Mater artium necessitas. (Necessity is the mother of invention.)
— Attributed to Plato
Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
— Ludwig van Beethoven
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
— Victor Hugo
Our Season 42 finale, on the afternoon of Mother’s Day, begins with a duo published in 1855 by an influential composer who was a legendary concert pianist (as soloist with orchestras, credited along with Franz Liszt as one of the originators of the solo recital) and, between 1841 and 1854, became mother to eight children.
Clara Schumann dedicated her Three Romances, Op. 22 to celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim, mutual friend to Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. It is her second and last chamber music work. (We last performed her first chamber work, Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17, in October 2019.) As inspiration, performer, teacher, critic, and promoter, she championed works by Robert and Johannes throughout her career, and theirs.
In November 1875 Johannes Brahms premiered his passionate Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 60 with members of the Hellmesberger String Quartet. It was the product of 20 years of revision, taking the place of an earlier piano quartet in C-sharp minor. Brahms is said to have written to his publisher about the Op. 60 quartet with a comparison to the hero of Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther:
On the cover you must have a picture, namely a head with a pistol to it. Now you can form some conception of the music! I’ll send you my photograph for that purpose…”
Although history has largely remained silent over the details, more than one writer has suspected Brahms was writing about his unrequited love for a married woman with whom he was closely involved. “Brahms …named the object of his despair by means of Robert Schumann’s Clara theme—C-B-A-G#-A—disguised in another key.” This same melodic shape appears as the theme of the Intermezzo of his first Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25, for which Clara praised and wrote him that it was “…a piece after my own heart.” Joachim, on the other hand, concerned about the lack of “invention” in its first movement!
Born in Walla Walla, Washington, and one of the founders of the American Music Center and the American Composers Alliance, Marion Bauer (1882–1955) was one of the most influential composers and promoters of New American Music. She was noted as the first American composer to study abroad with Nadia Boulanger, followed by Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Roy Harris, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Quincy Jones, Astor Piazzola, and countless others who would bring distinction to American Music.
Bauer’s Concertino for Oboe, Clarinet and String Quartet is that rare work which uses two wind instruments with string quartet rather than just one. As the title suggests it is a short work in three movements that reflect the expanding harmonic and melodic directions of its time while remaining expressive and tonal.
Our program and season conclude with the passionate and lyrical work by our third pianist-composer: Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor by Amy Beach (née Cheney) (1867–1944). Born in Henniker, New Hampshire and relocated with the family to Chelsea, Massachusetts at age 8, Beach displayed prodigious musical talents at an early age that led to special recognition as a celebrated pianist and a composer of symphony, song, sonata, and chamber music. Her only formal instruction as a composer took place at age 14 when she studied harmony and counterpoint with Junius W. Hill at Wellesley College. However, she began to collect every possible resource on theory, composition and orchestration; independently studied counterpoint, harmony, and fugue; even translated French treatises on orchestration into English for herself. Her marriage at age 18 to Dr. H. H. A. Beach, a prominent surgeon and Harvard lecturer, curtailed her public performances and perhaps necessitated her self-guided education in composition, as it was expected then for middle- and upper-class women to function as society matrons and patrons of the arts but not working musicians.
The Quintet in F-sharp minor (1909) is in three movements that display the piano virtuosity and lyricism for which she is celebrated. The Quintet is also highly personal as it reflects her synesthesia and penchant for odd keys and colors. For her, the home key of F-sharp minor was associated with the color black.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Enjoy,
MT
