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Octet #4 – Schoenberg

Hello all,

We are wrapping up our series on the octet with Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht, performed by two of the world’s best string quartets.

Schoenberg is one of the most pivotal and polarizing characters in the story of music. His early career include works like Verklarte Nacht, which reveal his unbelievable talent and his complete mastery of tonal harmony. However, later in his career, he came under the influence of the Marxist philosopher Theodore Adorno, a member of the Frankfurt School. Soon afterward, Schoenberg began advocating for the “liberation of dissonance,” and his music devolved into unplayable 12-tone serialism. Today, the only Schoenberg compositions that are performed are those from his early years; audiences have made it clear to musicians that the unintelligibility of Schoenberg’s later works do not interest them.

Schoenberg’s early works are in a league of their own, and Verklarte Nacht may be at the top of that league. It bridges the gap between Romantic and 20th-century music like nothing else. You will hear lush, almost Mendelssohn-esque passages, but you will also hear forecasts to the modernism of Prokofiev and Ives. A critic from the Los Angeles Philharmonic said it best: “Lush, dense, highly chromatic yet still just within the bounds of tonality, [Verklarte Nacht] can be regarded as a very late example of 19th century German Romanticism, a natural product of the trajectory from Beethoven and Schubert to Brahms, Wagner, and Strauss.”

Enjoy!

T

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Octet #3 – Enescu

Hello all,

This week’s music, continuing our series on music written for the octet, is the Octet for Strings in C Major by the Romanian composer George Enescu.

It is unfortunate that Enescu is not more well-known than he is, for he is arguably the greatest musical genius since Mozart. He began composing at the age of 5 and graduated from the Vienna Conservatory at age 13. The international premiere of his compositions began when he was only 16. In addition to being a masterful composer, Enescu was also one a generational talent on the violin (Heifetz himself called Enescu one of the greatest violinists of all time) and a world-class pianist. As a composer, Enescu is unmistakably original, yet accessible and enjoyable to a wide range of listeners.

The Octet was written in 1890. After writing for individual instruments for most of his life, Enescu found the orchestration of the eight-person ensemble to be a challenge. “An engineer launching his first suspension bridge over a river[] could not feel more anxiety than I felt when I set out to darken my paper,” he wrote. Yet the music he created is among the most complex and sophisticated works of chamber music in the repertoire. Much like Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht (https://thisweeksmusic.com/2018/07/31/an-amazing-discovery/) (which, as some of you know, I believe to be the greatest work of chamber music ever composed), Enescu’s Octet is a tour-de-force of musical texture. It is nuanced, invigorating, and unbelievably dense; lush, but also powerful and relentless; chromatic, yet intensely tonal.

Take a minute to compare this octet to what we’ve heard thus far in this series. Schubert’s Octet, for instance, could not be more different than this one. Where Schubert’s horn and clarinet lines weave delicate melodies through a soft accompaniment texture, Enescu flies without hesitation to the peak of emotional intensity. Where Mendelssohn’s violin solos soar gloriously over the cellos and violas, Enescu forces each instrument to fight for its time in the spotlight.

Enjoy!

T

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Octet #2 – Mendelssohn

Hello all,

This week’s music, in continuation of our series on the octet, is Felix Mendelssohn’s octet for four violins, two violas, and cellos.

While we commonly think of the Octet as the pinnacle of the chamber music repertoire, Mendelssohn (who composed it at the ripe old age of 16) did not view it as a chamber composition. In fact, he viewed it as a condensed symphony. This is reflected in both the structure of the piece and the inscription that Mendelssohn placed at the beginning of the manuscript: The Octet must be played in the style of a symphony in all parts; the pianos and fortes must be precisely differentiated and be more sharply accentuated than is ordinarily done in pieces of this type. These words clearly place the Octet within a symphonic framework, which is helpful when thinking about how to listen to it.

For instance, the structure of the Octet unfolds like a symphony. You will hear a brilliant first movement allegro leading to a lush andante. The third movement, a scherzo, frolics through chamber-music-like textures before the presto finale explodes into a fully symphonic finale. You’ll also hear Mendelssohn utilizing the full range of expressive qualities available to this combination of instruments, much like a symphony might do. You can also sense Mendelssohn’s movement away from the Classical traditions of his predecessors (Mozart, Haydn, etc.) an into the Romantic style of his contemporaries. This can be heard in the dreamy, enchanted quality in the second movement and the frenetic restlessness of the third movement (of which he wrote that it “is to be played staccato and pianissimo… the trills passing away with the quickness of lightning”).

I had the amazing opportunity of performing Mendelssohn’s Octet at the Lincoln Center in New York City while studying at the Foulger Institute, a summer music performance school, in the summer of 2012. The performance took place in the penthouse of the Lincoln Center, which is encased with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that provide a panoramic view of the entire city. I had the good fortune of having been assigned to play the virtuosic first violin part, and I have magical memories of soaring through the finale of Mendelssohn’s octet while, thousands of feet below us, the city sparkled in the night. It turned out to be one of those performances where the connection with the audience is electric. I’ve never understood why such performances occur; they just do.

Enjoy!

T

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Mendelssohn Octet

While we commonly think of the Octet as the pinnacle of the chamber music repertoire, Mendelssohn (who composed it at the ripe old age of 16) did not view it as a chamber composition. In fact, he viewed it as a condensed symphony. This is reflected in both the structure of the piece and the inscription that Mendelssohn placed at the beginning of the manuscript: The Octet must be played in the style of a symphony in all parts; the pianos and fortes must be precisely differentiated and be more sharply accentuated than is ordinarily done in pieces of this type. These words clearly place the Octet within a symphonic framework, which is helpful when thinking about how to listen to it.

For instance, the structure of the Octet unfolds like a symphony. You will hear a brilliant first movement allegro leading to a lush andante. The third movement, a scherzo, frolics through chamber-music-like textures before the presto finale explodes into a fully symphonic finale. You’ll also hear Mendelssohn utilizing the full range of expressive qualities available to this combination of instruments, much like a symphony might do. You can also sense Mendelssohn’s movement away from the Classical traditions of his predecessors (Mozart, Haydn, etc.) an into the Romantic style of his contemporaries. This can be heard in the dreamy, enchanted quality in the second movement and the frenetic restlessness of the third movement (of which he wrote that it “is to be played staccato and pianissimo… the trills passing away with the quickness of lightning”).

Enjoy!

T

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