TSM House Programme July 13-20

PROGRAMME NOTES
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
String Quartet in C major, Op. 20, No. 2 (Hob. III:32)
In the four years from 1769 to 1772, Haydn composed three sets of six
quartets, Opp. 9, 17 and 20; a quarter of the nearly 70 that span his
entire career. All 18 substitute a five-movement with a four-movement
design. In Op. 20—known familiarly as the “Sun” quartets because an engraving
of a radiant sun adorned an early edition—Haydn broke further stylistic ground: no
longer does the first violin dominate thematic material; henceforth, its partners in
conversation assert themselves ever more forcefully.
In Op. 20, No. 2, the cello leads not only off the top but also marks the beginnings
of both the development and recapitulation. (The viola’s lead in the development is
a false return.) The cello’s lyricism contributes to the movement’s affable qualities;
so, too, do frequent passages in thirds, the pair of violins answered by the viola and
cello. A dramatic unison establishes the slow movement’s dark mood in C minor.
Again, the cello introduces the chief theme but here seems unable to hold onto
its thought. The first violin interjects with cadenza-like passages, the full quartet
supplying brooding retorts. The movement unfolds thus, in fits and starts. Paradise
emerges in the central section, in E-flat major, the first violin singing a cantabile
melody to straight-ahead accompaniment. But the sun’s rays are fleeting; coalcoloured
clouds return. This strikingly operatic movement, incomplete by design,
segues directly into a cheerful minuet in the home key.
Three of the Op. 20 quartets end with fugues, thereby embracing not only prevailing
Austrian practice, but also serving Haydn’s goal of giving equal play to the four
parts. After all, a fugue, by definition, distributes the main thematic material to all
parts in turn. In this lighthearted finale, Haydn supplies not one but four subjects.
The chief one, with its chromatic descent, gets the most play, later inverted and
given in stretto. Haydn appears to have had so much fun that he even added a witty
annotation at the end, “Laus omnip: Deo / Sic fugit amicus amicum” (Praise be to
Almighty God / Thus friend flees from friend), that describes the fugue’s flittering
character using the verb fugere, itself related to fuga (fugue).
R. Murray Schafer (1933- )
String Quartet No. 3
Schafer’s singular artistic vision, expressed as much in his music
as in his writing, has fed an international reputation as a quintessentially
Canadian composer. A staunch environmentalist, he has
studied—and criticized—the dramatic changes wrought on natural soundscapes
by industrialization and the introduction of machinery into our everyday lives. His
music, ranging widely in style from hard-nosed experimentalism to traditional
tonality, always provokes and often projects a dry sense of humour. His signature
projects are Wagnerian in scope and ambition, frequently mining mythological
sources. The Princess of the Stars (1981), inspired by Aboriginal legends, and to
be “staged” outdoors on a lake at dawn by performers dispersed around it and in
canoes floating in the middle, is a characteristic creation, one that he calls his
“most ‘Canadian’ work”. Another, the multimedia Apocalypsis (1977), requiring a
cast of a thousand, was revived for the first time since its 1980 premiere at Toronto’s
Luminato Festival in 2015.
Schafer has not limited himself to grandiose statements. Like the great symphonist
Shostakovich who turned to the string quartet to convey his most intimate thoughts,
Schafer has composed 12 numbered quartets, the first in 1970, the latest in 2012.
Schafer added a five-minute thirteenth, entitled Alzheimer’s Masterpiece, shortly
after being diagnosed with the disease in 2015. Quebec’s Molinari Quartet has
recorded the entire cycle.
Schafer’s quartets are not, however, a refuge from his music dramas. Rather, he
brings a theatrical flair to bear on the medium in surprising ways, including by
choreographing the players’ physical movements. The Third Quartet (1981) was
commissioned by the CBC and premiered by the Orford Quartet in Boston on the
same day in 1981 that The Princess of the Stars beguiled listeners on Heart Lake near
Brampton. It opens with the cellist alone on stage (how the Second Quartet ends),
working through an extended cadenza. The violist joins in, but from offstage.
The two violinists later make their entries from the back of the hall. The spatial
arrangement emphasizes the deliberate disconnection among parts: “rhapsodic
with almost no convergence among the players”, explains Schafer. Only by the
end of the movement, in a witty reversal of Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony, have the
musicians assembled on stage. The final gesture is not a sound, but a movement: the
second violinist taking their seat.
Most of Schafer’s quartets must be performed from the score (rather than from
individual parts). The first movement, for instance, is written not in metrical but
in proportional notation; the players taking cues from one another, a technique
pioneered by the Polish avant-garde composer Lutosławski, notably in his String
Quartet (1964).
Such rhythmic coordination is paramount in the fast and aggressive second
movement. To a panoply of modernist extended techniques, particularly double-stopped
glissandos, and against harmony of unrelenting dissonance, Schafer
adds another theatrical element: vocalization. Throughout, the players intone
various phonemes and nonsense syllables “uttered as if the gestures to which they
are attached are calling them forth—like the vocal shouts of gymnastic exercises”.
Schafer emphasizes that “they do not stand out as a separate set of sounds but
appear born of the identical physical gesture that has produced the string tone”. The
blend of metal and vocal chords expands the quartet’s timbral palette in a startling way.
In the second movement, even the musicians’ breathing is occasionally notated
rhythmically—in unison. This coordinated imperative governs the third movement,
ruled now by an otherworldly tranquility. Messiaen had written a movement entirely
in unison in his Quartet for the End of Time. But unlike “Dance of Wrath, for the
Seven Trumpets”, which is fast, loud and notated metrically, Schafer’s movement is
muted, meditative and written without metre, relying on the musicians to carefully
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