CHAMBER MUSIC

posted by James Reel

    Broadcasts of last season’s Arizona Friends of Chamber Music concerts begin this Sunday at 1 p.m. Since I’m the host of that series, I have chamber music on mind a lot these days. One of the best appreciations of chamber music I’ve found in print comes from Andrea Lamoreaux, music director of Chicago’s WFMT-FM. Here’s the key paragraph from her notes for the recent Cedille release of Mendelssohn’s string quartets by the Pacifica Quartet:

Chamber music was originally an amateur musical occupation, but as the 18th century became the 19th and music of all types became more complex, the string quartet in particular evolved into a genre reserved for skilled professionals performing before an audience. This situation could be perceived as an active-passive division of responsibility: the musicians play, the listners sit back and enjoy. If all they do is sit back, however, they’re missing a great opportunity. Chamber music offers an inviation to sit up, not back; to sharpen your ears, extend your musical antennae, and become involved in what’s going on. Following the progress of a theme through various voices, listening to its transformations and its returns, is quite a different proposition when you’re faced with four players instead of dozens of symphony musicians. You can appreciate the slightest variation in tone color, hear the tiniest variation between a theme’s initial statement and its recapitulation. Even without the score, even without knowing the intricacies of formal procedures, you can hear with the greatest clarity the progression from opening statement through key changes and development to the final restatement that brings the music to a satisfying resolution. And when you are listening to a string quartet, you are often listening to a composer’s highest effort, his contribution to a rarified realm, but one that offers enjoyment for everyone involved.

    I don’t entirely buy that notion of chamber music being a composer’s “highest effort,” which is a cliché in classical-music circles (Lamoreaux wisely qualifies it with the word “often”). I think it’s true in the cases of Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Bartók, maybe Shostakovich. Not true, though, in the cases of Bach, Mozart, Nielsen, Stravinsky or Prokofiev. I won’t cheat by bringing up composers who wrote very little chamber music, like Verdi, Wagner and Liszt. There are times, however, when I’d gladly trade all nine Bruckner symphonies in on his sole string quintet.