Sunday, May 23, 2010, 3:00pm

Sponsored by The Placitas Artists Series Board of Directors

Willy Sucre and Friends 

play 

String Quartets

The program should include:

String Quartet No. 1
"A Revival Service"
by Charles Ives

I. Chorale: Andante con moto
II. Prelude: Allegro
III. Offertory: Adagio cantabile
IV. Postlude: Allegro marziale

Charles Edward Ives was born on October 20, 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut. During his four years at Yale University (1894—1898), Ives’s musical activities were channeled in two different directions. At school he studied composition with Horatio Parker, an American-born, German-trained composer who was musical, competent, intelligent, and overwhelmingly conservative. Outside the regular course of study, to help pay for his education, he held the position of organist at New Haven’s Centre Church. As church organist, he was growing bored with the elementary harmonies of the hymns and began “gussying up” the music he played or composed for church occasions. The minister, Dr. Griggs, encouraged this experimentation, saying, “Never you mind what the ladies’ committee says, my opinion is that God gets awfully tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.” The experiences with Parker and at the church influenced the creation of this string quartet, the young composer’s first major work, which he completed in 1896 when he was 21 and a student at Yale.

Although Charles Ives is now accepted as one of the truly great pioneers of contemporary American music, the first string quartet was not performed until 1957 and had to wait until 1961, seven years after his death, for publication. He died in New York City on May 19, 1954.

Notes adapted from Melvin Berger's Guide to Chamber Music.

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String Quartet in F Major, op. 135
by Ludwig van Beethoven

I.  Allegretto
II. Vivace
III.  Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo
IV. Der schwer gefasste Entschluss: Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Es muss sein! Grave, ma non troppo tratto; Allegro

Beethoven was born December 16, 1770, in Bonn.  He composed this final quartet, the sixteenth, during August and Sep­tember in 1826, finishing it on October 30 at his brother’s country es­tate in Gneixendorf, Austria. It was written during an emotionally draining time for the composer. His nephew Karl, his responsibility after a bitter and hard-fought court battle, attempted suicide, and money problems and increasing ill health further added to his miseries. But, like so many works written in similar circumstances, the quartet seems to laugh in the face of tribulation.

Op. 135 represents a sharp departure from the other late quartets. For one thing, the work is quite short. One possible explanation of its brevity is supplied by the composer’s friend, Karl Holz, who reported that Beethoven, believing that his publisher had not paid him enough for the work, had said: “If [he] sends circumcised ducats he shall have a circumcised quartet. That’s why it is so short.”

Some say it has a deep sense of calmness and peaceful resignation. Those who hear in it a serene acceptance of the inevitability of death refer to a letter Beethoven sent with the quartet to his publisher, Moritz Schles­inger: “Here, my dear friend, is my last quartet. It will be the last; and indeed it has given me much trouble. For I could not bring myself to compose the last movement. But as your letters were reminding me of it, in the end I decided to compose it. And that is the reason why I have written the motto: ‘The difficult decision— Must it be?—It must be, it must be!’  Others say it was Beethoven’s last (though awkward) little joke.

It was published in September 1827, and the Schuppanzigh Quartet gave the premiere in Vienna on March 23, 1828, almost one year to the day after the composer’s death on March 26, 1827.

Notes adapted from Melvin Berger's Guide to Chamber Music.

Time, date, and program subject to change.