String Quartet in B flat major K.589 (1790)

String Quartet in B flat major K.589 “Prussian” (1790)

Allegro

Larghetto

Menuetto: moderato

Allegro assai

Writing string quartets for Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, who played the cello, presented Mozart with a problem. In fact, it required a fundamental adjustment to tried and tested textural principles. In the case of K.589 it meant promoting the cello to the same level of prominence as the first violin - as in the exposition of an otherwise democratic first movement and throughout a Larghetto where the two instruments keep the melodic interest to themselves. But that was as far as Mozart was prepared to go in indulging the royal cello, whicht plays a comparatively modest role in both the Menuetto and the finale.

A string quartet, or any major piece of music, based an episode in the composer’s private life would have been unthinkable to Mozart and his contemporaries. For musicians of his generation - before Beethoven transformed the situation by finding such a potent source of inspiration in his personal hopes and fears - that kind of thing was in bad taste if not entirely irrelevant. In 1790, when Mozart wrote the three string quartets dedicated to Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, he was profoundly worried by debt and by both his wife’s state of health and his own. There is no trace of that in the String Quartet in B flat K.589. The composer was more concerned with the technical problem of writing a specially prominent cello part for a royal patron who played the instrument and reconciling it with the principles of string-quartet democracy. At the same time he assumed the responsibility not only of enlarging the scale of the conventional minuet- and-trio format but also of adding a dimension to it by means of a brief but harmonically adventurous development.

When he undertook to provide the King of Prussia with six piano sonatas and six string quartets Mozart had all kinds of problems to contend with. He was in a desperate financial situation, which was seriously aggravated by his wife’s illness, and he was in far from the best state of health himself. Apart from that, while he cannot have been very interested in putting together easy sonatas for Princess Friederike, writing quartets to favour the cello of Friedrich Wilhelm II himself, which meant a fundamental rethink of tried and tested textural principles, must have been a daunting challenge. In fact, after his return to Vienna in June 1789, he completed only one of the sonatas and abandoned the quartet project half-way through. Bearing in mind that he had to find a different solution to the cello problem each time, three out of six was no mean achievement.

Although it was not Mozart’s intention in the Prussian quartets to undermine the authority of the first violin, he did relieve it of some of its conventional responsibilities. The first movement of the Quartet in B flat begins like most of its kind with the main theme presented by first violin. But it is the cello that insists on changing the subject, eloquently rising on the A-string above second violin and viola, and introduces the sinuous second main theme. Balance is restored by way of a thoroughly integrated development section and a recapitulation in which much of the material formerly associated with the cello is redistributed to the other three instruments. In the Larghetto, however, second violin and viola are denied a share of the melodic interest, which is divided between cello and first violin, the former is awarded a particularly high profile when it is entrusted with the expressive main theme in the opening bars.

That, it seems, is as far as Mozart was prepared to go in indulging his royal patron. The cello plays a comparatively modest role in both the Menuetto, which is remarkable for its unprecedented development of the trio section, and the closing Allegro assai, where the priority is harmonic and contrapuntal adventure rather than individual virtuosity.

String Quartet in B flat major K.589 (1790)

Allegro

Larghetto

Menuetto: moderato

Allegro assai

Leos Janacek (1854-1928)

String Quartet No.2 “Intimate Letters” (1928)

Andante

Adagio

Moderato

Allegro

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

String Quartet in G major Op.106 (1895)

Allegro moderato

Adagio ma non troppo

Molto vivace

Finale: andante sostenuto - allegro con fuoco

A string quartet, or any major piece of music, based an episode in the composer’s private life would have been unthinkable to Mozart and his contemporaries. For musicians of his generation, before Beethoven transformed the situation, personal concerns were irrelevant. In 1790, when Mozart wrote the three string quartets dedicated to Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, he was profoundly worried by debt and by both his wife’s ill health and his own. There is no trace of that in the luminous String Quartet in B flat K.589. The composer was more concerned with the technical problem of writing a specially prominent cello part for a royal patron who played the instrument and reconciling it with the principles of string-quartet democracy. At the same time he assumed the responsibility not only of enlarging the scale of the conventional minuet- and-trio format but also of adding a dimension by means of a short but harmonically adventurous development.

Janacek, on the other hand, had not the slightest inhibition about investing his innermost feelings in his art. Indeed, he could scarcely do otherwise. His Second String Quartet, which he himself entitled “Intimate Letters,” is about his obsessive (and unrequited) love for Kamila Stösslova, a married woman less than half his age. An extraordinarily passionate work, not just for a man in his seventies but for any composer, it is the supreme example of the erotic fantasy as high art. The first movement, he told Kamila, is based on “my impression when I saw you for the first time.” Of the second movement he said, “Today I wrote in musical tones my sweetest desire. I struggle with it. It prevails. You are giving birth. What would be the destiny of that new-born son?” Although he was less explicit about the third movement, the gently rocking rhythm of the first theme clearly identifies it as a lullaby. The finale, he told Kamila, “will finish with great longing and as if with its fulfilment.”

Dvorak too found inspiration in his emotional life, though with rather more discretion and very much more moderation. The stimulus behind his last two quartets, both of them completed in Prague shortly after his return from the New World in 1895, might be nothing more than the spontaneous creativity of a composer with an inexhaustible supply of melody and such easy technical mastery that the structures seem to grow out of the natural impulse of the themes themselves. On the other hand, the way the amorous second subject of the first movement, tenderly introduced by the first violin, reappears in the finale suggests that there may be more to the work than purely musical considerations.

Gerald Larner ©2004