String Trio in B-Flat Major, D. 471
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Composed in 1816.

In June 1816, when he was nineteen, Schubert received his first fee for one of his compositions (a now-lost cantata for the name-day of his teacher, Heinrich Watteroth), and decided that he had sufficient reason to leave his irksome teaching post at his father’s school in order to follow the life of an artist. He moved into the Viennese apartments of his devoted friend Franz von Schober, an Austrian civil servant who was then running the state lottery, and celebrated his new freedom by composing incessantly, rising shortly after dawn (sometimes he slept with his glasses on so as not to waste any time getting started in the morning), pouring out music until early afternoon, and then spending the evening haunting the cafés of Grinzing or making music with friends. These convivial soirées became more frequent and drew increasing notice during the following months, and were the principal means by which Schubert’s works became known to the city’s music lovers. In September 1816, he began a Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello in B-flat major (D. 471) for these so-called “Schubertiads,” but completed no more than the first movement and 39 measures of an Andante before breaking off, perhaps, conjectured the distinguished German-American musicologist Alfred Einstein, because “he was not clear in his mind about the form.” (A similar difficulty probably caused the B minor Symphony to be left unfinished six years later.) Later that year, however, he did finish two symphonies (Nos. 4 and 5), a cantata in honor of the 66th birthday of his counterpoint teacher Antonio Salieri, a Magnificat, a Stabat Mater, and a large number of songs, including Der Wanderer. His only completed String Trio, also in B-flat (D. 581), dates from September 1817.

In its structure, style and general demeanor, the unfinished String Trio in B-flat evinces Schubert’s thorough grounding in the Classical idiom of Haydn and Mozart. Its only completed movement opens with a sunny main theme buoyed upon a rustling accompaniment. A violin-cello duet supported by the reiterated notes of the viola leads to the subsidiary subject, a melody initiated by an ascending arpeggio in the violin which is balanced by quick, descending scale motifs shared by all the instruments. A few shadows pass across the music as the exposition closes, and serve as the expressive bridge to the development section, which is more serious in character than the surrounding music. The recapitulation returns the themes and mood of the opening.

Sonata for Violin and Cello
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Composed in 1920-1922. Premiered on April 6, 1922 in Paris, by violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange and cellist Maurice Maréchal.

Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello was occasioned by a commission from Henry Prunières, editor of the periodical Le Revue musicale. Early in 1920, Prunières requested short pieces from some of the day’s most important composers — Bartók, Dukas, Falla, Goossens, Malipiero, Roussel, Satie, Schmitt, Stravinsky and Ravel — to be published in the December issue of the Revue devoted to the memory of Claude Debussy, who had died two years before. Though his relationship with Debussy had been more one of admiring rivalry than friendship, Ravel willingly contributed to the project a single-movement Sonata for Violin and Cello, a particularly difficult medium he might have chosen under the influence of Zoltán Kodály’s Duo of 1914 for the same instruments. The work was premiered with the others comprising the Debussy memorial collection in Paris in January 1921. By February 1922, Ravel had rounded out the Sonata with three additional movements.

“I believe that the Sonata marks a turning point in my career,” Ravel said. “Bareness is here driven to the extreme: restraint from harmonic charm; more and more emphatic reversion to the spirit of melody.” The Sonata’s opening movement is organized as a straightforward sonata form. The cello presents a lyrical melody of modal character as the main theme while the violin provides an arpeggiated accompaniment of uncertain harmonic identity. Two other themes fill out the exposition: a motive of wide leaps introduced by the cello, and a simple strain in even notes presented by the violin to the syncopated comments of its partner. A new idea begins the movement’s central development section, which goes on to incorporate several motives from the exposition. A full recapitulation rounds out this opening Allegro. The following movement is a quicksilver scherzo juxtaposing duple and triple meters in bracing (sometimes even bitonal) harmonic configurations. The slow movement is largely contemplative in mood but rises to a climax of considerable dissonance at its midpoint. (Ravel said that he once thought of having the movement printed mostly in black ink which would give way to poppy red for the central section.) The thematically abundant finale exhibits a fiery Gypsy personality.

Duet with Two Eyeglasses Obbligato in E-Flat Major for Viola and Cello, WoO 32
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Composed in 1796 or 1797.

Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz, born in 1759 into a family on the periphery of the Hungarian nobility in the village of Lestiny (today in north-central Slovak Republic), settled in Vienna in 1784 as secretary of the Hungarian Chancellery, powerfully motivated by his love of music to move to the city of Haydn and Mozart and Gluck. Joseph Sonnleithner, the librettist of Fidelio, called him “an expert violoncellist and a sound and tasteful composer,” and Zmeskall regularly participated in and sponsored musical events at his home and around town. Sonnleithner continued that Zmeskall was “too modest to publish his own compositions [which came to include sixteen string quartets and a few other chamber works],” but not too shy to introduce himself to a gruff but brilliant Rhineland pianist-composer who descended upon Vienna in November 1792 — Ludwig van Beethoven. Zmeskall, well-connected in Viennese society and a bachelor, introduced the 22-year-old musician around town, played chamber music with him, and took apparent pleasure in shepherding him through the practicalities of life that seemed always just beyond Beethoven’s easy management — sharpening his quill pens, ordering his wine, finding him servants and accommodations. They remained steady if not bosom friends (Beethoven once churlishly lumped him among the hangers-on that he valued “merely for what they do for me”), and were regular correspondents and frequent companions for the rest of their lives. (Zmeskall died in 1833, six years after Beethoven.) Beethoven dedicated the Op. 95 Quartet of 1810 to Zmeskall; Zmeskall, crippled by then with arthritis, was carried by his servants to the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in May 1824.

In the early days of their friendship, in 1796 or 1797, Beethoven wrote an ingratiating Duet for Viola and Cello in E-flat major that he and Zmeskall could perform together (Beethoven also played viola), cheerfully noting in the title that the piece was to be played “With Two Eyeglasses Obbligato” — both of them wore glasses to read. (Zmeskall was often the recipient of Beethoven’s rough humor. With the copy of the duet that he sent to Zmeskall, he included a note headed, Liebster Baron Dreckfahrer! — “Dear Baron Muck-Truck Driver!”) Beethoven originally planned a three-movement piece but finished only the opening Allegro, a tidy sonata-form number with an arching main theme and an expressive subsidiary subject. In 1952, the Swiss musicologist, composer and Beethoven authority Willy Hess brought the polite Minuetto that Beethoven had largely sketched to a performable state; the finale is only fragments.

Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello in G Major, Op. 9, No. 1
Ludwig van Beethoven

Composed in 1797-1798.

Among the nobles who served as Beethoven’s patrons after his arrival in Vienna in 1792 was one Count Johann Georg von Browne-Camus, a descendent of an old Irish family who was at that time fulfilling some ill-defined function in the Habsburg Imperial city on behalf of the Empress Catherine II of Russia. Little is known of Browne. His tutor, Johannes Büel, later an acquaintance of Beethoven, described him as “full of excellent talents and beautiful qualities of heart and spirit on the one hand, and on the other full of weakness and depravity.” He is said to have squandered his fortune, and ended his days in a public institution. In the mid-1790s, Beethoven received enough generous support from Browne, however, that he dedicated several of his works to him and his wife, Anne Margarete, including the Variations on Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte for Cello and Piano (WoO 46), the three Op. 10 Piano Sonatas, the B-flat Piano Sonata (Op. 22) and the three String Trios of Op. 9. In appreciation of the dedication of the Trios, Browne presented Beethoven with a horse, which the preoccupied composer promptly forgot, thereby allowing his servant to rent out the beast and pocket the profits. The Op. 9 String Trios were apparently composed in 1797 and early 1798 — Beethoven signed an agreement with Johann Traeg on March 16, 1798 for their publication, which was announced in the Viennese press the following July 21st. In the flowery dedication, written in French, the composer noted that he had “the rare satisfaction of presenting to the first Maecenas of his Muse [i.e., Browne] the best of my works,” a mark of his high regard for the Trios, though he never again returned to this particular genre of chamber music. The works were popular during the composer’s lifetime, and remained so for a considerable time — the records of the “Monday Popular Concerts,” for example, show that the G major Trio (Op. 9, No. 1) was performed at least twenty times on that London series between 1859 and 1896.

The G major Trio opens with a sonorous unison statement of the tonic arpeggio in slow tempo which is immediately balanced by a soft, feathery, sixteenth-note motive in the violin answered by tiny replies from the viola and cello. The sixteenth-note motive is shared among the three instruments and, after a brief pause, acts as the thread binding this introductory paragraph with the movement’s exposition. The main theme comprises four small but distinct gestures: a quiet lyrical phrase; a quick upward-shooting scale; a rising arpeggio; and bold leaping chords. The cello introduces another thematic idea, a fanfare-like falling motive that ends with a quick flurry of grace notes, before the second theme, a sort of skeleton melody in mysterious block chords, is heard. The development section is concerned with the motive that bridged from the introduction to the exposition and with the cello’s fanfare theme. The recapitulation returns the earlier material in compressed form (i.e., the fanfare melody is omitted), and the movement ends with a coda that gathers together many of the preceding motives.

The Adagio (in the unexpected key of E major) is an extended and delicately elaborated song for which the designation “Romanze” would not have been inappropriate. The music’s lyricism suggests the influence of opera, a quality which its intensity of expression, often enhanced by a tender, pulsing accompaniment, only strengthens. The following Scherzo is lighter in mood and more deft in scoring than many of Beethoven’s later movements in that form. The sonata-form finale contrasts a heady moto perpetuo main theme with an arching complementary melody in more sedate rhythms. This alternation of different melodic types occurs again in the development and the recapitulation, but the work ends with a fiery coda that exploits the technical resources of the three instruments.

©2008 Dr. Richard E. Rodda