The University of Chicago Presents | Mandel Hall
November 1, 2013, 7:30 PM
CUARTETO CASALS with DENIS AZABAGIĆ, guitar
Vera Martinez, violin
Abel Tomás, violin
Jonathan Brown, viola
Arnau Tomás, cello
Denis Azabagić, guitar
Pre-concert lecture with Woo-Chan Lee, Ph.D Candidate in the Department of Music
HAYDN
String Quartet in C Major, Opus 33, No. 3 “The Bird”
Allegro moderato
Scherzando: Allegretto
Adagio
Rondo: Presto
DEBUSSY
String Quartet in G Minor
Animé et très décidé
Scherzo: Assez vif et bien rythmé
Andantino doucement expressif
Très modéré; Très mouvementé; Très animé
Intermission
THOMAS
Out of Africa
Call at Sunrise
Morning Dance
Zenith
Evening Dance
Cradle Song
BOCCHERINI
Quintet in D Major for Guitar and Strings, G.448 “Fandango”
Pastorale
Allegro maestoso
Grave assai; Fandango
String Quartet in C Major, Opus 33, No. 3 “The Bird”
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau
Died May 31, 1809, Vienna
Haydn’s 83 string quartets span nearly his entire career, but rather than being written
continuously, they appeared in bunches. When the six quartets of his Opus 33 were completed in
1781, they were his first quartets in nine years, and Haydn offered handwritten copies of the
manuscripts to wealthy patrons, advertising them as having been written “in a quite new, special
manner.” Exactly what he meant by this has been the source of some debate, and cynical
commentators have felt that Haydn’s enthusiasm for the novelty of these quartets was merely a
sales pitch. But these quartets do show some new features: Haydn experiments with sonata-form
first movements based on only one theme, replaces the minuet movements with scherzos, and
uses rondo-finales in all six quartets.
Two of the Opus 33 quartets have become well-known, and both of these have nicknames: No. 2,
“The Joke” and No. 3, “The Bird.” The latter takes its nickname from the chirping grace-notes
that decorate so many of its themes, but even more distinctive in this music is the utter ease of
the writing: this graceful music soars and sings happily. While Haydn is usually credited with
liberating all four voices in the string quartet, “The Bird” is largely dominated by the first violin,
which remains firmly in the spotlight throughout.
Over steady accompaniment from the middle voices, the first violin announces the main theme
of the Allegro moderato. During these years, Haydn had grown increasingly interested in
building sonata-form movements on just one theme, and when the second theme-group arrives, it
reveals itself as a variation on the opening melody, complete with chirping grace-notes. Haydn
dispenses with a minuet in this quartet, replacing it with a movement he marks Scherzando. This
is not the sort of scherzo that Beethoven would write a generation later, but it is faster than
minuet tempo, and surprising accents give the melodic lines unusual weight. The outer sections
remain in the lowest registers of all four instruments (someone noted of this movement that C
major has never sounded so dark as it does here), and the trio section offers several surprises: a
duo for the two violins only, it brings back some of the “bird-music” of the opening movement.
The Adagio belongs almost entirely to the first violin–its simple opening melody grows florid
and complex as the movement unfolds–while the finale is a rondo. Reportedly based on a
Slavonic folk tune, this movement–aptly marked Presto–zips along with unflagging energy.
Seldom has there been more gloriously apt writing for string quartet, and seldom has there been
more cheerful music than this graceful romp, which rushes right to its close and, like smoke,
disappears silently and effortlessly.
String Quartet in G Minor
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Born August 22, 1862, Saint Germain-en-Laye
Died March 25, 1918, Paris
Early in 1893, Debussy met the famed Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaÿe. Debussy was at this time
almost unknown (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun was still a year in the future), but he and
Ysaÿe instantly became friends–though Ysaÿe was only four years older than Debussy, he
treated the diminutive Frenchman like “his little brother.” That summer, Debussy composed a
string quartet for Ysaÿe’s quartet, which gave the first performance in Paris on December 29,
1893. Debussy was already notorious with his teachers for his refusal to follow musical custom,
and so it comes as a surprise to find him choosing to write in this most demanding of classical
forms. Early audiences were baffled. Reviewers used words like “fantastic” and “oriental,” and
Debussy’s friend Ernest Chausson confessed mystification. Debussy must have felt the sting of
these reactions, for he promised Chausson: “Well, I’ll write another for you . . . and I’ll try to
bring more dignity to the form.”
But Debussy did not write another string quartet, and his Quartet in G Minor has become one of
the cornerstones of the quartet literature. The entire quartet grows directly out of its first theme,
presented at the very opening, and this sharply rhythmic figure reappears in various shapes in all
four movements, taking on a different character, a different color, and a different harmony on
each reappearance. What struck early audiences as “fantastic” now seems an utterly original
conception of what a string quartet might be. Here is a combination of energy, drama, thematic
imagination, and attention to color never heard before in a string quartet. Debussy may have felt
pushed to apologize for a lack of “dignity” in this music, but we value it today just for that
failure.
Those who think of Debussy as the composer of misty impressionism are in for a shock with his
quartet, for it has the most slashing, powerful opening Debussy ever wrote: his marking for the
beginning is “Animated and very resolute.” This first theme, with its characteristic triplet spring,
is the backbone of the entire quartet: the singing second theme grows directly out of this opening
(though the third introduces new material). The development is marked by powerful accents,
long crescendos, and shimmering colors as this movement drives to an unrelenting close
in G minor.
The Scherzo may well be the quartet’s most impressive movement. Against powerful pizzicato
chords, Debussy sets the viola’s bowed theme, a transformation of the quartet’s opening figure;
soon this is leaping between all four voices. The recapitulation of this movement, in 15/8 and
played entirely pizzicato, bristles with rhythmic energy, and the music then fades away to a
beautifully understated close. Debussy marks the third movement “Gently expressive,” and this
quiet music is so effective that it is sometimes used as an encore piece. It is in ABA form: the
opening section is muted, while the more animated middle is played without mutes–the quartet’s
opening theme reappears subtly in this middle section. Debussy marks the ending, again played
with mutes, “As quiet as possible.”
The finale begins slowly but gradually accelerates to the main tempo, “Very lively and with
passion.” As this music proceeds, the quartet’s opening theme begins to appear in a variety of
forms: first in a misty, distant statement marked “soft and expressive,” then gradually louder and
louder until it returns in all its fiery energy, stamped out in double-stops by the entire quartet. A
propulsive coda drives to the close, where the first violin flashes upward across three octaves to
strike the powerful G major chord that concludes this most undignified–and most wonderful–
piece of music.
Out of Africa
ALAN THOMAS
Born in Atlanta, Alan Thomas received his training at Indiana University and the University of
California and since 1996 has been based in England. On his website, the composer has
provided a program note for Out of Africa:
It was in the spirit of Karen Blixen’s classic book (and subsequent beautifully realised film) that
I wanted to use the title “Out of Africa” for this suite for solo guitar. I’m a big fan of many of
the different strands of African music-making, but was afraid of copying or appropriating
African music in a sort of ethno-tourist way. This is not African music, but rather music which
is inspired by my distilled memories of particular African styles of singing, for example, or the
use of additive rhythms, irregular metric groupings and pentatonic or pandiatonic scales. I also
try to pay homage to two great plucked-string instruments of the African continent: the kora (in
mvt. 2) and the oud (mvt. 3). Needless to say, these pieces barely scratch the surface of the
musical traditions and languages of Africa, but they do attempt to bring at least a bit of this rich
heritage under the guitarist’s fingers.
The suite consists of five different movements, which are played in two different groups without
pause (movements 1-2 and movements 3-5). To give the different pieces a sense of unity and
direction, I decide to programmatically chart the course of a day, from sunrise to sleep. The
music’s “day” begins with a “Call at Sunrise,” a melody presented in canon which gradually
develops into a vibrant ostinato and vocalic melody.
The second movement, “Morning Dance,” is again built on an ostinato bass line, and has an
exuberance and feel typical of South African popular music. By using cross-string scalar
patterns (in which notes ring over each other in what guitarists call campanella, I tried to evoke
the sound of the kora. Though this instrument comes from a different part of Africa, the crossbreeding of different musical traditions is precisely what I was aiming for in this piece.
The heat of mid-day is depicted in “Zenith,” which draws on North Africa/Arabic music in its
central and final sections. Particularly in the middle section, the sound of the oud (arguably the
guitar’s great-great-grandfather) is evoked, including microtonal inflections facilitated by detuning the guitar’s third string. The final section builds to a climax via an exploration of the
guitar as a percussion instrument. A transition then leads to the fourth movement, “Evening
Dance,” which in turn transforms at its end into the final movement, “Cradle Song.” This gentle
lullaby brings the day to a serene close, drawing on musical material from the first movement to
create a cyclical return to the next morning.
Alan Thomas
Quintet in D Major for Guitar and Strings, G.448 “Fandango”
LUIGI BOCCHERINI
Born February 19, 1743, Lucca
Died May 28, 1805, Madrid
During his forty-year tenure as court composer in Madrid, Boccherini appears to have been
charmed by the exotic life of his adopted country, and in his compositions he sometimes
included “non-musical” sounds he heard around him in Spain. One of his quintets, full of the
sound of hunting horns and bird-calls, is nicknamed the “Aviary,” and another work–subtitled
“Nocturnal Music of the Streets of Madrid”–makes use of church bells and bugle calls from the
military garrison. This attention to the native sounds of Spain appears as well in the series of
guitar quintets that Boccherini composed during the 1790s, late in his life. In the Guitar Quintet
in D Major, he expands the range of Spanish sounds in his music by including two of the most
“Spanish” instruments of all, guitar and castanets. These late guitar quintets were not new
compositions, but rather arrangements–for guitar and string quartet–of music Boccherini had
originally composed some years earlier for string quintet. In the present case, Boccherini
borrowed the first two movements from a quintet composed in 1771, the final two from another
composed in 1788.
Boccherini was not so much concerned in this music with sonata form and developing his
materials rigorously as he was with writing pleasing melodies and agreeable harmonies, and this
guitar quintet is full of enjoyable tunes and bright rhythms. In the relaxed Pastorale, Boccherini
mutes the strings and has the guitar provide a rippling accompaniment to their flowing, silken
melodies; several times he reminds the performers to play dolcissimo. In the vigorous Allegro
maestoso, Boccherini lets the strings take the lead, with the guitar content to repeat their themes
or provide chordal accompaniment; this movement makes striking use of cello harmonics. The
final movement is in two parts: it opens with a slow introduction marked Grave assai, but then
leaps ahead at the Fandango. A fandango is an old dance of Latin origin in which the tempo
gradually accelerates; the accompaniment is usually by castanets or guitar. Boccherini achieves
a rather full sonority from his players in this movement, and the writing–sometimes featuring
long cello glissandi–is imaginative. He brings all these elements together in the exciting and
colorful conclusion to this quintet, where the tempo gradually eases ahead and then rushes to the
close, pushed ahead by explosive interjections from the castanets.
Program notes by Eric Bromberger