Quartets and Quintets in the Classical Era

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There is something delicious about how music sounds with just sufficient instruments to fill out the harmony!

Back in Bach's day, I think it is fair to say that rhythm and syncopation were really the driving engines of the musical scene.  Though some of Bach's melodies are among the most lovely ever written, the vast majority of his orchestral works appeal to us ---to me, at least--- because of the rhythm.  The harmony does certainly play a major role; in fact, the harmony actually plays a rhythmic role, which is a phenomenon that is just a bit too subtle for me to describe.

Alongside the rhythms and the harmony, is the texture created by the interweaving melodies of the parts, or the voices.  This texture is characteristic of the contrapuntal era, beginning before Palestrina, and culminating probably with Mozart.  Some, of course, insist that Bach was the crowning glory of Counterpoint, and how are we to argue?  Chacun á son gout, as they say.

Let's leave that aside for the moment.

Imagine a lovely composition for just three voices!  Many composers have contemplated this very ideal, but Bach went further: what if the three voices were perfectly matched?  One of the ideals of chamber music is to have a small ensemble of perfectly matched voices.


Homogeneous Ensembles

At the end of the Renaissance, and up to the beginning of the Baroque, there was a genre of composition for a small set of matched instruments called a consort.  Two major consort types have come down to us: the Consort of Viols, and the School of Recorders (or consort of recorders).  Noble houses commissioned skilled instrument-makers to create a set of matched instruments of sizes ranging from a high treble size (or even a tiny descant), down to a large bass size (or larger contrabass size).  Then, the patron hoped, the jaded court composer would be spurred on to write new and better music for this matched set of instruments.

Among the consort pieces I enjoy the most are those of William Byrd and John Downland.  Here is an In Nomine by Byrd:



(The performer appears to have played all the parts himself.)

The homogeneity of the tone-color of the instruments --in this case, the single instrument-- enhances the contrapuntal texture, or the weaving in and out of the parts. Syncopation, especially --where different voices sound at different times, on the beat and off-- is particularly effective.

Bach wrote a number of Trios for the organ, where the two hands and the pedals played a single voice each, constituting a trio.  The important thing in Bach's Trio Sonatas was the delicacy of the texture and the lively rhythms, and not the weight of the sonority.  The Trio Sonatas are almost invariably performed with very light registration (very few stops), most performers understanding the esthetics of the Sonatas perfectly.  Here is the Trio Sonata in E Flat major played on an organ.  Here it is, played by a modern string ensemble.  It is just as charming, but the neutral organ tones lend themselves more towards enjoying the music independently of the performance (though an organist would be indignant at taking second place to the music itself, perhaps).

The famous Loeki Stardust recorder ensemble from Amsterdam is one of the few recorder ensembles that I am familiar with, and the following is this group playing the famous (incomplete) last fugue from The Art of Fugue of J. S. Bach.



Joseph Haydn, you may know, developed the musical structure called Sonata Form.  This was a plan for writing the large-scale first movement of a symphony.  (Subsequent movements contrasted both in mood and complexity with the First movement, so their forms were correspondingly simpler, usually, though often the last movement, too, was in a variant of Sonata Form.)  Another genre Haydn brought to full development was the String Quartet.  In some ways, the String Quartet, both the ensemble consisting of two violins, a viola and a 'cello, and the String Quartet form, consisting of a first movement in Sonata Form, followed by up to three more movements, was a successor to the Viol Consort, and the multi-movement pieces written for them.  The instruments were perfectly matched, and the music written for the ensemble exploited to the fullest the homogeneity of tone of the instruments.  (It must be noted that the three sorts of instruments do actually have a degree of distinctiveness in their tones, even if they sound very similar indeed.  Some composers exploit this slight variety in their sonorities, especially modern composers.)

Here is a string quintet movement by Mozart (not a quartet, as I had originally written!).



Heifetz, Primrose and Piatigorsky were famous performers of their time, and we can tolerate the poor recording quality to hear these folks play!

Heterogeneous Ensembles

In contrast to string quartets and viol consorts, a different sort of ensemble became popular in Mozart's day, namely the Woodwind Quintet.  The woodwind quintet consists of a flute, a clarinet, an oboe, a bassoon, and, of all things, a French Horn.  On one hand, these are five very distinctive voices, but on the other hand, they are similar enough to be able to blend together to a certain extent.  Quite honestly, I know little about this particular sort of ensemble, and the genre of music written for it (except that I have been scoring a movement that I wrote for various groups of instruments, including a wind quartet).  Let's look for examples of Quintets from about Mozart's time.

Well, I couldn't find any!  What a shame.  But here is a quintet anyway.  They're playing a movement from one of my very favorite modern suites: Le Tombeau de Couperin, by Maurice Ravel.  (It was originally written for piano solo, and subsequently orchestrated for orchestra.  Ravel was a genius at orchestration):



This is a piece by Anton Reicha:



And my Serenade. This is scored for Flute, Clarinet, English Horn (Cor Anglais) and Bassoon.

As I was fooling around with this piece, I was fascinated with the dual problems of scoring it (that is, assigning instrumentation to it) on the one hand, to make the strands of the harmony blend, and on the other, to make the strands of the harmony not blend too much.  For instance, if I had one instrument looping upwards past other melody lines, I didn't want the motion to be obscured by those other melodies.  This sort of thing happens beginning at 2:24, where the flute spirals past the rather laconic melody in the clarinet.

I also realized something directly that I had only read about up until last winter: the Clarinet has two entirely different "voices" in different parts of its range.  (Yes, I know everybody knew this but me, but ... never mind.)  In the higher register, which is beautiful in its limpid simplicity (or jaunty and perky, when playing popular or jazz music), the tone is actually uninteresting and sort of characterless.  In the lower register (more reminiscent of the ancestor instrument from which the Clarinet was developed: the chalumeau, the clarinet has a unique reediness different from the oboe and the bassoon.  In other words, the flute, clarinet, oboe, French horn and bassoon are really six quite different instruments, which can be made to blend together beautifully, but also keep their individuality.

Beginning in the time of Mozart, music that was essentially classical (using the word "classical" to distinguish from popular dance music) was being played by commoners: ordinary folks, tailors, cobblers, carpenters, farmers, etc.  Music, until this time, was played for the nobility by professional musicians, or played for dancing by musicians while they were off-duty, or by completely different musicians, who played for contributions from the dancers, e.g. street musicians.  But now, groups of serious musicians had obtained instruments for themselves, such as clarinets and bassoons and such, and played serious music on the street; or at least semi-serious music.  They formed themselves into clubs and Harmonies, and Mozart wrote some of his most brilliant music for them.  Some of Mozart's serenades are for these sorts of groups, including this one, K 375 in E flat:



This movement is incorrigibly jolly --it is the Finale-- but you can hear clarinets high up, bassoons earnestly keeping the bass going, and horns occasionally splashing chords in the middle.  (Flutes seem to have been used rarely, since it was probably too difficult to play flutes while marching along.)

The  Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet in rehearsal.

[More later.]

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