by Will Hertz

Bridge was better known during his lifetime as a chamber music musician and conductor than as a composer. Born and trained in Britain, he spent his professional life mainly in London, and in the mid-1920s moved to the South Downs in southeastern England, where he died in relative obscurity. A generation after his death, his importance as a composer came to be recognized, thanks to the efforts of his student Benjamin Britten, who sponsored performances of Bridge’s music at Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival.

Bridge was initially trained at the Royal College of Music as a violinist, but he switched to the viola and studied under Lionel Tertis, at the time the world’s leading violist and viola teacher.

Now, the viola has long been a favorite instrument in chamber music because of its ability to complement the violin or violins and to fill in the inner harmonies. Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn all wrote lively parts for the viola, and they preferred to play it when playing chamber music with their friends.

However, there has always been, and continues to be, a shortage of solo or chamber material for the viola. There are structural reasons for this. First, as a practical matter, the overall range of the viola is smaller than that of the violin. While violinists can play high on the fingerboard, composers generally avoid the extreme upper notes of the viola because the instrument’s additional size puts them out of reach for most players.

Second, the viola is typically about one-seventh larger than the violin, but to equal the violin in strength and brilliance it would have to be at least 50 per cent larger. This would prevent its being played on the shoulder. Because of this, the notes in the lower register are only incompletely reinforced, and the resulting sound is less rich and powerful than a violin’s and sometimes strikes our ears as faintly hollow and with a nasal quality.

Given the shortage of viola material, Lionel Tertis prodded his composer friends to expand the limited repertory for the instrument. Although a prolific composer, Bridge responded with only two short solo pieces and two viola duets to play with Tertis in 1912 at a concert at London’s Wigmore Hall. The duets were never published and the manuscripts were lost, but a pencilled draft of the second duet, the Lament for Two Violas, was later found in the Royal College of Music library. It was reconstructed by the composer and performed by him with composer Paul Hindemith, also a violist.

The lament is an eight-minute, warmly romantic, three-part, instrumental song. The work opens with a spacious and eloquent solo for one viola, and then the second viola joins in counterpoint. Together they spin out one of the most haunting musical dialogues ever written, with the contrapuntal texture becoming more animated, rising to a climax, and then subsiding.

The following announcement appeared in the April 2, 1788, issue of the Wiener Zeitung, and was repeated April 5 and 9:

"Three new quintets for 2 violins, 2 violas and cello which, beautifully and correctly written, I offer on subscription. The price is 4 ducats or 18 gulden in Viennese currency. The subscriptions may be ordered daily from Herr Puchberg at Sallinz’ business establishment in the High Market, where from the 1st of July the works will be available. I request out-of-town music lovers to pay postage for delivery.

Kapellmeister Mozart

in the service of his Majesty"

 

The three quintets – K. 406, 515 and 516 – had been completed a year earlier but had aroused little public interest, and the announcement was an attempt by the debt-ridden composer to stimulate their sale. Although he twice repeated the message, again the public failed to respond. In a follow-up in late June, Mozart confessed: "Since the number of subscribers is still very small, I find myself obliged to postpone the publication of my 3 quintets until 1 January 1789."

Since other Mozart works were winning public favor and all three quintets are vintage Mozart, why did the quintets meet such impenetrable indifference?

Unlike the string quartet form, which Haydn had brought to a high level of acceptability, string quintets did not appeal to 18th century musicians or audiences. In contrast to the clarity and balance of the quartet, the quintet, with its additional viola or cello, sounded muddy and thick about the middle. Significantly, Haydn wrote no string quintets, and when asked why, he replied, "Because no one asked me."

Why, then, did Mozart turn to so unpromising a medium for serious composition?

One theory is that Mozart wrote the three quintets to win the favor of Frederick William II, the new King of Prussia and a gifted cellist. However, there is no record of Mozart’s ever having submitted the works to Frederick William. Further, the cello enjoys nothing like the understandable prominence that it was assigned in the three subsequent quartets that Mozart did, in fact, compose for the King.

A more likely answer is that Mozart felt that the five-voice texture of the quintet offered more latitude for musical creativity than did the quartet. The five instruments not only made possible greater tonal and harmonic richness but also opened up new groupings. For example, they enabled Mozart to set violin against cello, or violin against viola, with the other instruments in three-part harmony; or to balance a pair of violins against a pair of violas, above the cello; or to contrast a higher trio of strings with a lower trio, one of the violas serving in both camps. It is significant that in converting the quartet into the quintet, Mozart added a second viola, his preferred instrument when playing quartets because of his interest in the inner voices.

Whatever Mozart’s thinking, there is general agreement today that his experiment in five-part string writing was highly successful. In particular, the K. 515 and K. 516 quintets are considered among his most deeply moving compositions. Mozart himself must have liked the results since, notwithstanding the coolness of the public, he returned to the string quintet form in December, 1790 (K. 593) and in April, 1791 (K. 614)

Of the three quintets offered in the Wiener Zeitung, K. 406 is a transcription of the wind serenade K. 388, completed five years earlier, and was probably undertaken to find a second market for the work. K. 515 and 516, on the other hand, were conceived afresh, and the closeness of their completion dates – April 19 and May 16, 1787 – suggests that Mozart intended them as a contrasting pair. K. 515, in C major, is characterized by optimism and confidence; K. 516, in G minor, by pessimism and despair. In this regard, as well as in key, the two quintets are often likened to the G minor and C Major "Jupiter" symphonies.

The G minor quintet begins on a note of anguish, which continues unabated throughout the first movement. The tension is due partly, of course, to the darker coloration added by the second viola. But a number of other devices are equally important – the presentation of the two main themes in broken, plaintive fragments; the continuation in the second theme of the tonic minor instead of the customary shift into a contrasting major; the almost continual undercurrent of throbbing chords in the middle strings; and the liberal use of chromatics (half-steps), starting in the second measure. The overall effect is heart-breaking.

The G minor tonality and despondent mood continue into the second movement, a minuetto in name but hardly in spirit. Any tendency for the tension to relax is crushed by the repeated appearance of two bitter, off-beat, ejaculatory chords.

The following adagio, played with strings muted, prompted Tchaikovsky to write:

"No one else has ever known how to interpret so beautifully and exquisitely in music the feeling of resignation and inconsolable sorrow....I had to hide in the farthest corner of the concert-room so that others would not see how much this music affected me."

 

The brief fourth movement is another adagio, even more despairing than the music that has gone before. The middle strings return to the throbbing chords of the first movement while the first violin plays a series of declaratory passages of increasing dissonance and intensity, based loosely on themes from the first and third movements. The tension then relaxes, and the final movement, a graceful rondo, follows without pause.

Some critics have found the rondo anti-climactic; others have argued that still another serving of despair would have been unbearable. In any event, such abrupt changes of pace are not uncommon in Mozart. After Don Giovanni sinks into the fires of hell, it should be remembered, Mozart’s opera ends on a note of relief and rejoicing.

The following announcement appeared in the March 25, 1828, issue of the Wiener Theaterzeitung:

"Among the manifold musical art exhibitions which have been offered us in the course of this season and still await us, one should attract general attention the more because it offers enjoyment both new and surprising by the novelty and sterling value of the compositions and the attractive variety among the musical items as well as the sympathetic collaboration of the most celebrated local artists.

"Franz Schubert, whose powerfully intellectual, enchantingly lovely and original tone-poems have made him the favorite of the whole musical public, and which may well secure their creator a more than ephemeral, nay an imperishable, name by their genuine artistic value, will perform on 26^th March, at a private concert in the Austrian Philharmonic Society’s room, a series of the latest products of his mind.

"May the glorious German tone-poet, then, be granted an attendance such as his modesty and unobtrusiveness would alone deserve, quite apart from his artistic eminence and the rare and great musical enjoyment which is to be expected."

 

The announcement also included the necessary ticket information and the works on the all-Schubert program. The latter included the first movement of a new string quartet; several lieder; a chorus for male voices; Auf dem Strom, a song with an "obligatory" part for the horn; and the Piano Trio in E flat major. Auf dem Strom was specially written for this concert, while the trio had previously been played in public only once three months earlier.

Schubert had been dreaming of a concert of his music at least since 1823, but he could not afford the cost. This was the only way, he believed, to promote the sale and performance of his music. Finally, in the spring of 1828, eight months before his death, Schubert’s friends persuaded the artists to perform without charge and the Philharmonic society to let Schubert use its concert hall – housed in an old mansion called "The Red Hedgehog."

His friends then wrote the flowery announcement quoted above, packed the house, applauded fervently, demanded encores, and, after the concert, adjourned to "The Snail," a favorite inn, to celebrate. The press comment was generally favorable although a Dresden journal said the concert "paled before the radiance" of a recent concert by Paganini. Most important, Schubert was left with a profit of more than 300 gulden, in those days a substantial sum.

Both Auf dem Strom and the Piano Trio escaped the fate of most of Schubert’s music of his final year – to lie undiscovered for 20 years or more following his death. The artists who performed Auf dem Strom at the March 26 concert repeated it at a concert of their own in April, and the trio was given several public performances. Significantly, both works were selected for performance in January, 1829, at an invitational concert sponsored by the Austrian Philharmonic Society to raise funds for Schubert’s cemetery monument.

Auf dem Strom was published in Vienna four months after Schubert’s death. The Piano Trio was published by a Leipzig firm just before Schubert’s death in November – the only Schubert work to be published outside Austria during his lifetime. However, the publication took place only after a series of delays and a tense exchange of correspondence, which paints a pathetic picture of the composer’s financial worries during his final summer. Given the normal delays in delivery, the chances are he never saw or held a printed copy.

The Piano Trio is one of Schubert’s longest instrumental works, taking some 42 minutes. Its first movement, in fact, runs to 634 measures, and its fourth movement, to 748. And this was after Schubert had cut 99 measures before publication! One factor in the work’s excessive length is its typically Schubertian abundance of melody. Another is Schubert’s habit of subjecting his melodies to long sequences of modulations (key changes). A third – let’s face it – is the trio’s tendency to be diffuse and repetitive.

These factors are clearly evident in the first movement, which departs in many ways in structure and content from the sonata form that Schubert inherited from Haydn and Mozart. The movement opens with a bold theme, announced by the three instruments in unison. After 16 measures, the theme continues with a completely different strain for the cello. The second theme also has two distinct elements, both in a minor mode – a rhythmic tune marked by repeated notes and presented by the piano, and a flowing melody stated by the cello with the violin joining two measures later.

And Schubert’s outburst of melody is still not finished. He combines the two elements of the first theme into a brand new third theme, and it is this theme – more accurately, its first four measures – that provides the raw material for the development. The violin and cello repeat these four measures again and again against triplets in the piano in a breath-taking series of modulations extending some 190 measures. Eventually, we are led back to the restatement of the first theme.

The second movement is an example of Schubert’s occasional use of a song as the basis for an instrumental work. In most cases, he used a song of his own. For the slow movement of this trio, however, he uses a Swedish folk song, "The Sun Has Set," which he heard a visiting Swedish tenor sing at a Vienna house party. However, he adds a marching gait, first stated by the piano, as the cello presents the theme. He then finds in the song a high drama far from the simple original, and the movement gradually builds in tension until it explodes in a disturbing and violent climax.

The third movement, Scherzo, again offers a wealth of melody. The main section treats them in canonic imitation – that is, with the piano leading off with the tune and the strings following with the same strain a measure later. Sometimes the order is reversed and the lag stretches to two measures, but virtually every measure is an imitation of another. In the contrasting trio, the rhythm changes to a stomping ländler – an Austrian country dance.

The long finale has three themes. The first, in a sprightly 6/8 rhythm, is stated at the outset by the piano. Schubert’s biographer Alfred Einstein points out the similarity of this theme with Schubert’s song "Skolie," which urges us to enjoy May flowers before their fragrance disappears, and the tune here has the same joyful intent.

The second theme, in duple time and presented in several different guises, has a distinctive Hungarian gypsy flavor. The third theme is the Swedish folk song from the second movement – one of the first examples of the practice of tying a work together by using a theme from an earlier movement. After a second and final appearance of the Swedish tune, the music increases in excitement, and the trio reaches a jubilant ending.

© 2006 by Willard J. Hertz