Chamber Music: An Essential History

3. Classical Chamber Music with Wind Instruments

three Classical Chamber Music with Wind Instruments chamber music for winds with strings Many scores by Haydn, Mozart, and their contemporaries throughout Europe have come down to us bearing the designation divertimento. Other pieces are called notturno, serenata, cassation, or Nachtmusik. Whereas divertimento denoted performance by one player per part, these other designations did not necessarily indicate nonorchestral scorings.1 The serenade literature of the later eighteenth century can only be understood as chamber music insofar as no conductor would have been needed, and, in some cases, the performance would have had one player per part; nevertheless, some of the repertoire encompassed by these designations was not chamber music at all since it would have been played out-of-doors. In that context , the performers usually stood during concerts. The cello had a rather short peg during the eighteenth century; consequently , it could not easily be played in a standing position. The double bass, on the other hand, had a longer peg as well as a strap to be used for suspending the instrument around the player’s shoulder. With this information in mind, the signi‹cance of the term basso in designating the lowest part of the divertimento/serenade literature becomes apparent. The labeling of the lowest string part as either basso or violoncello in late eighteenthcentury scores is also helpful in distinguishing actual string quartet literature from divertimento/serenade repertoire. When chamber music for strings was performed indoors, the bass line was usually played by the violoncello ; on the other hand, repertoire performed al fresco more commonly used the double bass on the bass line. 55 This modi‹ed instrumentation had signi‹cant consequences. The eighteenth-century double bass was different from the present-day instrument in that its tone was lighter, more transparent, and blended more easily with the stringed instruments in the higher registers. The serenade double bass was also unusual in that it was a ‹ve-string model . . . and its lowest string was normally tuned to contra F’—not to E’, and certainly not to contra C’. Hence we hypothesize that any bass part in soloistic chamber music which consistently goes below notated F, especially one that exploits notated low C frequently or in exposed contexts, is written for cello. Conversely, if in a full-scale multimovement work the bass never goes below notated F, it may well reckon with solo double bass.2 The pitches that we ‹nd in the scores of string bass parts of serenades, cassations, nocturnes, and some divertimenti would actually have sounded an octave lower than written. The disparity in register between viola and double bass was resolved by the addition of pairs of winds—often horns— to ‹ll in this range.3 Mozart’s Divertimento in F major, K. 247, composed in June 1776 for the name day of Countess Antonia Lodron, the sister of Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, is a good example of his essays in this genre. The ensemble consists of four-part strings with a pair of horns. The ‹rst movement is a bristling Allegro in common time with the primary melodic motifs in the ‹rst violin part. The second violin often reinforces the melody at the third or octave below, or at the unison. The terse phraseology in all seven movements places this work by the twenty-year-old Mozart squarely in the tradition of the style galant. The concise harmonic and melodic building blocks are repeated liberally, but each time, Mozart enlivens the repetition with some modi‹cation of dynamics, phrasing, or articulation. The ‹rst movement is a conventional sonata. The secondary theme, in the dominant key, contains some interesting chromatic color tones as it moves on to the closing thematic group. The opening theme is truncated in the recapitulation, but Mozart compensates by replacing the deleted material in an eight-measure codetta. A triple-meter Andante and a ‹rst Minuetto lead to an Adagio movement in the subdominant. With a practical eye to the endurance of the brass players, Mozart reduces the scoring in the Adagio to two violins, viola , and basso. Here Mozart makes much more extensive use of double stops in the second violin and viola parts than in any of the preceding movements, presumably owing to the absence of the horns. 56 • chamber music The remainder of this divertimento consists of three movements: a second Minuetto, a diminutive Andante, and a concluding Allegro, which balance and round out the...