Four Centuries of Great Music October 23, 2021 Four Centuries of the String Sextet Episode 2

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music is the second of our episodes on the string sextet.  Today we will begin in the 19^th Century and move into the 20^th Century with music by Dvorak, Schoenberg, and Korngold.  

The first work on today’s second episode of Four Centuries of Great Music on the string sextet is Antonín Dvořák´s String Sextet in A major, Op. 48,  for two violins, two violas and two cellos  which was composed for the most part in May 1878. It was Dvořák's first work to be premiered outside Bohemia.[1]

The period 1875-1879 was very important in Dvořák's life. The composer received government grants in that time, which enabled him to concentrate solely on composing. A sense of responsibility led him to hard and prolific work,[2] and one of the results of his activity was the String Sextet.   Dvořák's German publisher Simrock offered the work to his friend and collaborator Joseph Joachim (famous violinist and leader of a string quartet), and he together with other artists performed the work privately on 19 July 1879. The composer was present and was enchanted by the performance. The next day he wrote to his friend Alois Göbl: "...Joachim waited with eagerness for my arrival and even organized a soirée for my sake. During the celebration they played my new quartet and sextet. They played with great understanding and enthusiasm..."[3] Joachim and colleagues gave the public premiere of the work in Berlin on 9 November 1879.[4] A few months later they also performed it in London.   The composition was published by Fritz Simrock in 1879.

The composition consists of four movements:   Allegro — Moderato; Dumka. Poco allegretto; Furiant. Presto  and Finale. Tema con variazioni. Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino

The work was composed at the same time as the Slavonic Rhapsodies (Op. 45) and Slavonic Dances (Op. 46). The work is full of spontaneous invention in the manner of Schubert, and the Sextet’s themes have been described as ‘flowing with Slavonic blood’. Two inner movements are partly stylisations of the dumka and partly of the folk furiant. The first movement is written in the sonata form.   The Slavonic themes  are delightfully deployed in the course of the first movement and well contrasted.  The second theme is based upon the third of the tonic.  There is but a short development section before the recapitulation, which is also not in the tonic key.

To describe the second movement Dvořák uses the Russian term ‘Dumka’, an indication of the employment of strongly contrasted sections, sometimes very sad and sometimes happy. Over a steady march-like rhythm Dvořák’s asymmetrical phrase structure assists in making this one of the composer’s most interestingly novel movements, incorporating slow gypsy music and a tender lullaby. A return to the rhapsodizing gypsies is made in the coda.

Although called ‘Furiant’, the following movement has none of the characteristic cross-rhythmic effects associated with this type of music. But is a vigorous scherzo, which includes in its trio section an allusion to the first Slavonic Dance.

The last movement consists of five variations and stretta on a B minor theme which  combines the meditative with playful  and concludes with a very boisterous finale.

Next on this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music featuring string sextets we have Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4, is a string sextet in five parts but performed as a single movement composed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1899. Composed in just three weeks, it is considered his earliest important work’.   It was inspired by Richard Dehmel's poem of the same name, combined with the influence of Schoenberg's strong feelings upon meeting Mathilde von Zemlinsky (the sister of his teacher Alexander von Zemlinsky), whom he would later marry.[2] The work can be divided into five distinct sections which refer to the five stanzas of Dehmel's poem. Dehmel's poem (from 1896) describes a man and woman walking through a dark forest on a moonlit night. The woman shares a dark secret with her new lover: she bears the child of another man. The stages of Dehmel's poem are reflected throughout the composition, beginning with the sadness of the woman's confession, a neutral interlude wherein the man reflects upon the confession, and a finale reflecting the man's bright acceptance (and forgiveness) of the woman.

Schoenberg, the 20th-century revolutionary and later inventor of the twelve-tone technique, is perhaps best known among audiences for this early tonal work.  The piece derives its stylistic lineage from German late-Romanticism.  Schoenberg was influenced by both Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner and sought to combine the Brahm's structural logic with the Wagner's harmonic language, evidenced in the work's rich chromaticism (deriving from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde) and frequent use of musical phrases which serve to undermine the metrical boundaries.

The original score calls for two violins, two violas and two cellos. This version was premiered on 18 March 1902 in the Vienna Musikverein by the Rosé Quartet, Franz Jelinek and Franz Schmidt. Arnold Rosé and Albert Bachrich played violins, Anton Ruzitska and Franz Jelinek violas, and Friedrich Buxbaum and Franz Schmidt cellos.   In 1917, Schoenberg produced an arrangement for string orchestra (a common practice at the time), and revised this version in 1943. The string orchestra version had its premiere in the English city of Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1924, conducted by Schoenberg's champion and former student Edward Clark. The string orchestra version is the one most often recorded and performed. There is also a version for piano trio by Eduard Steuermann. The work has also served as the basis for several ballets.

Verklärte Nacht was controversial at its 1902 premiere. This was due to the highly advanced harmonic idiom, although Schoenberg did receive praise for his inventiveness. Some reaction was due to the use of Dehmel's poem as inspiration, questioning the viability of setting its themes to music, or being concerned about the situation of the woman in the story.   Richard Dehmel himself was favorably impressed by Schoenberg's treatment of the poem, writing, "I had intended to follow the motives of my text in your composition, but soon forgot to do so, I was so enthralled by the music."

Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4:

I. Zwei Menschen gehn durch kahlen, kalten Hain                 

II. Ich trag ein Kind, und nit von Dir

III. Sie geht, mit ungelenkem Schritt

IV. Das Kind, das Du empfangen hast

V. Er lasst sie um die starken Hüften

This second hour of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music focused on the string sextet will be devoted to Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was one of music history’s greatest prodigies, whom Mahler declared to be a genius. His 1920 opera, Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”), was one of the most widely performed modern opera reaching more than 80 stages. However with the rise of the Nazis in his native Austria, Korngold, a Jew,  was forced to leave his native Austria. Settling in Los Angeles, he where he became “the father of Hollywood Film Music,” with scores such as Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Sea Hawk (1940), and Kings Row (1942).

The String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10 was completed by the 17-year-old Korngold on the eve of the First World War. Glancing back at the Sextets of Brahms (the second of which we heard here last week), this is music which basks in the twilight of Romanticism. As with the works of late Strauss and early Schoenberg, it pushes the harmonic language to its chromatic limits, yet always falls back into the sensuous grandeur of tonality. At moments, melodic threads emerge that will remind you of the most beautiful and transcendent passages of Mahler. It feels youthful and vigorous, yet there is also a sense of autumnal nostalgia.

The first movement (Moderato-Allegro) begins with a triplet line in the second viola that later forms the subject of a fugue. This is followed by a warm, expansive melody which develops over constantly shifting harmony. The quietly passionate second theme emerges over ghostly, atmospheric sul ponticello in the middle voices.

Haunting bi-tonality with two harmonic keys occurring, simultaneously of the second movement (Adagio) continues to stretch romanticism into the 20^th century.  This restless and lamenting music grew out of an unpublished song by the Korngold. It seems to anticipate some of the most dramatic moments from his operas.

The buoyant Intermezzo (Moderato, con grazia) is filled with the sounds, atmosphere, and swing of prewar Vienna. The main theme contains a series of rising fourths that became Korngold’s musical “signature,” known as “the motif of the cheerful heart.” You can hear this motif in the opening of Korngold’s Sinfonietta Op.5, throughout the film score for The Adventures of Robin Hood, and in other works. The final bars drift off into wistful nostalgia.

The final movement (Presto) erupts with vivacious, cheerful energy. It revisits themes from the previous movements before culminating in a final, euphoric flourish.