CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAM NOTES
​by Judith Eckelmeyer

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The Cleveland Museum of Art
​The Castle Trio

Wednesday, March 25, 1992
​Gartner Auditorium

Marilyn McDonald, violin
Kenneth Slowik, cello
Lambert Orkis, fortepiano

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Program

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)​: Trio in G major, Hob. XV:25
     Andante
     Poco Adagio
​     Finale: Rondo, in the Gipsies' style

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)​: Trio in B-flat major, K. 502
     Allegro
     Larghetto
​     Allegretto

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)​: Piano in E-flat major, Op. 1, No. 1
     Allegro
     Adagio cantabile
     Scherzo: Allegro assai
     Finale: Presto

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Program Notes by Judith Eckelmeyer

The three trios for violin, cello and piano on this evening's program document the evolution of the genre at several levels in a fascinating way. The time-frame within which these works were composed is less than a decade--six years, at the most; nevertheless, they represent three very different concepts of how the piano and two string instruments should interact and balance each other, and what the format of the work as a whole should be.

Mozart's Trio in B-flat, written in 1788 and thus the earliest of the three, appears to have the most predictable structure overall and within each of its three movements, yet it is the most heavily oriented toward the piano, using the violin and cello only as heightened accompaniment. Haydn's and Beethoven's Trios in G and E-flat, respectively, were written within a year or so of each other, around 1793-1794. Both works have four movements. Beethoven's Trio is in the fast-slow-scherzo-fast arrangement typical of the late classical symphony, with the by-then standard arrangement of musical information in each movement. Haydn, however, used an odd moderate-slow-fast arrangement; he avoided the traditional sonata-allegro organization entirely, and built the last movement on the startling sounds of so-called "Hungarian" music (about which we shall say more later).

Curiously, despite their differences, the three works are bound up with each other in a historical fashion. The clarity of writing in Mozart's trios influenced Beethoven's Op. 1, No. 1, at a time when the young composer had only recently settled in Vienna in anticipation taking up the torch of Mozart's compositional greatness and keyboard virtuosity. However, Mozart had died in 1791, and Beethoven had become a pupil of Haydn's in those years; the senior master not only affected Beethoven's writing but, as the story goes, also played a role in the mini-drama of his publishing the three Op. 1 trios.

Haydn had been in the employ of the Esterházy family for about thirty years when his great patron, the musical Prince Nikolaus, died in 1790. Freed from his obligation, Haydn almost immediately accepted the invitation of Johann Peter Salomon, the noted violinist, to come to England where, world renowned composer that he was, he would find an eager, even voracious, audience ready to heap adulation upon him and the new works he would compose for them. Haydn returned to Vienna from his first English sojourn in 1792, but set out again in January 1794 for a second visit. In the interim, he accepted Beethoven as a pupil.

Over the past two centuries, the relationship between Beethoven and Haydn has generally been characterized as difficult, at  best. The predominant tradition has it that Beethoven soon resented Haydn's inadequate counterpoint instruction and perceived his simplicity and use of word-painting as limitations; to remedy this it is said, Beethoven applied to Johann Baptist Schenk (without Haydn's knowledge) to correct the counterpoint exercises in which Haydn had not found all of Beethoven's errors. Then, increasingly disappointed, Beethoven embarked on a formal course of instruction in counterpoint with Johann George Albrechtsberger, lasting from the beginning of 1794 until about the middle of the following year--almost completely corresponding to the period of Haydn's absence from Vienna. Just before Haydn's return in late August 1795, Beethoven's three Op. 1 Trios were published. The third, in C minor, is said to have generated further ill-feeling between the two composers because Haydn supposedly criticized it, while accepting the first two of the set. (Alternate versions of the story have Haydn urging Beethoven not to publish the work at all.) From this moment on, the tradition is that Haydn fumed at Beethoven's arrogance and revolutionary unconventionality, while Beethoven ridiculed Haydn's intransigent old-fashioned musical style and overly protective and cautious nature. Beethoven is said to have claimed that Haydn never taught him anything, a statement seemingly supported by the fact that he bypassed Haydn in dedicating the Op. 1 Trios to Prince Karl Lichnowsky.

As with so many traditions which grew up during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there are germs of fact and dollops of misunderstanding, exaggeration, and supposition in this story that recent scholarship has only begun to untangle. James Webster has provided a convincing reconstruction of the sources of the tradition, the errors or gaps in the story, and the means by which it has been perpetuated in "The Falling-out Between Haydn and Beethoven: The Evidence of the Sources" (Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honor of Elliot Forbes, ed. Lewis Lockwood and Phyllis Benjamin, Harvard University Press, 1985, 3-45); a secondary light on the matter has been provided in Martin Staehelin's " A Veiled Judgment of Beethoven by Albrechtsberger?" (ibid., 46-52). It would seem, now, that Schenk created much of the negative commentary about Haydn attributed to Beethoven because he envied Haydn. Further, Schenk probably invented and certainly promoted his own role in Beethoven's development of contrapuntal skill, but his invention was assisted by Beethoven's biographer Schindler (among others), who was not beneath supporting uncorroborated statements and perpetuating Schenk's biased account (although why he would do so is not clear in Webster's essay).

As for the tradition of Albrechtsberger's view of Beethoven as having never learned anything [counterpoint?] properly, it is now likely that the tradition is an extrapolation or exaggeration of the teacher's opinion that the younger composers of his time in general were ill-taught in the old, strict counterpoint of the sixteenth century.

On the basis of recent findings, then, it is appropriate to understand that during the period in which Beethoven's E-flat-and Haydn's G-major Trios were written, the two composers enjoyed a far more amicable and mutually respectful teacher/pupil relationship than tradition would allow. Haydn supported Beethoven's apparent need for increased subsidies from his elector in Bonn and referred to him in complimentary terms to others. And Beethoven, while evidently deceiving Haydn about his financial status and the dates of some of his compositions in order to win the increase in subsidy and while criticizing Haydn in partial truths, in fact praised Haydn's music and only after 1800 (during the crisis of impending deafness and personal pressures) resorted to more extreme negatives about his teacher.

Beethoven's deprecation of some details of Haydn's compositional style notwithstanding, Haydn and his music have been considered anew in our time and found to be vastly underrated in much of the literature since about 1830. A good deal of the credit for Haydn's "recovery" can be attributed to Karl Geiringer and H. C. Robbins Landon, whose biographies have opened doors to the richness of Haydn's genius. The Trio in G major, H. XV:25, is a case in point.

Haydn probably completed the Trio in G major in London during the early part of his second visit to England; the work was published there by Longman & Broderip and dedicated to Mrs. Rebecca Schroeter, who had taken piano lessons with Haydn in 1791 and had become a close friend. The Trio was immediately popular in England and on the Continent. The first movement presents a binary theme with four variations, alternating minor and major; the third is marked "solo" for the violin, and the fourth displays the piano. The second movement, in triple meter and ternary construction, replicates in miniature the arrangement of a minuet; the style is much more cantabile, however, and the dance-structure is not in the forefront. The middle section features the violin, with the piano accompanying in low-range triplets; the return to the first material begins with greater activity in all three instruments, but becomes simpler and calmer in the final measures. By contrast, the vivacious Finale takes the listener by storm. Haydn employs an unusual number of accent markings and extreme dynamic indication (such as f assai, ff, fz), and introduces unorthodox scale patterns along with strongly marked rhythms of a vigorous dance. The English edition of the Trio gave the title as "Rondo, in the Gypsies' stile," and hereby hangs a short tale.

Haydn's years of living and working with the Esterházy family in Hungary exposed him to the music of the region's gypsies, not only through direct experience of gypsy bands but also, possibly, through the few collections of so-called Hungarian dances in existence from about 1790. Is should be noted that while true Hungarian (Magyar) folk music is not the same thing as gypsy music, Haydn heard both types on the Esterházy estate. The gypsy style infiltrated Haydn's music in the 1760s; it shows up in 1772, in the spring quartet Op. 20, No. 4. In his Haydn: Chronicle and Works, Landon explains that the melodies Haydn indiscriminately called "all' Ongarese" or "in the Gypsies' stile"

are primarily those used for the recruiting of soldiers by Austrian officials, who employed gypsy bands to entice the peasants from the fields to the Wirthshaus [tavern]. There they made their mark on a slip of paper, the significance of which they hardly will have realized, dazzled as they were by the gorgeous white unforms, seduced by the strains of the most interesting 'folk music' in Europe and plied with the local Tokay wine (Bloomington: Indiana Press, 1976, 3:433-444).

Mozart's splendid Trio in B-flat is one of three written and published in 1788--the same year that saw this three final great symphonies and the first of his reorchestrations of Handel's oratorios (Acis and Galatea). The Trio has been little commented upon, but deserves hearing for its sheer beauty. It contains only brief moments of emotional stress; and in contrast to Mozart's vivid demonstration of contrapuntal prowess in the C major Symphony of the same year, the Trio wears its counterpoint most subtly, with great discretion and modesty.

The first movement is set up as a monothematic sonata form. The piano is the principal instrument, with the violin commenting and the cello either reinforcing the piano's bass or echoing a little passage of melody. The second movement, a triple-meter rondo, is exquisite in its delicacy and detail. A three-note anacrusis (upbeat) introduces each subsection in a unique overlapping method. The second retransition has the character of a small development; in the third statement of the principal theme, the cello comes into its own as a truly independent voice in a stronger, more contrapuntal section. The merry sonata rondo which concludes the Trio also shows the cello more actively in its later sections. In the Sturm und Drang of the F-minor second excursion we find the greatest passion in the entire work.

The opening of the first Trio of Beethoven's Op. 1, in E-flat major, strikes the ear with a melodious sweetness and graciousness that reflect not only Beethoven's youth (and thus Mozart's strong influence) but also the aristocratic environment in his early years in Vienna. After the opening flourishes, the melodic smoothness and light ornamentation stand out as vehicles for lovely dialogues between the piano and violin with the cello looking on. Dynamic accents (f, fp, sup) help to articulate contrasting phrases but rarely syncopate.

The second-movement is a rondo in A-flat, in which the principal theme is given by the piano and is varied somewhat at its return. The first excursion features the cello; the second is an affective minor-key discourse among the three instruments. This movement has the greatest attempts at counterpoint in the work, but these are not extensive. The slow drawing-out of the movement is a fine example of what would become one of the hallmarks of Beethoven's most sensitive mature works.

The rollicking scherzo is laid out like a typical dance movement but contains a developmental section leading to the return of original material in a tiny sonata form. In the Trio section, "always pianissimo and legato", chords in the strings support a transparent piano line. The movement disappears in a coda.

The Finale is ebullient. Leaps of a tenth in the piano mark the opening and are made much of in the development, recapitulation, and coda. In the last, the violin extends the leap to a twelfth, and by modifying the pitches slightly and renaming them, Beethoven slithers briefly from E-flat to E major before returning home.

Judith Eckelmeyer © 1992

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As The Castle Trio performance is not available on YouTube, please enjoy this performance:

Haydn's Trio in G major, Hob. XV:25
EMERALD Piano Trio
​Aleksandr Snytkin, violin Marie-Thaïs Levesque Oliver, violoncello Anastasia Markina, piano

Mozart's Trio in B-flat major, K. 502
Amatis Piano Trio
Lea Hausmann, violin | Samuel Shepherd, cello | Mengjie Han, piano

Beethoven's Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 1, No. 1
ATOS Trio

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