Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563 - VI. Allegro

this last movement is in sonata rondo form, in 6/8, in our home key of e-flat major.

this movement alternates between rolling and rollicking. it starts off lovely and graceful, but then has short outbursts of virtuosity with lots of sixteenth note runs for everyone.

development at 2:30 with the entrance of the viola. starts as the beginning, but very quickly modulates to several other keys, hinting for a while at g major, but bypassing it to continue around the circle of fifths in on of the explosions of sixteenths, ending finally at 3:35 in a dovetail into part of the exposition.
4:50 is the true recap, though, and the galloping part is the beginning of a coda which will bring the whole work to a grand close.

more will be added to this entry once i actually study this piece and get a clue as to this movement, but i couldn't leave the last movement hanging :) enjoy.

Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563 - V. Minuet: Allegretto

this minuet is in e-flat, has two trios, and is slightly more poised than the first minuet.

it sounds harmonically very much like the first minuet, but in the second section of the minuet there is a bit of a halted moment, where everything stops for just a moment before resuming as normal.

first trio comes at 1:18; it is in a mellower a-flat major and the melody is given by the viola. the second section plays in the dominant, and there is even a brief development in the middle, featuring sustained diminished chords.

the second trio, at 3:06, is a bit more jolly and fun, with a venture into the relative minor in the middle which is more energetic. the violin gives an arpeggiating tune with a cool bit of rhythmic augmentation in the middle.

the last repetition of the minuet includes even more mozartean moments of ornamentation, along with a little coda.

Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563 - IV. Andante

This movement features a set of theme and variations in b-flat major.

this is a bit hard to parse because there is no space in between the variations, so i will include lots of markers here.
theme is relaxed and pretty standard. two parts, both repeated. the first consists of a pretty standard eight bar, the first four bars half cadence and the final four cadence. already on the repeat, mozart starts varying, so it sounds a bit like a new variation, but the second part of the theme has yet to come. it takes us to harmonically new territory - c minor, f major, then cadence in b-flat, and then rounds it off neatly with a four bar "coda." again, the "repeat" of this second section is already quite different from the first time.

1:37 is the first variation, mostly for the violin. the viola receives the melody, while the violin plays a sort of descant. the repeat features some more difficult arpeggios for the violin, which are carried on in the second section.

3:06 is more boisterous, and gives a sort of conversation to the violin and viola, which alternately play parts of the melody and triplet arpeggios. the cello also gets to contribute his bit in the second half.

4:44 suddenly the jollity halts and we are given a much more solemn variation, in b-flat minor. wistful dotted rhythms and sustained notes are exchanged in equal part between all of the instruments.

6:16 back to the realm of the major, and the cello sustains long notes of the melody while the viola plays a sort of alberti bass and the violin has mad scales and perpetual motion all over the place. he does a bit of slicing and dicing, as the variation doesn't exactly adhere to the original theme, but that is because he is about to hit a coda. the other two instruments get their share of the perpetuo moto, but then all of a sudden we're back in the realm of the theme, which brings us to a relaxed close.

Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563 - III. Minuet

this minuet is cool because of the opening hemiola effected by the accompanying chords.

standard a-b-a minuet. we're now back in e-flat major, but the opening section gives us a taste of c minor (relative), and cadences in b-flat. second section, beginning at 1:00 and returning quickly to the opening material to round off in e-flat after a cool bit of extended playing on the main material.

2:40 trio, takes us very quickly in and out of b-flat major. the second section of the trio features some interesting "echoes" from the viola and cello, and an elided cadence at around 3:30 allows the viola to come up and take the violin's role out of nowhere.

recap at 4:33, the rest is history.

Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563 - II. Adagio

this second movement is the slow movement in sonata form. it is written in a-flat major, the subdominant to e-flat. elegant, full of moonlight, and plenty of cadenza-like moments for everyone, it sounds just like a serenade to me.

it starts, like the first movement, with a simple arpeggio, but this time turned on its head, coming from the cello, from the bottom up. before long it settles into a comfortable flow, and a lot of the little figures from the violin sound to me like they could be unmeasured - simple ornamentation over the bed of the viola and cello.
at around 1:30 there is a modulation into the dominant, e-flat. the second theme is a series of modulating arpeggios and is basically an extended cadenza for the violin. the exposition ends in e-flat.

2:57 development, on the opening figure (the ascending arpeggio), then diminished chords over the pedal C in the cello. this development, too, is extremely short. recap at about 4:08. the recap is basically the same but for a few extra ornamentations in the cello part. mozart begins redeveloping almost immediately, ensuring that the rest of the recap falls into place in the key of a-flat. sometimes he takes the time to stop and smell the roses, adding an extra half bar or so here and there with moments of repose.

7:19 is a bit of a coda, spearheaded for the first time by the viola. there is a surprise fully diminished chord, and this gives the final chords a greater sense of satisfaction at the end of the movement.

Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563 - I. Allegro

i have been assigned to perform this piece in a short festival i am attending this summer, so i thought i would get a head start on learning it. the piece was written in mozart's all-famous summer of 1788 (the most well-known feat being that he composed all three of his final and most well-known symphonies during these weeks). it is a string trio for the problematic ensemble of violin, viola, and cello, and it was dedicated to a friend of his who lent him money (michael puchberg). he premiered it that september playing the viola part.

true to the form of a divertimento, it has six movements, but in all other respects is basically a string trio work. most program notes point out that it includes two minuets, a set of theme and variations, and another slow movement in sonata form, but is not generally seen as the "light" music that the name 'divertimento' otherwise suggests.

the ensemble is problematic because it lacks fullness generally. this is an impression i get almost always listening to this ensemble - with one more violin it is generally easy to take care of, which is why the quartet has become such a staple ensemble of chamber music. but mozart does a great job of covering for it in this work.

the first movement is a standard allegro in sonata form.

exposition from beginning up until about 2:30, where it repeats. the theme, beginning with a descending e-flat arpeggio, is cheery and sunny, but elegant at the same time. a modulation into b-flat along with a second theme comes at about 0:45, a bit more lyrical, but not exactly dolce - still plenty of texture in the other parts. i enjoy how he prolongs the real cadence until quite late, spinning out many arpeggios and extended solos for the three instruments until finally rounding it off.
development begins at 4:50. he starts with the same figure that opens the movement, but then moves it in astonishing directions, contrasting it with a rising figure in whatever instruments accompany it. 5:15 a bit more movement and strife, and this moment reminds me a bit of the corresponding section in the first movement of beethoven op 18 no. 1. the strife dies down quietly, and the development is actually extremely short, leading to a recap at 6:00.
redevelopment at 6:34. cadences in the correct key of e-flat, so that he can begin the second theme in its rightful place. the movement ends without coda.

Ravel: Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, M. 77 - I. Allegretto

M stands for marcel marnat, who catalogued ravel's stuff.

this sonata was composed between 1923-1927, and is one of my favorite violin sonatas. friendly and sophisticated at the same time, it seems to have a lot of pull even with non classical listeners.

the reasons for its lengthy complicated birth period were things which plagued ravel from the end of WWI until the end of his life, including recurring illness and a creative block that only left in 1926. as a result the pre-war period for him was several times more productive than the last phase of his life from 1926 until 1937 (fifteen compositions versus fifty-six).

the main program note that usually accompanies this piece regards only the second movement which is noted for having some jazz/blues influence (it's quite unsubtly titled "blues"). this movement is indeed quite special and funky, but for me it's the outer movements which are so compelling.

analyses of ravel's music postwar usually stress his interest in making subtle and not-so-subtle references to the horrors of the war and his wish for it not to be repeated (see piano concerto for the left hand, which was written for the wittgenstein who had his right hand blown off in combat). some of this jazz inspired music is said to be a sort of homage to the american contribution to the war. this sonata is more abstract and seems to fall largely outside the scope of these more programmatic works. but it does reflect a lot of the changes in his musical language which took place directly after the war: "His attitude toward musical texture changes from lush and thick to spare and ascetic; his form names change from colorful to abstract, while his formal shapes turn a bit more unpredictable than heretofore; bitonality, harsh dissonance or unresolved friction, jazz sonorities, folk-like modalities, and all-but-incompatible metric interconnecting relationships increase exponentially in these later works." (this is a very good set of program notes on this piece.)

all of these are readily visible/audible in this violin sonata. it was first performed on may 30, 1927, with georges enesco on the violin and ravel at the piano.
two very different recordings. the first is monique haas at the piano, max rostal at the violin. i like this because of its plainness, which to me seems to adhere very closely to the nature of the work. the second is shlomo mintz and yefim bronfman. i expected this to be sort of lusher but eh.

the movement is meandering and dreamy, lots of asymmetrical phrases and bitonal chords. the meter keeps grounded in 6/8, but everything else seems to slide it around as if it were going to sort of take off any second. the tonality slides around constantly. after the opening theme the violin echoes the piano a fifth above, but then goes somewhere else entirely, from a tonal perspective.

i like how spare this writing is. it's totally clear and one can hear every note, but it boggles our musical instincts by not at all adhering to... well, anything, really. lots of augmented sevenths and ninths, things usually only found in jazz music - but the voicing is still off.
note the little inserted countermelodies starting at 1:11. these come back noticeably in the last movement. that plus the opening theme provide the grounds for the whole movement.
notable is how, while the violin and piano often trade off voicing melodic material, sometimes they go off in completely different directions.
development starts at 3:11.
there's a big climax with triplets in the violin. but the catharsis doesn't really come until quite a bit after that: the part i find most amazing is the "phrase" which begins directly after the triplets stop at 5:52. from then straight until 7:18 is the longest-spinning phrase ever. and it's not until 7:12 that we feel the relief of it ending.

ok, this entry was really difficult to write for some reason. O WELL SEE YOU TOMORROW

Faure: Piano Quintet in D minor, Op. 89 - I. Molto Moderato

ok and here is your second dose of french music for today - a very different, rather lesser-known piano quintet by a composer who lived roughly at the same time (about 20 years later on both ends) as franck.

faure wrote this work in his middle years as a music conservatoire inspector, having actually been blocked from a teaching post at the paris conservatoire by faculty who regarded him as too modern (he would end up there in 1896 anyway). faure had little time to devote himself exclusively to composition and sat on works for a while before getting them done - this quintet was in the works from 1890-94, finally published in 1895. it was dedicated to violinist eugene ysaye.

here is a great description of how i see the first movement:

Fauré's Piano Quintets are very different from his more popular Piano Quartets, which were written much earlier and storm the heights and depths of High Romanticism. The Quintets are sublime, but elusive. They are warm and comfy, like climbing with your feet into an armchair in front of a fireplace. The emotions are reticent, all is calm, you sense the soft smile of a wise old man. Sometimes it is a sad smile, a sorrow, a regret.

the beginning of this work is just so sad and wistful. later in this same review the writer says that the opening of this movement is "brahmsian," but in a way which sings with a very french melody - melancholy, unfulfilled, almost stalled, as if it has nowhere to go and is forced to circle around the same small room. i think that's why these works aren't really memorable - they aren't singing - but like much french music, even the stuff we all know and love, it is great at establishing an otherworldly color.
(let me just say as an aside, i don't know what "molto moderato" means - i guess he really really didn't want the tempo to be too much in either direction?)
the first phrase almost doesn't end until 1:07, the first we get of a real warm cadence. everything up until this point is kind of a cold color, lonely, sliding back and forth between neighboring keys.
the piano arpeggios are back immediately, but a "b" section begins around 1:45. i actually have a hard time telling where phrases "end" in this whole piece, but the texture/rhythm change right around here into something that really reminds me of the second theme in schumann's piano quintet.
a different section at 2:47, with slower arpeggios in the piano and a more songful theme which then dovetails and develops on the initial theme.

critics express problems with faure's monochromaticism and i think they might have a point. but the long-breathedness and chameleon-esque character of this music is what makes it rather special. i always like hearing how everything just melts into everything else - themes emerge from an almost constantly flowing texture, transitions are so gradual you don't notice they've happened until all of a sudden something strongly familiar emerges. that's what i like about this piece, other than the fact that i just really like the opening feeling it gives me. kind of goosebumpy.

Franck: Piano Quintet in F minor, M. 7 - I. Molto moderato quasi lento

for this double/make-up entry, the first movements of two piano quintets by two contemporaneous french composers.
(this is also music i was more or less unfamiliar with, so it's easier for me to do these expositions of more well-known works)

M stands for wilhelm mohr, who catalogued franck's work in 1969.
this 3-movement quintet was written in 1878-1879, pretty much right in the middle of his fairly prosperous career as professor at the paris conservatoire (his so-called "late period" lasts from 1872-1890). his new job allowed him to spend a lot more time composing, and he had a pretty reasonable output of work during this period, including a lot of the pieces we now know him best for - le chausseur maudit, symphonic variations, and later, the violin sonata.
wikipedia indicates that he is represented in the "standard" modern repertoire only by a fairly narrow range of works. i think perhaps this has to do with the fact that the color of much of what he wrote was so similar - hyperromantic, instrumentationally/texturally standard, lapsing sometimes into stagnation, even. but this piano quintet was one of his few works which had a successful premiere.

this massive first movement is angsty and vital, with a "theatrical grimness," as one of the critics wrote back in the day.
his work before this was mostly just sacred work, and this piece was the beginning of his actual success as a composer. nyphil writes that the mood's likeliest explanation was "franck's infatuation with his student augusta holmes, a beautiful and gifted woman 25 years his junior." apparently saint-saens, who was the pianist at the premiere, rather disliked this piece, as well as franck's wife, felicite (for perhaps obvious reasons).
this movement is opened by a slow instroduction with two components: huge angsty, dramatic cry from the strings, and a melancholy melody for the piano which begins at 0:27. at 3:43, the tempo suddenly changes to allegro, and a nice characterization for what's happening for the rest of the movement is that instead of the piano trying to calm the strings down, it's the other way around. the super-dotted rhythm is derived from the very opening string statement.
at 5:06 is a very chromatic theme which plays a crucial role in the work as a whole, repeating at various points throughout the three movements. it comes back at the end of this movement, much more agitated, at 7:43. in between you have a return of the slow introduction, and lots of development based on said theme.
looooots of chromatic movement through this piece - does quite a bit to undermine the tonal center. some characteristically french melody writing, and quite a lot of the devilish arpeggio-work that anyone who's familiar with the violin sonata will recognize - which was the next and maybe even only work that was quite as overtly passionate and heart-on-sleeve as this.

enjoy!

Brahms: String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 18 - II. Andante ma moderato

chamber fridays, in honor of classical music hour on fridays at princeton (or because i felt like i needed to have a day dedicated to chamber music)

this sextet might be brahms's best work for a chamber group that doesn't include piano. the problem with a lot of his string quartets is that he basically tries to write a piano piece and then divide it among the four string parts - at least, this is what it sounds to me. so invariably some instrument ends up with an ostinato or half of a chord that isn't quite as fulfilling because it doesn't fill out the texture the way it would on a piano. even if he assigns double stops and the like to the string instruments, because of all the different voices/timbres, it still often sounds sort of thin or ungrounded.

this is a problem brahms solves in this piece by adding more instruments. it's easy to imagine that things might get bogged down quickly with six instruments - 150% the normal group - and it is indeed a very, very different experience playing with six people as opposed to four. but i think i would be hard-pressed to find moments in this sextet that are actually too thick the way they might be if other composers tried to tackle the same ensemble.
there aren't that many string sextets out there - the other famous one is, of course, tchaik's souvenir de florence, which also doesn't have *that* much trouble being heard clearly, but this is because it's basically a first violin concerto (and sometimes a cello concerto). the same goes for mendelssohn's string octet. it seems the bigger the ensemble, the more need for one, perhaps two parts to come out prominently by virtue of being higher or more melodic). there's something about the magic number four that makes the string quartet full enough to be gratifying, but still an "equal" partnership among the four players. i think this is still the sort of aesthetic brahms goes for even with six players, though, and i think this is actually much more successful than his string quartet endeavors.

ok, on to the actual piece.

this sextet was written in 1860, just after the first piano concerto (op. 15). during this time he was basically juggling jobs between hamburg and detmold. this was also at the height of his public "feud" against the school of wagner and liszt, who thought he was too old-fashioned. he would later withdraw from that argument entirely. he later earned more widespread popularity in 1868 with Ein Deutsche Requiem.

this movement is a set of theme and variations. brahms is one of the only composers whom i consistently "trust" to handle this form in a way that maintains my interest. i think this has something to do with his ability to fill in a plain theme with a unique contour and insert a moment (in this case, a couple variations) of absolute gorgeousness. with this movement, every variation taps something really visceral, and the soft/major variations are sublime.

fantastic, raw, and very powerful recording, especially the first major variation. for comparison's sake,

this version is much more demure - you can hear it in the first two seconds. it's got its own beauty in its cleanliness and grace, but for me there's no real comparison.
edit: after discovering the first video is no longer legal in the US (and actually not having any idea who it was), i have begrudgingly looked up a second recording which i also consider to be very powerful.

the movement has the following variations:
I. theme, which is so simple and tuneful and yet angsty and intense that it really keeps your interest from the get-go, something already unique in the realm of themes and variations - themes usually are so simple you can't wait to hear what the composer's going to do and can we please just get the theme over with. not so here.
II. a variation which passes the arpeggios between all the instruments while keeping the firm marching chords on top of them
III. triplet variation. he throws in some great harmonic changes just at the end of the first half - switching to F major just briefly before descending back.
IV. stormy harmonic minor scales with lots of surging swells
V. the first major variation: songful and broad and breathy. the transition into this variation is an awesome moment.
VI. a much more delicate gossamer variation - the melody, given to the first viola, becomes something gentle and flowing (it doesn't even really sound like a melody - more like the harmony part, if a more straightforward version of the melody were present). it's accompanied by open strings and falling open intervals in the violins.
VII. a reprise of the theme, except made more solemn, heavier, by giving the melody to the cello and accompanying that with heavy, rhythmic pizzicati. marches on to a quiet close that somehow morphs into major magically just before the end.
aaaaaahhhhh it's so good!!!