Henry Purcell (Born September 10, 1659, London; died November 21, 1695, London)
Chacony in g minor, Z. 730 (arr. Benjamin Britten)
Composed: c. 1678; arr. Britten, 1947–48, rev. 1963
Approximate duration: 7 minutes
Regarded among the most important musical figures of the seventeenth century, Henry Purcell moreover occupies a hallowed place in the pantheon of English composers. So without peer was he among his countrymen, and so yawning a void did he leave that, for subsequent generations, England became known on the continent as Das Land Ohne Musik. (The derision was, to be fair, as much a reflection of German hubris—fueled by the succession of great composers from Haydn to Brahms—as it was an objective assessment of English musical culture. “These people,” sneered the German critic Oscar Adolf Hermann Schmitz in 1904, “have no ear either for rhythm or music and their unnatural passion for piano playing and singing is all the more repulsive. Nothing on Earth is more terrible than English music except English painting.”)
As Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and others restored English music to respectability in the early part of the twentieth century, Purcell remained their patron saint. Benjamin Britten revered him above all others. Ever conscious of cultivating a distinctly English compositional language, Britten strove to emulate what he identified in Purcell’s music as a synthesis of “clarity, brilliance, tenderness, and strangeness.”
Those qualities indeed permeate Purcell’s affecting Chacony in g minor. Originally composed for two violins, viola, and continuo (and heard in this performance in Britten’s edition for strings), the work contains an expressive urgency that, over three centuries hence, sounds irrepressibly fresh. The chacony is a musical form (more often referred to by the French chaconne or Italian ciaccona) in which a repeated bass line underpins a series of variations. Purcell (the composer, nota bene, of Dido and Aeneas, a towering accomplishment of Baroque opera) approaches this straightforward form with a sure hand and a keen dramatic instinct, charting an enthralling psychological drama over a taut canvas.
—© 2021 Patrick Castillo
Ludwig van Beethoven (Born Bonn, baptized December 17, 1770; died March 26, 1827, Vienna)
String Quartet no. 15 in a minor, op. 132
Composed: 1825
Published: Paris and Berlin, 1827
Dedication: Prince Nikolay Golitsïn
Other works from this period: Detailed in the notes below.
Approximate duration: 45 minutes
Near the end of his life, after completing his last symphony and his last piano sonata, Ludwig van Beethoven turned once again, after a twelve-year hiatus, to the string quartet as the medium for his most deeply felt musical thoughts. The quartets to which Beethoven devoted his final years represent the pinnacle of the composer’s mighty creative powers and infinite imagination. In the five late quartets (Opp. 127, 130, 131, 132, and 135), Beethoven surpassed all precedent for the expressive capabilities of music, as if transcending this world and composing for listeners of future generations. The impetus for the late quartets was a commission from the Russian prince Nikolay Golitsïn, himself an amateur cellist. Golitsïn asked Beethoven for “one, two, or three quartets, for which labor I will be glad to pay you what you think proper.” Karl Holz, the second violinist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet who later worked as Beethoven’s secretary, relates the following:
“During the time when he was composing the three quartets commissioned by Prince Galitzin, Opus 127, Opus 130, [and] Opus 132, such a wealth of new quartet ideas streamed forth from Beethoven’s inexhaustible imagination that he felt almost involuntarily compelled to write the C-sharp minor and F major quartets [opp. 131 and 135]. ‘My dear friend, I have just had another new idea,’ he used to say, in a joking manner and with shining eyes, when we would go out for a walk; and he wrote down some notes in a little pocket sketchbook. ‘But that belongs to the quartet after the next one, since the next one already has too many movements.’…When he had finished the B-flat major quartet [op. 130] I said that I thought it the best of the three. To which he replied, ‘Each in its own way! Art demands of us that we don’t stand still…You will find here a new kind of voice-leading, and, as to imagination, it will, God willing, be less lacking than ever before!’”
Beethoven began the String Quartet in a minor, op. 132, in the winter of 1824 and completed it the following July. The Schuppanzigh Quartet gave Opus 132 its unofficial premiere on September 9, 1825, at a Viennese tavern for an audience of fourteen; the public premiere took place two months later, on November 6.
The first movement has a free-spirited quality. Though essentially following sonata form, the emergence of each new musical idea carries the feeling of the next logical thought, rather than something formulaically conceived for the sake of thematic contrast. Following the mercurial opening measures, a brief melodic phrase, marked by three repeated notes, comes to the surface and passes through all four instruments.
This blossoms effortlessly into a flowing theme in the second violin.
Beethoven proceeds in this fashion throughout the movement, expanding on the basic material presented at the outset of the work, and exploiting it to craft a very rich movement indeed, whose psychological and emotional complexity cannot be simply or decisively articulated. A lighter, lyrical second movement follows, as a preface to the Quartet’s emotional centerpiece.
The Quartet is in five movements, though studies of Beethoven’s sketchbooks suggest that he originally planned a more traditional four-movement structure. But his work on the Quartet was interrupted for one month by a severe intestinal illness; upon recovery, Beethoven added the quartet’s substantial third movement, which would come to be regarded as the heart of the work. Beethoven inscribed above the movement, “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart”—Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity by a Convalescent, in the Lydian mode. (The Lydian mode, an ancient church mode marked by the raised fourth, adds to the Heiliger Dankgesang’s prayerful aura.) The movement begins with a solemn chorale melody.
The Heiliger Dankgesang alternates between varied restatements of this Bach-like chorale and more animated passages, marked “Neue Kraft fühlend”—feeling of new strength.
The movement ends with a final utterance of the Heiliger Dankgesang, which Beethoven marks to be played “with the most intimate emotions.” Following the great spiritual magnitude of the Heiliger Dankgesang, Beethoven gives the listener a welcome respite with a good-humored march movement—understandable, perhaps, as an extension of the previous movement’s celebration of newfound vigor. But lest the listener hear this brief march simply as a palette cleanser after the Heiliger Dankgesang, Beethoven rounds it off in striking fashion: above dramatic tremolando in the lower strings, the first violin issues a declamatory recitative. The recitative proceeds attacca to the spirited sonata-rondo finale, marked Allegro appassionato.
—© 2021 Patrick Castillo