio” almost always refers not to three Steinways jostling each other on stage, but to the most frequently encountered instrumental threesome of violin, cello, and piano. Once more, you’ll find sterling examples of the form in the output of most major composers, from Mozart and Beethoven on through the romantic masterworks of Schubert, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky, and then forward into our own century with Copland, Shostakovich, and a host of younger generation composers.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Little of Schubert’s music was published during his lifetime (1797–1828), and there were few public concerts of his works (including, by the way, one of his two piano trios). It remained for later generations to discover his genius, and significantly, several of his composing colleagues led the way: Schumann, who wrote eloquently about Schubert’s Ninth Symphony; Mendelssohn who conducted its premiere; Arthur Sullivan, who found the lost score to “Rosamunde”; and Liszt, who prepared an edition of Schubert’s piano music. “Like a bird in the air,” wrote Liszt to the publisher, “he lived in music and sang in angelic fashion.” And Schumann, after hearing Schubert’s B-flat Piano Trio, said that “the troubles of our human existence disappear and all the world is fresh and bright again.”

We don’t have to say that a quartet is a piece for four players, do we? Didn’t think so. Again in this category, the ensemble can be a mixed instrumental bag (Villa-Lobos has one for flute, celesta, harp, and saxophone), but more often than not, the foursome involves instruments of the same family. Prokofiev wrote a “Humorous Scherzo” for four bassoons, and if you look hard enough, you’ll find saxophone quartets, flute quartets, horn quartets, and even tuba quartets. Piano quartets, on the other hand, almost always refer to one keyboard and three of something else.

Perhaps the most familiar foursome, and certainly the one with the richest repertoire, is the string quartet. The family resemblance of the two violins, viola, and cello give the form a unity of sound and expression, yet each instrument retains its own dynamic personality and the ensemble overall has an astonishingly wide gamut of dramatic expression.

Although earlier examples of works exist that happen to be scored for four strings, the string quartet really came into general use around the middle of the 18th century. Haydn is often called the “father of the string quartet,” but a Viennese composer of an earlier generation, one Georg Mathias Monn, published six string quartets. Haydn, in other words, didn’t actually make the mold, he just filled it in with far higher inspiration than any of his predecessors—and in far greater numbers: His quartet output totals a bewildering 83.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Monn is almost entirely forgotten today, but he found a 20th century champion in Arnold Schoenberg, of all people. This master of atonality, many of whose works still scare away many listeners because of their austerity and dissonance not only edited one of Monn’s symphonies and two of his harpsichord concertos, but converted another Monn harpsichord piece into a mild-mannered cello concerto.

Mozart wrote approximately 30 string quartets (six of them dedicated to Haydn, who responded with his famous remark to Mozart’s father about Wolfgang being the greatest composer of whom he had any knowledge), and Beethoven followed with the 16 masterpieces that remain to this day the milestone works in the form.

The numbers dwindle somewhat as we move deeper into the 19th century—perhaps composers then were too busy pushing the boundaries of orchestral and keyboard music to spend much time on quartets—but what they may have lacked in quantity they more than made up for in quality. Brahms, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky each wrote three magnificent string quartets, Mendelssohn completed half a dozen, and Dvorak actually equaled Beethoven’s output at 16.