Mozart Piano Quartet #1 in G Minor, K.478 (1785)
Saint-Saëns Sonata for Oboe and Piano, in D major, Op. 166 (1921)
Ravel Piano Trio in A minor (1914)
“Music must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or, in other words, must never cease to be music.” –Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Our second concert weekend of Season 36 showcases some of the most beautiful and comforting music ever written, including two BCMS series favorites by Mozart and Ravel. It’s hard to imagine now that anything Mozart composed would create such offense as to cost him financially. Given his personal views on what is to be considered good music, and its responsibility to the listener, it is revealing to learn that the “difficulty” of his first piano quartet caused the cancellation of the contract with a music publisher and fellow composer for the second and third. (Mozart was widely viewed at his time as a very gifted composer who wrote music too difficult for public consumption.) Such may also be the lot of many recent composers who must resort to self-publishing, or worry that today’s music may have to wait for tomorrow’s audience.
“Music is something besides a source of sensuous pleasure and keen emotion, and this resource is only a chance corner in the wide realm of musical art. He who does not get absolute pleasure from a simple series of well-constructed chords, beautiful only in their arrangement, is not really fond of music.” –Camille Saint-Saëns (1913)
Often compared in his precocity and wide ranging musical genius to young Wolfgang Mozart, young Camille astonished many with interests as far afield as astronomy, mathematics, archeology and philosophy. He is said to have offered to play from memory any of Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas as an encore and to perform all of Mozart’s concertos in London. He championed the music of his contemporaries even when Schumann wasn’t popular, and took a leading role in restoring interest in old forms of French music. He wasn’t so keen on later developments in the Paris of Debussy and Stravinsky that took music from Impressionism into Primitivism. The Oboe Sonata dates from the last year of his life and reflects more of his tastes in musical values that had by then long vanished. It appears to be a rejection of his later contemporaries who constructed simple series of chords and forms in ways different from his. This performance will mark the BCMS debut of the gorgeous work.
“…the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind—not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.” –Maurice Ravel
Ravel’s open acknowledgement of the influence of Schoenberg’s aesthetic to turn a corner in his own work will come as a surprise to many. Not just because the influence of Germanic music was being driven from the French composition for decades, or Chabrier and Debussy were regarded as more direct aesthetic influences, but because the French seemed to have more interest in building their future by looking inward to their glorious past (Rameau and Couperin), or if looking outward—to Spanish scenes and open-hearted themes—rather than to the systemic intellectualism (which has been known to offend many ears) advanced by a German mind.
The Piano Trio in A minor dates from 1914, the start of WWI, in which the composer was himself an ambulance driver. The first of four-movements draws on themes from Ravel’s native Basque country. The second, entitled Pantoum, is based on a poetic form of alternating lines from the Malay language that gained popularity among French poets in the late 1800’s. The third movement, called Passacaglia (derived from the Spanish street promenade), is variations built on a repeating bass-line. The lively fourth movement is based on the inversion of the theme of the first movement.
Our performances this season will be the sixth in BCMS history. This work has clearly remained among our audience favorites.
Enjoy!
Marcus
Buy tickets
Sat. 10/20 at Arlington Street Church | 11:30 a.m.
Sun. 10/21 at Sanders Theatre | 7:30 p.m.
