Post by Beagle February 4, 2006 (1 of 20)
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Egad, yet another* 'dancing elephants' version of Late Beethoven Quartets! I was in the final step of ordering this from JPC when I saw "Orchesterfassung" (orchestral setting). Has Sandor abandoned his fiddle for a baton? One could interpret "Soloists of International Musicians Seminar" as 2nd violin, viola & cello (wishfully thinking, I did), but the Orchesterfassung suggests a much bigger crowd.
That being said, please forgive a modest diatribe and thumbnail social history:
The symphony and the quartet were indistinguishable in the time of Vivaldi, but went their separate ways thereafter, in separate venues: private and public. The shift of european economics away from an agricultural aristocracy to a commercial middle-class meant a shortage of the sort of Princes who could maintain a stable of composers and musicians, so it fell upon the emergent middle-class to band together to hear quality music. That meant more auditors, which meant larger halls, which required louder music, more musicians and by extension, less musical manoeuverability.
One might ask then, why did not chamber music disappear into history altogether? The answer must be the non-simplistic musical textures which smaller ensembles can produce. Haydn said, 'I paint my symphonies with a broad brush; I save the finer points for the connoiseur of chamber works'. It is tempting to take great chamber music and make great BIG orchestral music out of it, but there are physical and purely arithmetical obstacles, which are virtually insurmountable. Four very good musicians sitting in close proximity can articulate complex music TOGETHER, orchestras cannot.
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Cf discussion: Beethoven String Quartet Op. 135, Amsterdam Sinfonietta
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Beagle said:
Four very good musicians sitting in close proximity can articulate complex music TOGETHER, orchestras cannot.
With the greatest respect, that is quite clearly cobblers if one listens to the BPO, BFO, RNO, RCO, VPO, COE, ORR or LSO (and on their day, some others too).
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Post by Beagle February 4, 2006 (3 of 20)
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Polly Nomial said:
With the greatest respect, that is quite clearly cobblers if one listens to the BPO, BFO, RNO, RCO, VPO, COE, ORR or LSO (and on their day, some others too).
Likewise with greatest respect, I sincerely congratulate you on your enjoyment of those productions, and wish you more of the same, but I believe we differ. And I suspect that 'clearly cobblers' translates as 'horse-patooties' or something similar.
I do have Leonard and the Wiener-Phils wading through opp 131 and 135, and I listen to it at least one a year with unstinting amusement. It is lugubrious in its gait, and one can hear the disconnect when the boys in the back miss a turn. I would not part with the disc for love or money, but I wouldn't buy another such, any time soon. I also feel that the Late Quartets are a private experience, unsuited to large social gatherings.
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Post by Ken_P February 5, 2006 (4 of 20)
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Beagle said:
One might ask then, why did not chamber music disappear into history altogether? The answer must be the non-simplistic musical textures which smaller ensembles can produce.
While this is partially true, you left out probably the most important point. The primary means of entertainment for the new middle class was music making in the home. Hearing a concert put on by a professional group was an incredibly rare experience, even in a highly populated area. Chamber music was intended, for the most part, to be played by talented amateur in private, purely for the enjoyment of the players.
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Post by seth February 5, 2006 (5 of 20)
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Ken_P said:
Hearing a concert put on by a professional group was an incredibly rare experience, even in a highly populated area.
And putting on a chamber concert for a large audience was a lot cheaper than hiring a full orchestra. It's simply economics to a large degree. For instance, look at Stravinsky. His early compositions were scored for gigantic orchestras. Then in the late nineteen-teens, he shifted to writing music for chamber orchestras. Why? The First World War. He realized that few music institutions had enough money after the War to perform works on the scale of the Rite and Firebird. So he wrote music which required only 30 some musicians.
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Beagle said:
Likewise with greatest respect, I sincerely congratulate you on your enjoyment of those productions, and wish you more of the same, but I believe we differ. And I suspect that 'clearly cobblers' translates as 'horse-patooties' or something similar.
I do have Leonard and the Wiener-Phils wading through opp 131 and 135, and I listen to it at least one a year with unstinting amusement. It is lugubrious in its gait, and one can hear the disconnect when the boys in the back miss a turn. I would not part with the disc for love or money, but I wouldn't buy another such, any time soon. I also feel that the Late Quartets are a private experience, unsuited to large social gatherings.
Apologies, I think I might have misunderstood your original posting - I took it to mean that an orchestra cannot render complex textures together with unanimity of approach and co-ordination; I would completely agree about re-orchestrating a work of genius like the LvB late quartets!
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Post by Beagle February 5, 2006 (7 of 20)
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Thank you, everyone, for a non-hissyfit look at chamber music from a number of interesting perspectives. My thumbnail socio-economic history certainly admits to infinite expansion. I'll add a few more lines myself:
Prior to the 20th C., literal tons of chamber music were published, and performed in the 'home theatre'. Home piano music continued into my childhood as a middleclass mainstay; my daughter got the lessons but doesn't play. In eastern Europe, home string music lived on until circa the fall of the Berlin Wall (and not so well thereafter): In the '70s, my Hungarian friends were shocked to learn that Canadian medical doctors could not all play a stringed instrument, but rather put their feet up and snored when taken to the symphony.
In the 20th C., the quartet at least has belonged less to the parlour, and more to the composer's genius and a circle of like-minded friends, e.g. Bartók and Shostakovich. It is not only economical but politically wise to give free rein to creativity in an essentially private world, with public performance optional. In S. America though, Villa-Lobos seems to have used the genre with more of an eye on public acceptance. And some indeed have used the form as a testing-bed for larger-scale works. And then there's the academicisation of music into university music departments, which has created a plethora of mongrel chamber combinations, just because the composer is chummy with a sousaphone-, a marimba- and an accordion-playing colleague.
But economics seems to be the largest driving force. The sheer expense to a suburban population, of getting a babysitter, driving to the City, dining out and purchasing symphony or opera tickets -- has pushed S.O. after S.O. into a sea of red ink. And oppositely, chamber music festivals have sprung up seemingly everywhere, often in vacation-destination locales.
And that is music to my ears.
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Beagle said:
I do have Leonard and the Wiener-Phils wading through opp 131 and 135.
I have that on LP as well and it never got played very much. I much prefer my recordings with just four strings, although I love large orchestra compositions. What do you suppose might have been Bernstein's motive for that excercise?
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Post by Beagle February 6, 2006 (9 of 20)
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What do you suppose might have been Bernstein's motive for that excercise?
In 1937, Dmitri Metropoulos arranged and played op 131 with the Boston Symphony. In 1968, Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle. In 1977 Bernstein recorded opp 131 plus 135. Object: sell tickets to a (yawn!) jaded audience.
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Post by Edvin February 6, 2006 (10 of 20)
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Or just a bit of variation.
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