Program Notes
About the Author
Keith Horner currently provides program notes for presenters throughout North America. After taking a music degree at the University of Cambridge, Keith started his writing career as a freelance music critic with The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and as a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (leading to an MA (Cantab.). His interest in communicating with audiences was honed over four decades as a music broadcaster and Executive Producer for BBC Radio 3 and CBC Radio 2, based in London, then Toronto. Keith remains active as an independent recording producer, with well over 100 CDs and LPs to his credit, several Juno awards, and the Special Prize at the Prix Italia for a documentary production with composer Christos Hatzis.
JACK Quartet - January 30, 2025
Program
TAYLOR BROOK (b. 1985)
Organum, from Drifts (2016/17)
NICOLÀ VICENTINO (1511-1575/6)
Madonna, il poco dolce
Musica prisca caput
AMY WILLIAMS (b. 1969)
Tangled Madrigal (2024)
TAYLOR BROOK (b. 1985)
Ars Nova, from Drifts (2016/17)
CHRISTOPHER OTTO (b. 1983) after RODERICUS (fl. late 14th c)
Angelorum psalat tripudium (Antiphon of the Angels) (c 1390s)
INTERMISSION
RUTH CRAWFORD (SEEGER) (1901-53)
String Quartet (1931)
Rubato assai –
Leggiero –
Andante –
Allegro possibile
TAYLOR BROOK (b. 1985)
Phrygia, from Drifts (2016/17)
PHILIP GLASS (b. 1937)
String Quartet No. 5 (1991)
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II –
III –
IV –
V –
Program Notes
TAYLOR BROOK
Born October 5, 1985 in Edmonton, AB
Organum, from Drifts (2016/17)
Phrygia, from Drifts (2016/17)
Ars Nova, from Drifts (2016/17)
As a high-school student at Etobicoke School for the Arts, Taylor Brook’s interests turned to composition after hearing the St Lawrence Quartet perform Bartók’s Fourth String Quartet. After studies at McGill, then in Kolkata, Brussels, and as a doctoral student at Columbia University, Brook’s composition grew increasingly concerned with finely tuned microtonal sonorities. Organum which opens tonight’s concert Phrygia and Ars Nova, which are played later in the program, are parts of a larger work entitled Drifts – a set of five short pieces for string quartet, written for the JACK quartet in the winter of 2016/17.
“These pieces,” Brook explains, “explore the idea of ‘tonal drift,’ which is the result of modulation in a just intonation context. In 12-tone equal temperament, a series of modulations by a just major third will cycle back to the initial key after three modulations. However, the same number of modulations by the just major third will result in landing roughly a quarter-tone below the initial tonal centre, having drifted away from an equal temperament tonic.
“Drifts takes several approaches to tonal drift, with each piece focusing in on a different type of cadential movement to create the sense of modulation. Organum draws upon early polyphony, focusing on parallel fourths and creating a sense of cadence through movement to the octave in first species counterpoint. Phrygia reinterprets the basic idea of a Phrygian cadence, with various small just intervals heard in place of the usual semitone movement of the flat second to the tonic. The fifth and final movement, Ars Nova, reworks cadences from the Ars Nova period.”
NICOLÀ VICENTINO
Born 1511 in Vicenza, Republic of Venice; died c1575-6 in Milan
Madonna, il poco dolce
Musica prisca caput
Nicola Vicentino worked at the court in Ferrara, in Rome, Siena, and in 1565 in Milan where, a decade later, he died during the plague of 1576-6. In 1546 one of his two books of madrigals and motets was published in Venice. In his music, Vicentino develops a 31-note-to-the-octave system of what we would now refer to as microtonal tuning. Indeed, as a progressive musical theorist, he took part in a famous 1551 debate in Rome against the more traditional Portuguese composer and theorist Vicente Lusitano, losing the debate but leaving a legacy of vocally beautiful part songs and the creation of the archicembalo, a keyboard containing 31 keys to the octave.
Dolce mio ben is taken from a madrigal using this tuning system. (Its text: “My sweet delight, these are the sweet eyes that so sweetly consume me…”). In another madrigal, Musica prisca caput, Vicentino again draws inspiration from ancient Greek music, illustrating this microtonal scale of 1/5th tones. (Its text: “Ancient music has recently raised her head out of the darkness, so that, with antique and sweet numbers to compete with ancient deeds...”)
AMY WILLIAMS
Born 1969 in Buffalo, NY
Tangled Madrigal (2024)
Amy Williams teaches composition at the University of Pittsburgh and performs as a pianist of contemporary music. She was featured with JACK in a Miller Theatre of Columbia University portrait concert in February 2024, which included the world première of her 16-minute Tangled Madrigal.
“The title is taken from the last line of a Robert Morgan poem entitled ‘History’s Madrigal’, writes Amy Willams. ”This poem references ‘fiddle makers’ and their need to use ‘antique’ wood to make ‘truer and deeper music.’ The poem ends with the line: ‘the memory and wisdom of wood delighting air as century speaks to century and history dissolves history across the long and tangled madrigal of time.’
“My string quartet interfaces quite continuously and in varied ways with an historical artifact: Nicola Vicentino’s 16thcentury madrigal Musica prisca caput. This short vocal piece is a radically forward-thinking study in tuning systems—diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic (microtonal). The piece utilizes these three tuning systems. It also occasionally and in limited ways references the prelude from the first Bach cello suite.”
CHRISTOPHER OTTO after RODERICUS (fl. late 14th c)
Born November 11, 1983 in Champaign, IL
Angelorum psalat tripudium (Antiphon of the Angels) (c 1390s)
The mediaeval music manuscript known as the Chantilly Codex is to be found today in the museum at the Château de Chantilly in Chantilly, Oise, about 35 km north of Paris. It contains 112 secular polyphonic pieces, mostly by French composers, comprising popular courtly dance styles of the time, including ballades, virelais, and rondeaus. Angelorum psalat tripudium (Antiphon of the Angels) is one of two Latin ballades in the collection and is the only surviving piece attributed to ‘Rodericus’, under the reversed form of his name S Uciredor. Like most of the collection, this two-part ballade is written in a complex notation which encompasses voice, pitch and rhythm in some 20 different note shapes, some aspects of which cannot be reproduced in today’s notation, which it predates.
The JACK’s first violin player Christopher Otto was drawn to the intricacy of the 700-year-old Antiphon of the Angelswhich allows for several realisations. “For my arrangement,” he writes, “I have relied on the transcription of Nors. S. Josephson, in whose interpretation the note shapes signify a radical expansion of rhythmic possibility, specifying a much richer variety of speeds and durations than most Western music before the twentieth century. I have given the first violin and viola the original two parts and added the second violin and cello parts to clarify the underlying grid of these complex rhythms.”
RUTH CRAWFORD (SEEGER)
Born July 3, 1901 in East Liverpool, OH; died November 18, 1953, in Chevy Chase, MD
String Quartet 1931
In her biography Ruth Crawford Seeger : A Composer's Search for American Music, Judith Tick quotes Seeger’s daughter Peggy reflecting on her mother’s early, progressive new music: "I don't understand how the woman that I knew as a mother created something like the 1931 string quartet. It is like someone crying; it is like someone beating on the walls... and I don't want to think about this as regarding my mother because my mother always seemed to me to have it all together, to have gotten a life that pleased her.”
Ruth Crawford’s search for a distinctly American music began in Chicago in her early twenties, where she studied piano and gained the attention of Henry Cowell. Recognising her as a “completely natural dissonant composer,” Cowell encouraged her to study with his own teacher, Charles Seeger, in New York. There, Crawford’s modernist interests in dissonant harmony and linear structure aligned with Seeger’s work on dissonant counterpoint, sparking a creative and intellectual partnership that would last years. By the late 1920s, Crawford’s music was being published in Cowell’s New Music Quarterly and performed by prominent new music organisations. She became the first woman awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled her to study in Berlin and Paris in 1931-32.
While in Europe, Crawford composed her String Quartet 1931, a work that became the centrepiece of her career. Its compact structure (11–12 minutes) unfolds in four movements played attacca. The first juxtaposes a lyrical violin theme with a brusque, angular cello line, exploring their tension in evolving counterpoint. The second is a brief, rhythmically precise chase of scalar fragments, woven into a contrapuntal web.
The third movement, Andante, is Crawford’s most innovative. Described by the composer as “a sort of counterpoint of crescendi and diminuendi,” it features instruments sustaining single pitches in a pulsing mosaic of dynamics. The intensity builds to a breaking point before receding to its hushed opening. The finale presents a rigorous additive-subtractive structure, with violin phrases gradually expanding while the other instruments respond with diminishing phrases, eventually reversing the process to close the quartet.
Henry Cowell praised the Andante as “perhaps the best thing for quartet ever written in this country.” Compact yet rich with complexity, the quartet’s originality inspired future composers like Elliott Carter and remains a landmark of American modernism.
PHILIP GLASS
Born in Baltimore, MD, January 31, 1937
String Quartet No. 5 (1991)
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II –
III –
IV –
V –
American composer Philip Glass is mindful of tradition when composing string quartets. “It’s almost as if we say we’re going to write a string quartet, we take a deep breath and we wade in to write the most serious, significant piece we can,” he said around the time of the fifth of his nine numbered string quartets. Glass discarded three early attempts before No. 1 (1966). Nearly two decades later, he composed No. 2 (Company) (1984), a set of four concise reflections for a stage adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s novella. After No. 5 (1991), a further two decades passed before No. 6 (2013). His quartet cycle concludes with No. 9 (King Lear) in 2022, 55 years after the first. Several of these quartets influenced his wider oeuvre, including scores for concert, theatre, film, and dance.
Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, his long-time collaborators, No. 5 represents a journey of transformation, blending the rhythmic energy of earlier minimalism with a new emphasis on melodic lyricism and emotional depth. Its prefatory opening movement unfolds slowly, presenting ideas and fragments that recur throughout the work’s five interconnected movements. The second movement introduces a brighter, oscillating texture, expanding and contracting around a short chordal motif. The central third movement is longer, and develops two contrasting ideas with vigorous momentum, ultimately unwinding into the longer-spun melodic writing of the fourth. The fifth movement builds on Glass’s signature interwoven scales, driving to a climax before returning to the questioning chords of the opening. This culmination integrates earlier themes into lush, sonorous chordal writing resolving with an introspective farewell.
Reflecting on the work, Glass said: “I was thinking that I had really gone beyond the need to write a serious string quartet and that I could write a quartet that is about musicality, which in a certain way is the most serious subject.”
— Program notes (Vicentino, Rodericus, Crawford Seeger, Glass) copyright © 2025 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca
Earlier this season
Quartetto di Cremona - October 24, 2024
Program
GIAN FRANCESCO MALIPIERO (1882-1973)
String Quartet No. 2, Stornelli e ballate (1923)
MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)
String Quartet in F (1902-3)
Allegro moderato - très doux
Assez vif - très rythmé
Très lent
Vif et agité
INTERMISSION
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 (1842)
Introduzione - Andante espressivo - Allegro
Scherzo - Presto - Intermezzo
Adagio
Presto - Moderato
Program Notes
GIAN FRANCESCO MALIPIERO
Born in Venice, Italy, March 18, 1882; died in Treviso, August 1, 1973
String Quartet No. 2, Stornelli e ballate (1923)
Born to an Italian family of musicians, of aristocratic, if dysfunctional, ancestry, Gian Francesco Malipiero belongs to a largely forgotten generation of composers from early 20th century Italy. Malipiero, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Alfredo Casella, and Ottorino Respighi were all born within four years of one another, around the early 1880s, but only Respighi’s music has continued to find a niche in the repertoire of today’s musicians. Malipiero outlived them all and continued composing – profusely, in all the established musical forms – until the age of 91. His biographer, John C. G. Waterhouse, regards the post-World War One years, from 1917 to 1929, as Malipiero’s most creative period – and his Second String Quartet of 1923 falls exactly at the midpoint.
Malipiero withdrew most of his pre-World War I music (though it did come to light after his death) and this does includes an early string quartet. Beyond this, he wrote eight published quartets, between 1920 and 64, spanning most of his creative life. During the post-WW1 years, Malipiero was still absorbing the impact of Stravinsky (whose birth year he shares) and Debussy too, and this can be heard in his best-known orchestral piece (Pause del silenzio I(1917) and in his chamber composition (String Quartet No. 1, subtitled Rispetti e strambotti, (1920). Here, the composer works with what Waterhouse refers to as ‘panels’ of sound, rather than any remnants of the Austro-German traditional exposition of contrasting themes, their development and, after a thorough examination, their eventual recapitulation for all to enjoy.
The first three quartets are related, each taking as a springboard an allusion to the early sung poetry popular in Renaissance Italy. The roundelays of String Quartet 1 make way for Refrains and Ballads found in the subtitle given to No. 2, while the Third Quartet (1931) is subtitled Cantàri alla madrigalesca.
There are recurring ideas and patterns in tonight’s quartet, but the whole appears more like a sequence of sound, music that is idiomatically written for string quartet, somewhat like a soundtrack to an unseen short film (15 mins or so). Melodies are generously shared among each instrument and, perhaps, if viewed as a mosaic, a feeling of overall coherence may begin to emerge. Although Malipiero indicates 14 ‘panels’ of sound (a term coined by Waterhouse), I find, when listening, that knowing that there is an overall structure of three movements (untitled and unmarked) more helpful. Two of them have somewhat decisive endings. The third – I’m not specifying which – comes as a surprise . . .
MAURICE RAVEL
Born in Ciboure, France, March 7, 1875; died in Paris, December 28, 1937
String Quartet in F (1902-3)
When French composer Vincent d'Indy first heard Ravel’s new quartet at its première in Paris on March 5, 1904, he enthusiastically said: "It is a piece worthy of any composer's work at the end of a long career.” Ravel, however, was just 28 when he wrote the masterpiece that was to become a cornerstone of the string quartet repertoire and one of the most popular of all quartets. He wrote it immediately before his exotic, sometimes voluptuous song cycle Shéhérazade. Ravel dedicated the quartet to Gabriel Fauré, whom he considered his true mentor, even though academic officialdom had expelled him from Fauré’s composition class at the Paris Conservatoire for failing to write a fugue. Its roots, though, are intertwined with those of the D major quartet of César Franck, composed two decades earlier. And in between these landmark works – the Franck and the Ravel – equally intertwined with both, lies a third masterpiece, the only quartet of Claude Debussy.
Ravel, the youngest of the three composers, was enthusiastically absorbing the music of Debussy, 12 years his senior, when he began work on his string quartet. He went to all 14 performances of the first run of Debussy’s revolutionary opera Pelléas et Mélisande, and had the sound of Debussy's earlier quartet so much in his head that some of its lifeblood carried over into his own piece. He borrowed the use of Eastern exoticism and the modality of the harmony from Debussy. He also borrowed the richly scored textures and the idea of a pizzicato second movement.
Both Ravel and Debussy, at ten-year intervals, followed Franck’s lead in using a single theme, transformed both melodically and harmonically throughout all four movements. Although generally freer in his use of the cyclical principle, with each appearance of the theme, Ravel makes subtle changes, using the thematic unity to bring about a constantly shifting sound world. Following the première March 5, 1904, critics were quick to comment on the similarity of the two quartets. They divided themselves and the followers of the composers, into two polarised camps. From this point on, the relationship of these two revolutionary French composers was to grow uneasy. Nevertheless, when Fauré criticized Ravel’s finale as a failure, Debussy was magnanimous in the way he reassured Ravel shortly before the première: “In the name of the gods of music and in my name too, do not alter a thing in your quartet." His advice was backed up the following month by Jean Marnold, critic for the bi-weekly journal Le Mercure de France, who wrote: “A healthy and sensitive temperament of a pure musician is developing here . . . We should remember the name of Maurice Ravel. He is one of the masters of tomorrow.”
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 (1842)
Schumann wrote all three quartets of his Op. 41, his only string quartets, during an intense seven-week period in the summer of 1842. His characteristically short and often feverish bursts of composition are generally explained as the result of a manic-depressive illness, a bipolar disorder that troubled him throughout his life. First came a flood of piano music. A ‘year of song’ followed, then an outpouring of orchestral music. In June and July 1842, he turned to the string quartet. “The thought of the string quartet gives me pleasure,” he had written several years earlier. “The piano is getting too narrow for me. When composing now, I often hear a lot of things that I can barely suggest.” He began to analyse established classical quartets by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, often playing them through in four-hand versions with his young wife, acclaimed pianist Clara Wieck. Then, he arranged private ‘quartet mornings’ in his lodgings for string players from the Gewandhaus Orchestra, including concert-master Ferdinand David, when they would read through the latest quartets of the day. Schumann also wrote about the quartets for his music periodical. He set the bar high, viewing the medium as a “by turns beautiful and, even, abstrusely woven conversation between four people.”
The A minor quartet is the first of the three completed quartets from 1842. Its austere, contrapuntal opening reflects Schumann’s on-going interest in the music of Bach, and his study of the Well-tempered Clavier in particular. Once the first movement proper gets underway, its two themes are closely related, recalling a favoured technique of Haydn. Through its taut musical forms and close musical arguments Schumann reveals his awareness of the legacy of the classical quartet. “I love Mozart dearly,” he wrote in an entry in his diary around the time he was composing the quartet, “but Beethoven I worship like a god.” The galloping Scherzo is cut from the same cloth as the mercurial scherzos of Mendelssohn. Schumann revered Mendelssohn and he dedicated all three quartets to him when they were published in 1843. The radiant slow movement has the nobility of a slow movement by Beethoven. The finale opens with a vigorous, scurrying theme, with something of the exuberance of Schumann’s own Spring Symphony, and this single, driving theme propels the quartet to a fiery conclusion.
— Copyright © 2024 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca
Miró Quartet- November 14, 2024
Program
JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)
String Quartet in G, Op. 77 No.1 (Hob. III:81) (1799)
Allegro moderato
Adagio
Menuet: Presto
Finale: Presto
CAROLINE SHAW (b. 1982)
Microfictions [Vol. 1] (c.2021)
I …………. Road signs melted, pointing to cadences
II ………… But the tune was still visible
III ……….. Beneath an oak's dappled counterpoint
III &½ …. Between the third and fourth movements
IV ………. A chord that fell from grace
V …………To the tempo of an undiscovered Mendelssohn song
VI ………. Heard in heavy fragments, obliquely
INTERMISSION
CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10, L. 85 (1893)
Animé et très décidé
Assez vif et bien rhythmé
Andantino, doucement expressif
Très modéré
Program Notes
JOSEPH HAYDN
Born in Rohrau, Lower Austria, March 31, 1732; died in Vienna, May 31, 1809
String Quartet in G, Op. 77 No.1 (Hob. III:81) (1799)
The music-hungry Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz (1772-1816) was the most generous of Viennese patrons, so much so that his extravagance eventually drove him and his household into bankruptcy. In 1799, he received the music from two substantial commissions. From Beethoven, at the threshold of his greatness, came the six quartets of Op. 18, which mark the beginning of a journey that no one, not even Beethoven himself, could have forseen. From Haydn, now in the twilight of a composing career, he received just two completed quartets (and the middle movements of a third). These, however, stand as the crowning jewels of one of the 18th century’s most significant bodies of artistic work. The two ‘Lobkowitz’ quartets show Haydn at his most vigorous and assured.
The opening movement of the first quartet, in G major, begins with a march-like theme whose lilt and buoyancy reflect Haydn’s lifelong pursuit of balance, order, and proportion. Though rooted in classical ideals, Haydn speaks here with an unmistakably individual voice. Humour is never very far from the surface of his music, and this movement’s unity of purpose, symmetrical form, and taut musical language reveals a lifetime’s expertise in the quartet medium. The music plunges dramatically into a new key in the development section of this single-theme, single-minded movement, reinforcing its sense of forward drive.
Solemn and dignified, the slow movement is the longest of the four. It carries an element of melancholy, or perhaps resignation. The Minuet, by contrast, is a burst of energy – arguably the most vigorous of all classical minuets, rushing forward at almost one beat to the bar. It is a scherzo in all but name and its music blends virtuoso violin writing with equal importance given to the other strings. The finale is one of Haydn’s exuberant movements in Romani style, built on a fully worked-out sonata structure with a single theme, derived entirely from its first four measures. Said to echo a Croatian round dance Haydn knew from his youth, this finale, like the first movement, also incorporates traces of Eastern European folk music. The march theme of the first movement has been linked to an old Hungarian recruiting song. How fitting, then, that in this splendid late quartet, memories of Haydn’s youth mingle with the compositional mastery of his old age.
CAROLINE SHAW
Born in Greenville, NC, August 1, 1982
Microfictions [Vol. 1] (c.2021)
The multifaceted New York-based composer Caroline Shaw has, over the past decade, created more than one hundred works for prominent soloists, orchestras, and chamber groups, along with compositions for stage and screen. As a member of Roomful of Teeth, the collaborative Grammy-winning vocal ensemble, her Partita for 8 Voices (2009-12) emerged from an exploration of diverse vocal techniques, including Tuvan throat singing, yodelling, Gregorian chant, and Inuit throat singing, among others. The piece’s success led to the then 30-year-old composer becoming the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, later also receiving multiple Grammys and an honorary doctorate from Yale.
In Microfictions [Vol. 1], Shaw presents “a set of six short musical stories, in the tradition of imagist poetry and surrealist painting, inspired in part by the work of Joan Miró and the short science fiction of T. R. Darling.” Darling, a former radio journalist, crafted microfiction within Twitter’s original 140-character limit, aiming to ignite listeners' imaginations. Shaw similarly encourages "curious listening" and creative participation, stating, “There is no one right way to connect the sounds and images or ideas.” The first piece, Road signs melted, pointing to cadences . . .opens with shimmering harmonics that descend to a warm, grounded harmony, blending timeless intervals with Shaw’s characteristic modal touches. The music dissolves into a deep cello glissando, with pizzicato hints of the opening fading away.
Each of Shaw’s bagatelle-like ‘musical stories’ connects to a short text by the composer, revealing micro-narratives, as follows:
“I. Under the hot sun, the road signs melted until they were the colour of an unrhymed couplet, pointing to cadences left or north.
II. The photographs smeared into focus one by one, like organ pipes being tuned. Some of the edges and corners were torn, but the tune was still visible.
III. The summer storm laughed and lilted and shouted until it found a shady spot, beneath an oak’s dappled counterpoint.
III ½. Between the third and fourth movements, the second violinist stood up and said hello to the audience. Everyone was grateful to know which movement they were on.
IV. The complete taxonomy of verse forms is buried in a cardboard box beneath a chord that fell from grace.
V. Waking up on the early side that Tuesday, Miró noticed a bird repeating its solitary caption. The clouds nodded to the tempo of an undiscovered Mendelssohn song.
VI. The mountains folded in among themselves, as the day grew on. Their songs could only be heard in heavy fragments, obliquely, from years and miles below.”
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Born in St Germain-en-Laye, France, August 22, 1862; died in Paris, March 25, 1918
String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10, L. 85 (1893)
Debussy titled this string quartet Premier Quatuor en sol mineur, Op. 10. However, it remains his only string quartet and the only composition to which he ever assigned an opus number. It is also the only piece in which he specifies a key – an ironic gesture from a non-conformist young composer, confident in his own musical voice. He promised a second quartet “in a more dignified form,” to Ernest Chausson, a friend and mentor, but nothing ever came of it.
The year 1893, when the G minor Quartet was written, was a pivotal one for Debussy. At 30, he had just achieved his first significant public performance with the cantata La demoiselle élue. He had also been captivated by Maeterlinck's symbolist drama Pelléas et Mélisande and had begun work on an opera based on it. Around the same time, Debussy was making headway on his revolutionary orchestral tone poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, whose 1894 première would launch his fame.
The String Quartet comes from the beginning of Debussy’s maturity and its influences are wide-ranging. In each movement, he explores the cyclical form championed by César Franck, much like an impressionist painter capturing multiple facets and shifting hues of the same subject on one canvas. In each movement, transformations of a single theme appear and reappear with subtle changes to the melody or harmony. By the finale, recurring motifs reinforce the quartet’s cyclical nature, creating a sense of cohesion.
The exotic sounds of the second movement owe much to the Javanese gamelan Debussy encountered at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Pizzicato strings and shifting rhythms lend a playful quality to this scherzo, introducing new tonal colours to the motto theme. Structurally, the quartet may appear to adhere to traditional forms up to this point, and the third movement continues this with a simple A-B-A layout. Its muted, sensuous melodies evoke the influence of Borodin – especially the Notturno from his D major Quartet – and Mussorgsky, whose music Debussy became familiar with while working in Russia for Tchaikovsky’s patron.
Around this time that he was composing the quartet, Debussy wrote of hearing a mass by Palestrina with “the shape, the outline and the intertwining arabesques which combine to produce unique melodic harmonies.” The modal influence and ‘intertwining arabesques’ permeate Debussy’s quartet. The polished lyricism of Massenet also makes its mark, and in the finale, echoes of Grieg's String Quartet can be heard. Despite these influences, Debussy’s unmistakable voice shines through with passion and clarity – qualities that define French chamber music. His String Quartet boldly challenges traditional conventions and introduces modernity into a musical form that was, perhaps, the least likely vehicle to accommodate its revolutionary impact.
— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca
What Makes It Great?® with Rob Kapilow and the Cheng² Duo- November 10, 2024
Program
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Cello Sonata No. 3, in A, Op. 69 (1807-8)
Allegro ma non tanto
Scherzo: Allegro molto
Adagio cantabile - Allegro vivace
Program Notes
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born in Bonn, Germany, baptised December 17, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827
Cello Sonata No. 3, in A, Op. 69 (1807-8)
Beethoven’s five cello sonatas are cornerstones of the repertory, with the A major Sonata sitting in the middle of the collection and coming from the middle period of the composer’s creative life. From the opening, the cello sings a radiant melody, setting the tone for a piece full of intricate interplay between the two instruments. Throughout, each instrument takes the spotlight in turn, their themes dovetailing intricately, with the piano supporting the cello as it soars to a high, eloquent phrase, or with the cello underlining a piano melody. Written around the same time as the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the vibrant Scherzo shares some of the rhythmic obsessiveness of the Fifth and brings contrast to the sonata’s overall sunny, pastoral mood. The beautiful, tantalisingly brief introduction to the finale, designed to display the cello's singing tenor voice, is soon overtaken by an exuberant, joyful finale.
— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca
Marc-André Hamelin- November 19, 2024
Program
JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)
Piano Sonata No. 50, in D, Hob. XV1:37 (1779)
Allegro con brio
Largo e sostenuto –
Finale: Presto ma non troppo
FRANK ZAPPA (1940-93)
Ruth Is Sleeping (1982-3)
STEFAN WOLPE (1902-72)
Passacaglia (from Four Studies on Basic Rows), 1936 rev. 1971
JOHN OSWALD (b. 1953)
Tip (2020-21)
NIKOLAI MEDTNER (1880-1951)
Improvisation in B-flat Minor (in variation form) Op. 31, No. 1 (1914)
Danza festiva (Forgotten Melodies, Vol. 1) Op. 38, No. 3 (c1918-20)
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)
Étude-tableau in E-flat minor, Op. 39 No. 5 (1917)
Piano Sonata No. 2, in B-flat minor, Op. 36 (1913 rev. 1931)
Allegro agitato - meno mosso –
Non allegro - Lento - più mosso –
Allegro molto - poco meno mosso - Presto
Program Notes
JOSEPH HAYDN
Born in Rohrau, Lower Austria, March 31, 1732; died in Vienna, May 31, 1809
Piano Sonata No. 50, in D, Hob. XV1:37 (1779)
Haydn once described his compositional routine: “I get up early, and as soon as I have dressed, I kneel down and pray to God and the Holy Virgin that things may go well today. After some breakfast, I sit at the Klavier and I begin to improvise.” Several accounts confirm that Haydn used the keyboard in his compositional process across all genres. Although proficient on the harpsichord, clavichord, and fortepiano, he tended to downplay his performance skills, often remarking that he was ‘no wizard’ on any instrument.
This cheerful D major Sonata is part of a set of six that Haydn dedicated to the Auenbrugger sisters and was published in 1780 by Artaria, marking the start of his long association with the Viennese publisher. The collection was designed for both amateur players (Liebhaber) and connoisseurs (Kenner), adaptable for either harpsichord or the emerging fortepiano. Artaria’s title page reflects this, stating “Per il clavi cembalo, o Forte Piano.” Maria Katherina and Franziska Auenbrugger were gifted pianists admired by both Haydn and Leopold Mozart. Haydn himself praised them: “They possess genuine insight into music equal to that of the greatest masters.”
The D major sonata is the most demanding of the set and remains one of Haydn’s better-known keyboard works. Its crisp, good humoured opening movement requires the ‘insight’ that Haydn mentions, as well as nimble fingers. Its slow movement evokes the grandeur of Baroque music and lies somewhere between a Sarabande and a French overture. It leads directly into a lively rondo finale, marked innocentemente.
FRANK ZAPPA
Born in Baltimore, MD, December 21, 1940; died in Los Angeles, CA, December 4, 1993
Ruth Is Sleeping (1982-3)
In 1982, genre bending American composer and guitarist Frank Zappa, the fiercely demanding bandleader of The Mothers of Invention, who was no less demanding on himself when creating his music, purchased a Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer. This allowed him to precisely notate music through keystrokes on a digital module. Zappa’s first Synclavier composition was Ruth Is Sleeping, a piece for keyboard. Initially, he had to dictate every detail to technician Steve DeFuria, a process Zappa described as “the most gruelling, horrible thing,” until DeFuria finally taught him how to operate the Synclavier himself.
The title of the five-minute work comes from Ruth Underwood, Zappa’s mallet player through much of the Seventies, who was known to nap under her marimba during rehearsals. Zappa later revised Ruth Is Sleeping when MIDI technology allowed the Roland Digital Piano to connect to the Synclavier. He produced a score for a “very, very, very difficult” solo piano version, as he later told pianist Jeffrey Burns, contrasting it with a four-hand or duo piano arrangement of the same music – “which is less difficult, but still hard.” Burns premièred the solo version in Berlin on September 21, 1992, noting the technical challenge posed by Zappa’s simultaneous use of different piano registers to create multiple combinations of major sevenths. Burns also appreciated the absence of dynamics or tempo markings, which encouraged interpretive freedom, evoking “dreamy, sometimes tempestuous moments of Ruth’s sleep.”
STEFAN WOLPE
Born in Berlin, Germany, August 25, 1902; died in New York City, April 4, 1972
Passacaglia (from Four Studies on Basic Rows), 1936 rev. 1971
"A headache is better than his music," quipped a Palestinian critic soon after Stefan Wolpe arrived in Jerusalem to teach at the Palestine Conservatory. The politically engaged, Dadaist, and Bauhaus-influenced composer had already fled Berlin for Vienna, where he studied with Webern to "rid his style of unnecessary stuffing." Wolpe stayed in the middle East for just four years, composing songs for the kibbutzim as well as complex concert pieces like tonight's Passacaglia. He later moved to the United States, where he taught Morton Feldman, Ralph Shapey, David Tudor, Charles Wuorinen, jazz musicians and others. At his death in 1972, Elliott Carter praised Wolpe's "artistic personality, motivated by deep conviction" and an "innately original way of doing things."
The Passacaglia is a key work from Four Studies on Basic Rows (1935–36, rev. 1971), formidably subtitled "Study on an all-interval row in conjunction with 11 basic rows." Beneath its advanced serialism lies Wolpe’s lifelong desire to engage listeners, supported by his technique as an accomplished pianist. The piece opens with a 22-note row in the right hand, ascending in widening intervals. This row unfolds in multiple permutations throughout the work, interwoven with counter-sets derived from the original intervals. The music intensifies to a fortississimo climax about a third into the 15-minute piece. The following section sustains this intensity before building to an Impetuoso passage of cascading, brittle chords and fierce momentum, culminating in bell-like fortississimo chords. The coda features leaner, more transparent textures as the material fragments.
In 1951, Wolpe described his music as "thoroughly organized, proud, erect, hymnic, profoundly contained, but human." These words aptly characterize the Passacaglia.
JOHN OSWALD
Born in Kitchener, ON, May 30, 1953
Tip (2020-21)
Tip was commissioned by Marc André Hamelin. John Oswald writes:
Why Tip? A short title for a brief piece. But that little word packs a myriad of associations. Some tip-ical phrases are:
Tip of the iceberg…In the ocean of music this iceberg is composed of my condensation of the most familiar music in the pianistic repertoire. What you hear in Tip is the 10% that rises above the surface of that ocean. The 90% below the surface contains the many other possible quotations not chosen from the nearly 400 scores and performance transcriptions investigated. Perhaps while listening to Tip you will sense some aspects of what lies below the surface – the unheard but easily recalled continuations of phrases unfinished; the layers of possibility in polyphonies of superimposition; a great submerged consciousness of musical memory.
On the Tip of the tongue…The reader will notice that we are not citing sources here; therein lies the fun. At times the quotes come so fast and furious your ears might tingle on the verge of recognition. Other times up to four quotations occur simultaneously (a momentary quodlibet). A familiar pop tune weaves into the key and melody of an equally familiar classical fragment. Diverse quotes can pivot on a common note or chord. A medley on steroids?
Are there any tips for listening to Tip? Marc André Hamelin writes: “I’ve always been fascinated by how completely unrelated but familiar snippets of music can influence each other when juxtaposed – and here John Oswald puts pedal to metal, going as far as superimposing material, so that the final result is a delightful challenge for the listener in untangling this multitude of strands of musical thought! And it’s no less of a challenge for the pianist!”
NIKOLAI MEDTNER
Born in Moscow, December 24, 1879/January 5, 1880; died in London, November 13, 1951
Improvisation in B-flat Minor (in variation form) Op. 31, No. 1 (1914)
Danza festiva (Forgotten Melodies, Vol. 1) Op. 38, No. 3 (c1918-20)
Moscow-born Medtner clung to the tradition of the Romantic virtuoso composer-pianist long after it had faded in the 20th century. Though a gold medallist at the Moscow Conservatory and a prize-winner at the 1900 Rubinstein Competition, he chose to focus primarily on composition. His 14 piano sonatas form the core of a catalogue that includes three concertos, chamber music, and songs – all featuring the piano. Trained by the legendary Vasily Safonov, Medtner’s pianistic brilliance remained a vivid memory in Russia even after he went into exile following the Revolution.
In the West, Medtner’s reluctance to perform anything but his own works and his conservative musical aesthetics in a time of change led to financial struggles. In 1935, with help from Rachmaninoff, he published his treatise Muza i moda (The Muse and the Fashion) and settled in London. Sponsored by Rachmaninoff and the Maharajah of Mysore, Medtner was able to record many of his key works on '78s,' which later became collectors’ items.
Medtner’s Three Pieces, Op. 31, were written in 1914–15 in memory of composer and pianist Alexei Stanchinsky who died tragically young. The first, Improvisation in B-flat minor, consists of five variations on a wistful, Russian-sounding theme. Medtner explores the theme’s capricious potential, blending spontaneity with the polish of a master pianist.
The luminousDanza festiva, fromForgotten MelodiesOp. 38 (1918–20), was one of Medtner’s last works before leaving Moscow for Germany. He recorded it on both piano roll and '78' records.
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Born in Semyonovo, Russia, March 20 / April 1, 1873; died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943
Étude-tableau in E-flat minor, Op. 39 No. 5 (1917). Piano Sonata No. 2, in B-flat minor, Op. 36 (1913 rev. 1931)
Rachmaninoff's Op. 39 is the second of two sets of virtuoso piano pieces, marking the close of the 19th-century tradition of études. He called them Études-tableaux (Study-Pictures), coining the term to describe short, technically challenging works that evoke moods or narratives. The E-flat minor Étude (No. 5) is the dramatic high point of the collection, featuring powerful, chordal writing that conveys anguish, tragedy, passion, and despair
Rachmaninoff composed his Second Piano Sonata as a showpiece for his recital tours, completing it just before the Russian Revolution. He began work in Rome in 1913, while staying in the Piazza di Spagna apartment where Tchaikovsky had also lived. He finished the piece at Ivanovka, his family estate, where he found solitude . . . and bred racehorses. Monumental in scale and opulently Romantic, the sonata demands great technical prowess. Rachmaninoff revised it in 1931, cutting 120 bars and clarifying the musical texture.
Like much of Rachmaninoff's work – and that of other Russian composers including Stravinsky – the sonata is haunted by the sound of church bells. During its composition, Rachmaninoff also wrote his choral symphony The Bells. The sonata opens with a dramatic, drooping chromatic motif that recurs in many guises throughout its three movements, which are played without pause. The second movement delves into a deep melancholy, a hallmark of his music, while the finale erupts with an exuberant fortissimo four and a half-octave plunge and ends in shimmering cascades of chords.
— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca
Invocations- December 5, 2024
Program
VIVIAN FUNG (b. 1975)
Prayer (2020/2024) (arr. violin and piano) (World première)
AMY BEACH (1867-1944)
Invocation, for violin and piano, Op. 55 (1904)
AARON COPLAND (1900–90)
Vitebsk: Study on a Jewish Theme, for piano trio (1928-9)
AVNER DORMAN (b. 1975)
Nigunim, for solo violin and piano quintet (2011/22)
Adagio religioso
Scherzo
Adagio
Presto
INTERMISSION
JAMES ROLFE (b. 1961)
Mitzarim (Narrows) (2024) (world première)
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-56)
Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 44 (1842)
Allegro brillante
In modo d'una marcia: un poco largamente – Agitato
Scherzo. Molto vivace
Allegro, ma non troppo
Program Notes
VIVIAN FUNG
Born in Edmonton, AB, February 6, 1975
Prayer (2020/2024) (arr. violin and piano) (World première)
Vivian Fung's Prayer was premièred in July 2020 by the ‘CBC Virtual Orchestra’, a collaboration between CBC Music and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Prayer was recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 36 musicians from 28 Canadian orchestras. Later, Nézet-Séguin led the Philadelphia Orchestra in performances in September 2020 and May 2021, honouring frontline.
Written during pandemic isolation, Prayer is a stirring, slowly moving work, meditative at first, gradually coming into focus. Chant-like textures evoke inner strength and resolve. Tonight's performance introduces a new version for violin and piano.
Fung describes the short piece as a highly subjective, emotional outpouring, reflecting both personal and the broader challenges she faced. Inspired by a chant from her 12th century ‘composer heroine’ Hildegard von Bingen, the piece embodies faith—in humanity, love, and perseverance.
AMY BEACH
Born in Henniker, NH, September 5, 1867; died in New York City, December 27, 1944
Invocation, for violin and piano, Op. 55 (1904)
"A woman must be a woman first, then a musician," wrote Amy Beach, encapsulating a view widely held in Boston’s educated society during her time. Although society encouraged Amy Cheney’s musical talents, it was only under the identity of ‘Mrs. H. H. A. Beach,’ conforming to the expectations of her role as a wife. Largely self-taught as a composer, Beach maintained rigorous standards in her craft. Despite being one of the finest American pianists of her era, she gave up a promising career at the request of her husband, a prominent Boston surgeon, who was not only a generation older than her but older than her father. After his death, Beach resumed her career, embarking on her first trip to Europe at the age of 43. There, she performed her piano concerto, heard her symphony played, and sought to establish herself in the musical world on her own terms. Ultimately, she had significant success; only three of her 300 compositions were not printed during her lifetime. Composed while she was married, Invocation, Op. 55 (1904) is a gentle, four-minute piece, a lyrical work of generous Romanticism, showcasing the soaring lines of the violin.
AARON COPLAND
Born in Brooklyn, NY, November 14, 1900; died in Peekskill, NY, December 2, 1990
Vitebsk: Study on a Jewish Theme, for piano trio (1928-9)
American composer Aaron Copland once remarked, “it was not necessary to have an experience to compose about it. I preferred to imagine. . . ” His Vitebsk (1928), one of his few compositions to incorporate Jewish folk music, emerged from a haunting folk song (Mipnei Mah) he heard during a New York production of Semyon Ansky’s The Dybbuk. Copland named the piece after Vitebsk, the village where Ansky first heard the song, and aimed “to reflect the harshness and drama of Jewish life in White Russia.”
The trio, structured as a single movement (slow-fast-slow), opens with declamatory major/minor piano chords and quarter tones from the strings, evoking the dissonance of Jewish hardship. These unsettling sounds set the stage for the mournful folk tune, played by the cello. The central section, which Copland describes as “a Chagall-like grotesquerie,” bursts from fragments of the song, reaching a wild climax before halting abruptly. [Artist Marc Chagall was also, coincidentally, born in Vitebsk]. The piece closes with an echo of the opening, offering a solemn, fragmented farewell to the folk melody.
AVNER DORMAN
Born in Tel-Aviv, Israel on April 14, 1975
Nigunim, for solo violin and piano quintet (2011/22)
Avner Dorman's Nigunim, originally composed in 2011 as his Violin Sonata No. 3, for violinist Gil Shaham and pianist Orli Shaham’s ‘Jewish Melodies’ program, has since evolved significantly. The Gettysburg, PA-based Israeli composer later orchestrated the sonata as the Second of his three Violin Concertos, winning the 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music. The version performed tonight, a third arrangement, was created in 2022.
Here, Dorman describes the nigun, a foundational concept in traditional Jewish music: “According to Habbad literature, the nigun serves as a universal language. It ascends beyond words and conveys a deeper spiritual message. A nigun sung in Yiddish will reach and affect someone who only speaks Arabic, and vice versa. Though short, since it begins and ends on the same pitch nigunim (plural) may be repeated over and over. In this sense, the nigun has no beginning and no end and is eternal. Nigunim may be secular or religious, fast or slow, and may be sung and played in a variety of social events and circumstances.”
Dorman discovered common musical elements across diverse Jewish traditions, including North African cantillations, Central Asian wedding songs, Klezmer music, and Ashkenazy prayers. These commonalities, rather than specific Jewish melodies, form the core of Nigunim's modes and melodic gestures. The work’s first movement, Adagio religioso, is reflective, evoking traditional cantorial singing, particularly as recalled from a specific Libyan-Jewish synagogue. The Scherzo contrasts this with secular exuberance, recalling Georgian folk music and dancing at a wedding he attended. The slow, shifting Adagio features a melismatic solo, alternately shared between ensemble and violin, with punctuating intervals of sevenths and ninths. Macedonian rhythms drive the vigorous finale to a virtuoso conclusion.
JAMES ROLFE
Born in Ottawa, July 20, 1961
Mitzarim (Narrows) (2024) (world première) ** for Gryphon Trio and Aviva Chernick
James Rolfe writes: “Lawrence Cherney of Soundstreams approached me in 2019 to compose a piece on the theme of nigunim, the wordless melodies sung by Ashkenazi Jews. My thoughts wandered to a text by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, loosely translated as: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge, but the main thing is not to freak yourself out.” I never imagined how apt those words would prove: a pandemic delayed the work's première for five years, and a tragic conflict in the Middle East shattered countless lives, setting Jews at odds with their neighbours and with each other.
When I learned that I would be collaborating with Aviva Chernick, a wonderfully soulful singer and cherished colleague, I looked to the Psalms. There, I found lyrics which take us to heights of joy and depths of sorrow, beseeching the divine to spare us from hatred and oppression, lamenting the ephemerality of our lives. Mitzarim(which translates as ‘Narrows’) traces a journey from a place of constriction and darkness into light and joy.
Mitzarim (Narrows) was commissioned by Soundstreams, with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council. Many thanks to Aviva Chernick for helping to shape and tune up this piece, to Aviva and the Gryphon Trio for bringing it to life, and to Lawrence Cherney, who commissioned it, for giving my musical voice a platform over so many years, forging a wonderful creative partnership and journey.”
Mitzarim (Narrows): Lyrics
Chaneinu, Adonai, chaneinu!
Ki-rav savanu vuz
rabat savah-la nafsheinu ha'la'ag hasha'ananim
habuz ligei yonim.
Show us kindness, Adonai, show us kindness!
We have had more than enough of hatred.
Long enough have we endured the scorn of the complacent,
the contempt of the high and mighty. [Psalm 123:3-4]
Hodiyeini Adonai kitziy umidat
yamai mah-hi
eidah me-chadeil ani
hinei t'fachot natatah yamai
v'cheldi ch'ayin negdecha
ach kol-hevel kol-adam nitzav. Selah.
Tell me, Adonai, when is my end,
what is the measure of my days;
I want to know how fleeting my life is.
You have made my life the width of my hand;
its span is nothing in Your eyes;
no one endures any longer than a breath. Selah.
Shim'ah t'filati Adonai
v'shavati ha'azinah el-dimati
al-techerash ki geir anochi imach
toshav k'chol-avotai
hasha mimeni v'avligah
b'terem eileich v'einenei.
Hear my prayer, Adonai;
hear my cry;
see my tears;
for I am a stranger with You,
a sojourner, an alien like my ancestors.
Spare me, that I may know joy again,
before I pass away and am gone. [Psalm 39:5-6, 13-14]
Yis'm'chu hashamayim v'tageil ha'aretz
yiram hayam umlo
ya'a'loz sadai v'chol-asher-bo
az y'ran'nu kol-atzei-ya'ar.
Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it,
the fields and everything in them rejoice;
then shall all the trees of the forest shout for joy. [Psalm 96:11-13]
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, nr Bonn, July 29, 1856
Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op.44 (1842)
Robert Schumann was the first to combine the string quartet – a medium he had just begun to explore – with the piano, an instrument that was seldom absent from his compositions. He wrote his Piano Quintet in 1842, a year when he concentrated on chamber music. After composing three string quartets in just five weeks during the spring, his health collapsed, and he spent the summer with his wife, the renowned pianist Clara Wieck, touring Bohemian spas in search of a cure. Rejuvenated, he sketched the Piano Quintet in just five days, tailoring the piano writing to his wife’s keyboard strengths. [Clara would go on to give hundreds of performances of the work in both public and private settings, establishing it in the repertoire, where it remains to this day]. Two weeks later, in mid-October, Schumann completed the full score. Many revisions followed, including dropping the idea of a fifth movement. With the clarity of form reached in the final version, Schumann achieved a success with the public that so often eluded him.
The Piano Quintet is highly unified, with themes reappearing and transforming throughout. The assertive opening theme evolves into a more lyrical variant as soon as it is introduced, returning in moods both turbulent and dreamy. The second movement, a funeral march theme in C minor, anchors a rondo structure, with two episodes, the first ethereal and intensely romantic, the second, a variant on the march theme, more agitated and dramatic. In the Scherzo, Schumann deftly manipulates scales, teasing out a theme in the first trio from an inverted version of the main theme from the opening movement. In the coda, the second trio’s theme is cunningly combined with the Scherzo material. Schumann’s contrapuntal skill reaches its peak in the finale, where, in an extended coda, the main theme is developed as a fugue and then combined with the quintet’s opening theme as an ingenious double fugue, spanning some 50 radiant, virtuoso measures. Throughout, Schumann’s piano writing strikes a perfect balance between the intimacy of chamber music and the virtuosity of a piano concerto. The Piano Quintet remains his most frequently performed chamber work.
— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca