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MOZART

Five Fugues for String Quartet from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, Book II, K.405

String Quartet in C major, K.465 (“Dissonance”)

Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K.581

There has certainly been no lack of opinion as to the influence or non-influence of J.S. Bach on composers of subsequent generations. The common belief that Bach was re-discovered by Mendelssohn is a only partially true. The story that the St. Matthew Passion manuscript disappeared only to surface sometime in the 1820s in a store as it was about to be to be used as wrapping paper for cheese, may or may not be true; but as important as the 1829 performance of the St. Matthew Passion was, its sibling the St. John's Passion had already been performed in part in 1811 and the complete score in 1822. Two of his sons, the eldest W.F and second eldest C.P.E, were proponents of their father's work. C.P.E. Bach, in particular, took pains to maintain his father's manuscripts and reputation, performing the Credo from the The B-Minor Mass in 1786. Martin Geck in his Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work states: “The Well-Tempered Clavier did not need to be rediscovered: Bach's cantus firmus remained in continuous use among the cognoscenti.."

Every composer worth his salt discovers Bach, and Mozart was no exception. What Mozart supposedly stated about C.P.E. Bach could also be applied to J.S. Bach: “He is the father and we are the children.” There is in the performance of these works the certainty that Mozart held Bach in high esteem. Except for some minor technical and trans-positional modifications, the fugues are note for note transcriptions of the originals. All five that Mozart chose are written for 4 voices. If Mozart had wanted to show that he could outdo Bach, he certainly could have chosen more difficult pieces or use one of the two fugues that were written for 5 voices. The Emerson Quartet played these pieces in a style appropriate to their use as study pieces for Mozart to gain skill in writing contrapuntally, resulting ultimately in his writing of the great fugal finale of the Fourty-First Symphony

. The second work on the program was Mozart's String Quartet in C Major K.465(“Dissonance”). Without going into the history of dissonance (a word with all kinds of definitions and interpretations musical and non-musical) other than to say that the dissonance that Mozart uses in this quartet is unusual for this composer in this particular period, but not uncommon for composers of earlier periods. The works of Machaut, Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Scarlatti to name a few were rife with dissonance, so much so that one wonders why Mozart's use of it was so shocking in its time. Both C.P.E Bach and W.F. Bach used it, W.F. Bach even composing a string symphony called the Dissonant. As a matter of fact, one would think the collective subconscious of the time would have overtaken the tenets of the Age of Enlightenment in regard to musical resolution. Understandably so, the modern ear has a hard time even recognizing where the dissonance is in this quartet, so harmless is its effect

. The beginning of the first movement of this quartet, one of six dedicated to Haydn, creates such a sensation of ab initio that it seems very likely that Haydn reciprocated the dedication from Mozart in Haydn's opening movement of the The Creation. The approach to this work by the Emerson Quartet, which as I said above worked for Bach-Mozart did not do so for this particular piece. The playing was technically faultless but suffered from a mechanical execution. This doesn't have to be the case with music played hundreds of times. if one puts one's heart into it as Gil Shaham did in an earlier Mostly Mozart performance of Mozart's A Major Violin Concerto., the music would express this attitude.

The same cannot be said of the concluding work the Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K.581. The addition of David Shifirin to the stage seemed to awaken the Quartet from their sleep. The players warmed up to their instruments and played with flair and feeling. Special mention should be given to the violist Lawrence Dutton for his tender and sensitive playing of the second variation in the final movement. Now if the same attention to the music as Mr. Dutton gave had been given by the other players to the previously performed works, this would have been a truly great evening of music.

Although the Emerson String Quartet performed a pre-concert recital at 6:30, those of us who appeared for the scheduled concert should not have been penalized with a performance of only forty minutes in the first half and, even less, thirty-five in the second. Perhaps, based on the audience's applause, an encore was in order?

Stan Metzger