Party of Four Program Notes

In just two seasons, Wit’s Folly has had the chance to explore a lot of music.  We’ve played music by 17 different composers, of which 8 pieces were string quartets.  The string quartet was one of the most important genres of the 19th century, but it picked up its momentum from the end of the 18th century.  Composers like Mozart and Haydn existed in a larger ecosystem of composers, players, and audiences that together shaped the string quartet into the form that would be embraced and built upon by later composers like Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, and Bartók.  A big part of what we’re aiming to do with Wit’s Folly is uncover lesser known music that propelled that journey, bringing our audiences a deeper appreciation for where some of our favorite later pieces came from.  Tonight, we’ll be sharing a few of our favorites from those we played in our first two seasons.

Although the string quartet is strongly associated with Viennese composers, the genre was popular all over Europe.  In fact, the string quartet had arrived in Madrid soon after it had established itself in the other European capitals, sometime around the second half of the 18th century. There were Italian masters working in Spain like Francesco Corselli and Luigi Boccherini who had produced quartets while on Spanish soil, but the honor of being the first Spanish practitioner of the genre would eventually fall on Manuel Canales. We know little about his life, mainly that he was a cellist by trade, educated and later hired by the Toledo Cathedral. In 1770 he moved to Madrid in order to work for the Duke of Alba. Here he was able to work under Boccherini (also a cellist) and have access to a large music library that lacked nothing even when compared to the musical hubs of Paris or Amsterdam. Canales dedicated his first set of string quartets (1774) to the Duke. After the Duke’s death two years later, Canales tried in vain to get into the royal graces by dedicating his second set of quartets to the King, and our quartet tonight comes from this second opus.  

Canales’ first movement is moody with its lyrical moments frequently interrupted by impassioned outbursts from the first violin.  The brief agitated minuet is paired with a more laid back and open trio.  The third movement is the emotional heart of the piece, an aria for first violin accompanied by the steadily flowing second violin and viola and a plucked bass line in the cello.  The final movement is a whirlwind, beginning with the upper three parts in very close imitation and closing out the quartet with a return to the urgency of the first movement. 

Czech composer Anton Reicha (1770–1836) spent his early years in Bonn, Vienna, and Hamburg where he crossed paths with important musicians of both his own generation and the one before. He studied with Antonio Salieri, bonded over fugues with Franz Joseph Haydn, and became Ludwig van Beethoven’s life-long friend. Reicha is known in our own time primarily for his chamber music for winds, but he was an important composer in other genres including the string quartet, and his interest in the science of music composition ultimately led to his appointment as professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Paris Conservatoire in 1818. There, he in turn taught the next generation of composers including Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and César Franck. Reicha’s music shows the influence of intellectual training, popular genres, and his own unique art.  Tonight’s quartet is the genre at its most playful, full of stops and starts, surprising turns, and entertaining repartee between parts.  It’s a beautiful example of the kind of music that might have been enjoyed among friends coming together to make music at a party or after dinner.

The first movement opens with a deceptively sweet andante before becoming a mischievous scherzando. The first violin leads us on a merry journey that takes us to some quite unexpected harmonic areas and back again, all while keeping the conversation lively. The slow movement is mostly a calm meditation in C major, interrupted by a brief melodramatic outburst.  The brief minuet is quirky from start to finish.  The final movement is enthusiastically playful, with the four instruments following each other through unexpected pauses, harmonic modulations, and even a few moments reminiscent of the fugues for which Reicha was so well known in his own time. Throughout, Reicha plays with our expectations and invites us to share in his sense of humor.

Joseph Eybler was among those who benefitted greatly from Joseph Haydn’s famously generous spirit. When Eybler was 18, his studies in law were derailed by a fire that destroyed his family home. Confronted with the need to support himself financially, he turned to the musical training he had received throughout his youth to pay the bills. A few difficult years followed, but he was helped financially and socially by Haydn who, alongside Mozart, treated Eybler as both friend and student.

Eybler’s D major quartet opens with a rhythmically ambiguous slow section before beginning a romp in 6/8 time, unusual for a first movement which tend to be in a straight forward duple time.  The third movement adagio is sweet and flowing, and includes the use of mutes, an object that is placed on the bridge of the string instrument whose extra weight interferes with the vibrations to create a unique sound.  Mutes were frequently used for special effect by composers at this time. In our case, the mutes are made of leather or wood, although modern mutes are often made of plastic. After the dreamy third movement, a lively set of variations on a simple theme rounds out the piece. Each instrument is allowed a variation in which to shine, responding to the variations of the other instruments or leading the way into new ideas. The movement concludes with a coda of musical material borrowed from the first movement, an approach that stands out in an era in which many pieces contain no thematic relationships between movements.