On Monday evening I went to hear the first of the Jupiter Players' three summer recitals at Christ and St. Stephens Church on West 69th Street. The program featured the works of Johann Joseph Fux, George Friedrich Fuchs, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, all of whom had some connection, no matter how vague, to the Mannheim school of music..
The recital began with Fux's Sinfonia in F Major (c. 1701) for flute, oboe and cello. Fux was a late Baroque composer known not so much for his music as for his pedagogical text Gradus ad Parnassum, derived from his studies in Italy of Palestrinian polyphony, that was to become the standard treatise in the practice of counterpoint and is still in use today in musical education courses. Bach, Hadyn, Mozart and Beethoven all possessed copies and made use of it in their own efforts to master the technique. In the nineteenth century, Ludwig Ritter von Köchel, the same who prepared the catalog listings of Mozart's music, became interested in Fux's work and prepared a catalog of his compositions as well. This led to a rediscovery of Fux's music and he is regarded today as one of the most important composers of the Austrian Baroque. The present Sinfonia - whose six movements included such intriguing titles as La joye des fidels sujets and Les énemis Confus - was an extremely accomplished and enjoyable work and one wonders why Fux is not better known as a composer.
The next work was Fuchs's Horn Quartet No. 1, Op. 31. Fuchs was a student of Haydn and later became one of the first teachers of clarinet at the newly founded Paris Conservatoire. Despite these positions, Fuchs was and is one of the most obscure composers I've come across. Other than the German Wikipedia article, there is almost no biographical information available regarding him. As for the three movement quartet for horn, violin, viola and cello played at the recital, it was interesting but not particularly distinguished. It did contain in the violin part an example of the famous "Mannheim rocket."
This was followed by Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major, Op. 28 (1801) here transcribed for string quartet by the composer's amanuensis Ferdinand Ries. This was the piano sonata that immediately followed the much more famous "Moonlight" Sonata and it has sometimes suffered by comparison. Nonetheless, it is a great work in its own right. Though the title "Pastoral" was appended to the work by Beethoven's publishers and not the composer himself, it does seem fitting especially in the opening bars of the first movement. The references to pastoral themes that the composer was to develop more fully in his Sixth Symphony can also be clearly heard in the final movement. Listening to the work, one has the impression that Beethoven was in a reflective mood when he wrote the piece. This was shortly before the beginning of the middle period and here the composer seems to be glancing back - this was his last four-movement sonata - at what he had already accomplished even as he looked forward to creating something entirely new. In this regard, the dedication to Joseph von Sonnenfels is telling. Swafford, in his biography of the composer, has emphasized the importance the German enlightenment, of which Sonnenfels was a leading figure, had on the development of Beethoven's artistic outlook. It may have been that Beethoven, in search of new ideas, looked first to the philosophical basis from which his art had originally sprung.
After intermission, the recital concluded with Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1 (1838). I had only heard a two weeks before a performance at Juilliard of the Quartet No. 4 and it was interesting to compare the character of the two works. Mendelssohn was always much more a classicist than a romantic in spirit, and so it's not surprising that he chose to write for the second movement of the No. 3 a menuetto rather than a scherzo. Much more telling is the restraint the composer shows in third movement andante. There's no wild display of emotion here, only a perfectly planned exercise designed to be pleasant rather than intoxicating. There's a sense of control and deliberation in the manner in which Mendelssohn created his effects that never allows the listener a glimpse of the individual behind the craftsman.
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