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Doors Open!
Festival Concert 4
August 18, 2021
Wednesday
One-hour concert at Lincoln Theater
4:00 pm – Socially distanced seating with limited capacity; masks required. Tickets must be purchased in advance.
7:30 pm - General admission / open seating; masks requested. Tickets available in advance or at the door.
PROGRAM
Franz Joseph Haydn String Quartet in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5
Bruce Adolphe ContraDictions (a reaction to Bach’s Art of the Fugue, Contrapunctus No. 2)
Steven Mackey ‘Lude (a reaction to Bach’s Art of the Fugue, Contrapunctus No. 11)
Ludwig van Beethoven Grosse Fuge, Op. 133
Brentano String Quartet
(Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violins; Misha Amory, viola; Nina Lee, cello)
Artists
Brentano String Quartet
Please note: All ticket sales are nonexchangeable and nonrefundable.
This concert is sponsored by First National Wealth Management.
Pre-Concert Lecture by Mark Mandarano:
PROGRAM NOTES
by Mark Mandarano
Toward the latter part of his life, perhaps surveying the musical landscape of Europe and seeing that no one remained whom he considered a musical peer, or perhaps as a nod to his family’s legacy of pedagogy, J.S. Bach set about composing music in vast tomes that synthesized and virtually exhausted the parameters for composition during his time. These monuments each featured two categories of music of which Bach was the ultimate master: counterpoint and variation. Variation is the technique of repeating an existing or previously heard phrase or tune or structure, while enlivening it in clever or revealing ways. Counterpoint is the skill of setting one melody against another, so that two (or more) can overlap and be heard simultaneously, while creating a coherent harmony between them. Among Bach’s compositions that codified these skills were the Goldberg Variations, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Mass in B Minor, and The Musical Offering. Of course, Bach was known for his skill in writing fugues, a compositional process steeped in counterpoint in which one primary melody is introduced by three, four, or even five voices (very rarely more than that) and proceeds to overlap with many independent lines all at once. Bach’s final major work was The Art of Fugue, which he did not live to finish. In The Art of Fugue, all 14 fugues (and four canons) are based on the same fugue subject, making these contrapuntal works, in essence, a series of variations on a single theme, while simultaneously they are a systematic set of examples, even a practical manual, of how to construct fugues.
From Misha Amory, violist of the Brentano String Quartet:
In 2002, our quartet launched a commissioning project to celebrate our 10th anniversary, in which we invited ten living composers to write short companion pieces, each one for a different fugue from Bach’s The Art of Fugue. There was an enthusiastic response, and we were lucky to receive contributions from Bruce Adolphe, Chou Wen-chung, Sofia Gubaidulina, David Horne, Steven Mackey, Wynton Marsalis, Nicholas Maw, Shulamit Ran, Charles Wuorinen, and Eric Zivian. On this program we offer Bruce Adolphe’s and Steven Mackey’s pieces, paired with their respective Bach fugues (or “contrapuncti”).
Bruce Adolphe chose Contrapunctus No. 2, in which Bach changes the basic rhythm of his main idea, giving it a kind of limp, at once slightly awkward yet dignified. Bach also plays around with “tied notes” in this fugue, meaning notes that are held over-long while other voices, moving on, shift around them creating brief, beautiful moments of tension. In the companion piece, ContraDictions, Bruce magnifies these moments, often making time stand still at the tense point, meditating on it. In other spots, the tied patterns are spun out into a more perpetual texture, so that they suggest a kind of spinning stasis. In a central section, graceful and airy, the main idea appears in one voice while the others dance around it in unison; over time, the tone intensifies, becoming rhythmically denser and finally reaching a crisis or breaking point. Bruce is a master at portraying how one might examine an object, becoming obsessed with it, looking at it from different angles, feeling now tender towards it, now frustrated by it, unable to put it out of mind: an apt description of what these fugues have been for later composers!
Steven Mackey chose Contrapunctus No. 11, a rather more complex fugue where Bach uses a halting, stuttering version of his main idea, and then adds two other melodic subjects to the mix. Not content to place his companion piece respectfully alongside the Bach, Steve chose to toss his composition and Bach’s into a mixing bowl and make one piece out of them, where the music alternates between Mackey and Bach, one dissolving and melting into the other from time to time. Since his work serves as prelude, interlude, and postlude for the Bach, Steve entitled this blended result simply ‘Lude. He opens with a spiky version of the four-note motif that Bach used to express his own last name, spelt “B-A-C-H” in musical pitches—a motif that appears elsewhere in The Art of Fugue although not in this contrapunctus. From there, he riffs on Bach’s main Art of Fugue idea, using tricky cross-rhythmic textures in an energetic, popping atmosphere. When the Bach does eventually appear and take over, it seems to emerge in its own tempo while Mackey’s tempo and energy fade into the background. Later, in a particularly zany moment, he interrupts the Bach by taking a passage where the music is rising, having it gradually speed up, lose control, and explode back into Mackey-world. And so the two musics alternate, one commenting on the other. When the Bach finally reaches its concluding, sustained chord, that too blurs, losing its focus and splintering back into the restless Mackey world, which dances and fades its way to a hovering, unresolved final sonority. As with the Adolphe, one has the impression that here we are not neatly summing Bach up and finishing his work, but rather discovering ever more questions and uncertainties, hinting that the search is “to be continued at a future date.”
—By Misha Amory
Though no subsequent composer would claim to match Bach’s god-like mastery of counterpoint, proving one’s skill and ingenuity by writing fugues remained (and remains) a way to pay homage to the master and to prove one’s worth and position in this lineage.
Haydn’s Op. 20 quartets represent a new chapter in the creation of chamber music. As with his previous quartets, the texture relies somewhat on the tradition where the first violin provides the primary voice; but here, the independence and interdependence of all the voices reaches a new level. In this quartet, as in two others within this opus, this new equality among the four voices is quite prominent in the fugal finales. The F minor Quartet is possibly evidence of Haydn’s engagement in the Sturm und Drang style in music. The fact that it is in a minor key, opens with a profoundly serious and sophisticated movement in a tempo slower than the traditional Allegro, and that it has such a broad emotional range—these are all potential signs of this rebellious strain. The first movement has an inwardness and an almost religious contemplative quality. The slow movement turns much of the melodic focus over to the second violin, while the first violin floats over all with obbligato passages. The fugal finale references the traditional “high style” with its minor key and fugue subject in slower note values. It has a lofty, sacred character within the intimacy of the string quartet, seeming to plead for grace.
In his final years, Ludwig van Beethoven produced a string of masterpieces that included the grand Ninth Symphony and the Missa Solemnis. Among these final works, the ones that are considered the greatest are his final string quartets, each one a divine inspiration of the highest order. His Quartet No. 13 in B-flat, Op. 130 is a jewel even among these. When it was first performed, however, there were objections to the final movement, a fugue so intensely demanding that initial players and listeners deemed it incomprehensible. In a rare gesture of conciliation with his listeners and critics, Beethoven wrote a new finale for the quartet and published the fugue separately as the Grosse Fuge. Even on its own, it remains a work of startling complexity, challenging physically for the players and intellectually for listeners. After a few splintered opening gestures (called an “Overtura”), the fugue proper begins with a leaping dotted theme against a syncopated quarter-note counter theme. Whether they are shouts of exultation or cries for mercy (or a combination of both) is within the latitude of each individual’s interpretation. This fugue’s unrelenting drive reaches a fierce climax which then dissolves into a smooth, tranquil, legato contrasting section. As this ebbs to a close, suddenly there emerges a playful dance-like final part, one that also builds to cathartic extremes, reintroduces the slow music, and then finally, at what seems the last possible moment, resolves in joyful stability.
—By Mark Mandarano