Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 1, No. 7 (1927-04)

The Phonograph Monthly Review 291 *&1 Lli__g_!L! " ■" 1 ■" ! great detail and undoubtedly represents the ac- cumulated scholarship of many minds besides the author’s. We are grateful for such a work and wait the day for such a complete work in Eng- lish. Paul Bekker m his book on Beethoven gives mainly a philosophical interpretation of the Quar- tets and their relation to Beethoven’s other works. As most of the Quartets are already available on the phonograph and the others are soon to come, a brief survey will be helpful. Bekker sees in the Quartets “the quintessence of the other works of each period.” It has been customary to divide Beethoven’s works into three periods and while this may be convenient such attempts tend to “break up the unity of the works as a whole and to obscure the fact that they were the expression of a gradually unfolding, gradually ripening personality.” If we emphas- ize quintessence and pass over the question of periods, which was so abhorrent to Liszt, it is because the quartets seem to epitomize all that he did in other branches. Where other instru- mental combinations present obstacles “which forced him either to submit to the limitations of his material or to write work impossible of performance,” there are no obstacles here. For those who have not thought of the String Quartet as a medium compared with other me- diums, let us consider, before taking up the Quar- tets individually, some of Bekker’s remarks in general. “The mechanical imperfections of the pianoforte, of the orchestra, or the human voice, have no counterpart in the string quartet, a group of instruments perfectly united yet perfectly in- dividualized. It is a combination in which the most exacting reformer could suggest no im- provement. Despite the independence, the homo- phonous character of the instruments adapts them for mutual support and fulfillment. In chamber music, music lor pianoforte and strings, the underlying principle is that of tone contrast, but in the string ensemble there is similarity of tone underlying individuality. Hence the char- acteristic double effect of the string ensemble — unknown to any other combinations of instru- ments—obtained from a unity of tone which can yet be analysed into several distinct tone individ- ualities. In combination they represent a greater range of tone than is obtainable from the piano- forte, and they allow an independent treatment of the parts impossible on the keyboard. They possess the pianoforte capacity for cantabile with far greater flexibility. They have almost the force of the orchestra, for they comprise the most important part of the orchestra. They lack in- deed orchestral diversity of colour, they have not the register capacity of the pianoforte tone, or the sensuous warmth of the singing voice, and they are dependent on the art of light and shade, but, for the musician with a bent to abstraction, this constitutes the chief charm of the string ensemble. He wishes to avoid the sensuous charms of other means of expression; his thoughts are too airy and fine to bear the weight — -■■■■- ■■■■ of the garments of tone in its more material as- pects, and he seems to weave a vesture as trans- parent and ethereal as the ideas themselves. For this purpose the string ensemble is peculiarly adapted, and from the moment that Beethoven first realized this he chose this branch of music to summarize his intellectual conquests stage by stage, and to concentrate therein all the rays of his spirit at the end of his creative life.” If Beethoven did not actually think this all out, as Bekker does for us, he acted on it instinctively. Besides, the String Quartet was in the air, fashionable if you please. Lichnowsky’s musical mornings, the example of Haydn and Mozart, and Beethoven’s personal acquaintance with Emanuel Aloys Forster, all contributed to quicken Beethoven’s interest. As Bekker says, “at the turn of the century and before his thirtieth year, Beethoven had so mastered and developed the three branches of his art that he was able to use them as effective bases of all his future creative works.” His skill in improvisation found its permanent reflection in the pianoforte sonata; his architectonic impulse found its greatest ex- pression in the symphony; and of abstract musi- cal thought the quartet was the purest vehicle. (Bekker) Beethoven wrote sixteen quartets in all,-—the so-called seventeenth being a fugue originally written as a movement of one of the others. They were produced in groups in widely dif- ferent periods of his life. Beethoven was over thirty before he produced either symphony or quartet. His early chamber music for wind in- struments seems to have been mainly prepara- tion for the symphony and when he started on his symphonies he gave up this species of cham- ber music almost entirely. If he continued longer writing music for pianoforte and strings it was mainly because it gave him opportunities for par- ticipation as a pianist. When he withdrew as a pianist his interest lapsed. Not so his interest in the string quartet. After he once found himself in this combination it be- came the “very heart and kernel of Beethoven’s creative work, around which the rest is grouped, supplementing, explaining, confirming. His life is there faithfully mirrored, not in the ‘diary’ form of the sonata improvisations, not in the monumental style of his symphonic works, but with absolute intellectual clarity, independent of the sensuous appeal of personality or of the com- pelling force of great orchestral tone masses, and limited in the outwardly inornate form of a ‘con- versation’ between four ‘individuals’ of equal standing and privileges.” In listening to a quartet it is important to re- member that we are listening for the most of the time to four distinct individualities—some- thing like a four-track railroad with the different trains sometimes running abreast but usually at different speeds. Sometimes one is steaming up and the others just coasting along. Another sin- gular thing is that they toss the load (or thematic material) from one train to the other; some-