by David M. Zajic
Tonight the Columbia Orchestra presents a concert of chamber music for various ensembles of orchestral instruments. In so doing, we are both expanding our activities and reflecting on our history. The Columbia Orchestra began as a group of friends meeting in each other’s homes to make music for their own private enjoyment. Over twenty five years it has grown by steps into a full symphony orchestra giving public concerts. In an amusing cycle, it is now happens quite frequently that groups of friends who have met each other by playing the Columbia Orchestra gather in each other’s homes to play chamber music.
The term chamber music (in German kammermusik, in Italian musica da camera) came into general use during the 16th century. It was used to refer to private musical entertainments in wealthy homes, and also the performers of such music and the musical works performed during these concerts. By the 18th century, the term had broadened to refer to any music that was not intended for theater or church, and encompassed small symphonies, concertos and choral works. During the 19th century the term evolved into its current meaning: music composed for small instrumental ensemble, one player to a part and generally without conductor. Chamber music is usually written for two to nine players, and is performed at home without audience or in a small recital hall.
Although chamber music can be written for any group of instruments, certain ensembles have become standard in that a large amount of music has been written for them and musicians form permanent ensembles in those combinations. The earliest such ensemble is the string quartet, composed of two violins, one viola and one cello. Franz Josef Haydn is credited with establishing the basic technique of writing for string quartet.
A wind quintet consists of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn. This combination first appeared about 1800 when technical improvements to wind instruments allowed composers such as Antoine Reicha and Franz Danzi to apply the principles of Haydn’s string quartet technique to wind writing. The genre was abandoned during the later part of the 19th century, but was revitalized in the 20th century by composers such as Paul Hindemith, Carl Nielsen and Arnold Schoenberg.
Theodor Blumer (1881-1964) wrote numerous chamber works for winds in a lush, late Romantic style reminiscent of Richard Strauss. Blumer was born in Dresden in 1881. The son of a chamber musician and composer, he showed remarkable talent very early as a composer and pianist. His many years of association with the winds of the Chamber Music Society of the Dresden Staatskapelle inspired the composition of many chamber music works for winds. The Dance Suite is salon music for the concert stage, containing a fun mixture of popular and art music of the 1920s. Three of the suite’s six movements will be heard tonight. A rigaudon is a French dance of the 17th century. The slow Boston Waltz has an unmistakable smoky cabaret flavor and, and features the clarinet in its lowest register. The peppy One Step, with its Puccini-esque melodic and harmonic touches, rounds out the suite.
Five-part music for brass dates back to the 16th century, when the ensemble usually consisted of two cornets and three sackbuts. With the popularity of brass band music in the late 19th century, the brass quintet was revived, consisting of two trumpets, French horn, trombone and either tuba or bass trombone. The New York Brass Ensemble, founded in 1947, was the template for the modern brass quintet. In 1954 two members of that ensemble started the New York Brass Quintet, the first professional brass quintet. The Philip Jones Brass Ensemble in Britain and the Annapolis Brass Quintet in the USA have been influential in establishment of the brass quintet as a standard chamber ensemble, through commissions and performance of new works.
Victor Ewald (1860-1935) lived in St. Petersburg. Like many other Russian composers of the time, Ewald had a career outside of music. He trained as a civil engineer and was a professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering, and wrote music as an avocation. Ewald played horn and cello and enjoyed playing chamber music. Written in 1910, the Symphony for Brass was one of three works Ewald composed for brass quintet. The original scoring was probably for two cornets, e-flat horn, euphonium, and bass trombone. Today it is commonly performed by the standard ensemble . The lyrical melodies and pulsing rhythms were heavily influenced by Russian folk songs. Ewald's understanding of the brass ensemble genre makes this work a standard in contemporary brass quintet literature.
Another form of chamber music is the sonata for solo instrument with piano accompaniment. In the hands of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), one of the greatest masters of Romantic chamber music, the piano and cello are equal partners in a work Brahms called “a sonata for piano with cello.” Brahms sketched three movements for cello and piano in 1862. In 1865 he completed the work for Josef Gansbacher, an amateur cellist who had helped Brahms get a job as director of the Vienna SingAkademie in 1863. During the 1865 revisions Brahms removed the slow movement, an Adagio, now lost. The final version consists of a large first movement in sonata form followed by a minuet with a fugal finale.
Mark Weiser (b. 1968) started his musical studies in piano performance, but from the start enjoyed creating original music. While studying piano performance at Peabody Conservatory, Weiser realized that he preferred composition, making it his minor and later completing a Master’s degree. Among Weiser’s teachers was Columbia resident Tom Benjamin. Weiser currently lives in Los Angeles, and teaches composition, music theory and orchestration at the University of Southern California. Contemporary composers often write chamber music that is primarily intended for performance in front of an audience rather than private music-making at home by amateurs. This is certainly true of his challenging and engaging work, Triptych for string quartet, piano and percussion. Triptych was commissioned in 1996 by Jason Love for the New Horizons Music Ensemble, of which Weiser was a member. The work is in three sections, performed without a break. The first movement is primarily concerned with complex, irregular and unpredictable rhythms. The second movement is lyric, yet it is a dark and angular type of lyricism. The final movement focuses on counterpoint, the independent motion of multiple musical voices, and presents an acceleration to a frenzied climax. In part, Triptych was written in response to a criticism that Weiser’s music was “too pretty.” Undefensively, Weiser decided to explore a darker, more angular sound, while preserving his music’s clarity and accessibility.
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