Pavel Haas Quartet
In addition to their nationality, composers of the quartets on this program share several other common features. Both were influenced by indigenous folk music and dance; both chafed at Austrian political control; both attended as students, and eventually taught at, regional then major institutions; both had a female muse; both were overshadowed by the more internationally prominent Dvořak; well into adulthood, both struggled with inadequate financial means; both composed their canonic works in their last decade.
Bedřich Smetana: Quartet No. 1 in E Minor
Smetana was the first major Czech composer to write nationalist music for the concert stage. A friend at his funeral stated, “For me, Smetana was always a model of purest patriotism. When he pronounced the words ‘my nation’, his voice vibrated and the hearts of those who heard him beat faster.” As a student in Prague, Smetana was enthralled by the music of visiting performers, especially Liszt, and developed an interest in German music, particularly Wagner’s. As was true in other small Central European countries in the nineteenth century, Czechs chafed at times under domination by the Habsburgs; other times they were fearful of Russian aggression. One way to preserve identity was music, especially folk music. By mid-century, Smetana was committed to Czech music and culture, composing his first nationalist work in 1848. The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride were successful opera, and concert works representing Bohemian Czech musical culture were likewise admired. Dvořák succeeded him in this lineage, followed by Janáček of more Moravian identity.
He showed early talent as a composer and pianist, but Smetana’s development was hampered by lack of consistent access to an adequate piano and musical education. While living in Prague for intermittent study as a teenager, he took advantage of the concert life there that fired his ambition. A diary entry in 1845 states, “By the grace of God and with His help I will one day be a Liszt in technique and a Mozart in composition.” Nearly destitute, Smetana made a meager living playing for parties and teaching a few students. His woes were heartbreaking as his wife and one daughter died from tuberculosis; two other daughters died in infancy of other diseases. Lack of opportunity coupled with domestic trauma prompted a move to Sweden with the hope of concertizing and composing.
Smetana’s return to Prague led to a controversial appointment as chief conductor of the Provisional Theater. In 1874, hostility to his conducting and programming coincided with the beginning of health problems that affected composing and performing. Especially troubling was loss of hearing and painful lesions. These and other symptoms due to syphilis increased substantially over his last decade, culminating in complete loss of sanity and death in an asylum.
Despite these unfortunate circumstances, Smetana’s last decade was his most productive as a composer. Unable to conduct and perform, he concentrated on composition. The cycle of tone poems including The Moldau was completed, as were his two extant string quartets. (He wrote quartets as a student for his friends to perform, but these were lost.)
Titled From My Life, String Quartet No. 1 is autobiographical. Regarding the first movement, he wrote that it speaks to “Love of art in my youth, my romantic mood, the unspoken longing for something which I could not name or imagine clearly, and also a warning of my future misery.”
According to Smetana, the descending interval that begins the quartet refers to this warning. The form is essentially sonata-allegro, permeated by the “warning figure” in varying guises. The viola, played by Dvořák at the premier, states the theme and quickly elaborates; the energy of the rollicking accompaniment becomes the essential texture of the movement. The second theme in appropriate contrast is a lovely aria, the major key and bright scoring offset the dire misery of the first theme. Thereafter, though, the “warning figure” asserts prominence, interjecting a reminder of composer’s future misery.
There might not be another in a string quartet that features a polka. Smetana employed the Classical minuet-and-trio structure, substituting polka for minuet. He wrote, “It brings happy reminders of my youth, when as a composer I strewed the young world with dance pieces and was known everywhere as an enthusiastic dancer. In the trio I depicted sound reminders of the aristocratic circles in which I lived for a long time.” The jaunty two-step dance derives entirely from a short-short-long rhythm in a festive spirit that ideally displays Czech nationalism. Intermittent changes of key and texture, notably the extended passage for solo cello, lead to an emphatic conclusion. Smiles and movement are permitted.
The third movement is an elegy. Smetana stated, “It reminds me of the happiness of my first love for the girl who later became my faithful wife.” Reminiscence is provided by the solo cello’s minor key introduction featuring the “warning motive” from the first movement. The sweet primary theme in a major key is briefly developed before a passionate outburst leads to a simple second theme accompanied by the cello with the first theme, then a soft, reflective ending.
The fourth movement “describes the discovery that I could treat national elements in music and my joy in following this path until it was checked by the catastrophe of the onset of my deafness, the outlook into the sad future, the tiny rays of hope of recovery, but remembering all the promise of my early career, a feeling of painful regret."
Energetic dance flavor permeates the short finale. The introduction features syncopations with simple harmony. The main tune is a lively dance with busy accompaniment. Contrasting melodies follow in unrelenting frenzy until abruptly interrupted by a curious passage featuring an extremely high first violin note. Smetana wrote that this note is “the high-pitched whistling in my ear that announced my deafness. [Likely a form of tinnitus.] Since it was so fatal to me this little freak made me suffer.” The coda is a sequence of fragments of a theme from the first movement, a resignation of sorts.
Leoš Janáček: Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”
"You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving. The fragrance of your body, the glow of your kisses–no, really of mine. Those notes of mine kiss all of you. They call for you passionately."
This passage is from one of Janacek’s more than 700 letters to his intended lover, Kamila Stöslová, while composing his second quartet. One might hear, with guidance and suggestion, Janacek’s pining for Stöslová’s attention (which she rarely and tepidly returned). Many other passages in his letters and diary are equally passionate and musically referent, but other than generalized impressions of ardor and moods varying from tenderness to powerful exclamations, audiences “read” the score and accommodate sounds creatively with or without the impetus of the composer’s ardor.
Janáček himself titled this quartet. Composed in his last year of life (he died a few months after its completion, never heard it performed), it is one of several late works in which Stöslová figures as a character. She’s persona, for instance, in the title role in Katya Kabanová and surreptitiously present other operas. Even the original instrumentation of “Intimate Letters” referred to her—viola d’amore, replaced by the standard viola for balance and sonorous reasons. Other composers have referenced their lovers, real or imagined, acknowledged or disguised, in their works—Janáček’s contemporary Alba Berg’s Lyric Suite for instance. Janáček’s pined-for lover might have been actual, but it’s more likely that Stöslová was merely an intense obsession, the other partner in a largely fictitious romance.
Current repertoire from Janáček’s catalogue was composed almost entirely from his final decade. He was nearly 50 when his scores were performed beyond Brno and smaller Moravian venues. But that last decade, beginning in 1919 with a professorial appointment at the Prague Conservatory, brought forth the operas, both quartets, Glagolitic Mass, and powerful Sinfonietta. Janáček was 63 when he met Stöslová; she was 25 with a husband and child. Janáček had long been married to Zdenka Schulzová, their unhappy marriage mutually disheartened by youth or adolescent deaths of their children. Zdenka knew of her husband’s infatuation with his muse, and Stöslová was aware of Janacek’s legal domestic arrangement. The couples vacationed together as late as 1928, the year Janáček’s died.
“Intimate Letters” was composed rapidly in that year. The work as a whole does not stylistically comport with any of the myriad compositional ideas and procedures of the 1920s. Stylistic dichotomies—nationalist, modernist, neoclassic--within and between movements likely resulted from Janacek’s moods relevant to Stöslová, emotions that intensified as the work progressed. He sometimes wrote more than one letter each day, so it’s likely that his thoughts of Stöslová at the time contributed to passages under construction.
The quartet begins with rough-hewed sounds. Accented, edgy double stops alternate with solo viola passages, perhaps an implication of Janacek’s ardor and Stöslová’s lack of response. Interspersions of frenzied violin passages add to the relentlessly unsettled emotional outcry. Tightly wrought motives that anchor the movement reappear in varying guises in subsequent movements.
The lovely viola theme that introduces the second movement immediately relieves the tension exhibited in the first--his muse characterized by a less dissonant palette. But relief quickly dissipates into an anguished permutation of the first movement’s agitation. Blocks of aggressive passages haphazardly unleash a succession of quirky harmonic progressions, amplified eventually by a Moravian folkdance tune. A peculiar implication of wistful whispers suggests verbal communication with Stöslová. Scurrying figures give impetus to the immediacy of Janáček’s intention to connect on a physical level.
The third movement is based on a lilting rhythmic motive and angular melodic gestures. The whole of it seems formless, uncertain, as brief blocks of agitated passages are counterbalanced by the viola’s gentler interruptions. The latter sections feature extremely high violin exclamations.
A rustic dance anchors the final movement, a loosely structured rondo. Occasional plaintive melodies contrast the rough primary pillars, suggesting a desire to have fun but unsettled matters prevent relaxation, prevent a decision of sorts about the intended outcome.
Robert Zierolf
