As a title for my quintet, Ad Concordiam has overlapping meanings, as does its translation from the Latin: toward (in search of, in tribute to, aspiring to) harmony (or agreement, or unity, or…Concord)…When it comes to values, Concord represents historically the ideals that motivated the formation of our union and that established, through the transcendentalists, a new standard for intellectual and moral integrity. I can’t claim that Ad Concordiam is about concord—or Concord—in light of the above, but only that this sense of place and these values, which recently seem under threat in our world, have been very much on my mind during its composition.
Daniel Strong Godfrey
Ludwig van Beethoven String Trio No. 3 in G major, Op. 9, No. 1 (1798)
Daniel S. Godfrey Ad Concordiam: Quintet Variations for Oboe, String Trio and Piano (2018; BCMS Commission)
Johannes Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (1861)
The second concert of our Season 41 returns us to three works from our repertoire that allow us to build our program on three strings, plus wind, plus piano. If an orchestra, made up of many families and communities of strings, winds, brass, and percussion may be seen as symbolic for the public state, chamber music may be seen as symbolic of the private interaction in the home.
Beethoven’s String Trio in G major is the first of three works published under Op. 9 and following two earlier works for that combination, Op. 3 in E-flat major and the Op. 8 Serenade in D major. Each of these works predate the sixteen string quartets starting with the first six published under Op. 18 until the end of his life with Op. 135.
String Trio in G major begins in unison agreement with a slow introduction in octaves, before bursting forth into a lively exchange of roles—leading, following, imitating, supporting, and teasing. After a sublime slow movement in the unrelated elevated key of E major, it returns to even more fun and games of a Scherzo (joke movement!) of the type popularized by Beethoven to replace the traditional Minuet and Trio pairing. Unlike many Classical works, this one has two Trios paired with its Scherzo, so just when one thinks it’s over, it starts all over again. The finale takes the fun even further with one of the most playful and virtuosic movements of his entire output. One way to know it’s coming to a conclusion is return of unison octaves texture with which the piece began, but this time with all players playing doubled notes with a burst of energy as fast as possible!
Our performance of Daniel Godfrey’s Ad Concordiam allows us to return to the fifth of ten works so far commissioned annually since 2013 by members of the BCMS Commissioning Club. It was premiered in 2018 and reappears as part of the Our Art in Our Time recording project. Ad Concordiam is scored for oboe, violin, viola, cello and piano. (Ironically, the earliest instrumental chamber music of the Renaissance was written for consorts of winds or strings. If one were to mix winds and strings in the same group, not to mention add keyboard, that would be considered a broken consort.) Godfrey writes further,
The quintet is in four parts, mostly defined by tempo, played without pause from beginning to end. The contemplative melodic fragments introduced by the oboe at the outset appear throughout the work, but combined, recombined, and expanded into longer themes. Hence the subtitle “Quintet Variations.”
Our program concludes with an old BCMS audience favorite, the first of Johannes Brahms’ three piano quartets, in G minor. It is the bold work of a young man still in search of his voice. Some of the searching can be heard within the quiet of the opening measures, three of which are in open octaves, each leading in a different harmonic direction away from the home key of G minor. In fact, we do not arrive boldly in G minor until Measure 27 and then only with a harmonized version of the ambiguous opening bars, only to quickly move on. Brahms’ friends, among them fellow performers and luminaries in their own rights, were critical of the work, calling it inscrutable, unfortunate, and illogical to the point of causing pain. They sought changes.
On the other hand, writing nearly seventy-five years later, Arnold Schoenberg seemed to echo an earlier observation by Robert Schumann that Brahms’s works seemed ‘to strive beyond their medium.’ As a result, in 1937 Schoenberg began the task of orchestrating the G minor piano quartet as a study to work out its orchestral possibilities. The result is a revelatory analysis in sound of what he heard and saw in the work, one that has been frequently performed by orchestras!
The quartet contains three additional movements, an Intermezzo with muted violin, an Andante con moto with a triumphant March in 3/4 time; and most popular of all, the Finale Rondo alla Zingarese, a Gypsy Rondo—evidence of ethnic inclusion?
Our 41st Season will revisit one of Schoenberg’s lasting contributions to music and theatre in our April 21st concert at Jordan Hall, Pierrot Lunaire. Piano Quartet in G minor was a great source of inspiration for the young Schoenberg, who based so much of his progressive compositional technique on that of Brahms’s exploration of continuing (i.e., evolving) variation. We like to think of our performance as harbinger to our observation of the Schoenberg Anniversary starting with our season finale and going into fall of Season 42.
Enjoy.
MT
