String Quartet No. 14 "Death and the Maiden" by Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

If you ever thought string quartets were boring, hold on to your hats! Franz Schubert, who is most known for the 600+ songs (including Der Leiermann) he wrote in his life, also wrote many fantastic string quartets. My favourite of them all is the "Death and the Maiden" string quartet written in 1824. This work showcases all of the power and beauty and intimacy of this genre.

This Quartet takes its name from a song that Schubert wrote in 1817. It was a setting of a poem by Matthias Claudius. The translation of the text of the poem is as follows:

The Maiden:
Oh! leave me! Prithee, leave me! thou grisly man of bone!
For life is sweet, is pleasant.
Go! leave me now alone!
Go! leave me now alone!

Death:
Give me thy hand, oh! maiden fair to see,
For I'm a friend, hath ne'er distress'd thee.
Take courage now, and very soon
Within mine arms shalt softly rest thee!"

While the 2nd movement of this work uses the melody from Schubert's song, the entire "death and the maiden" struggle permeates the entire work. Walter Willson Cobbett (author of the 1929 Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music) said of it "The struggle with Death is the subject of the first movement, and the andante accordingly dwells on Death's words. The finale is most definitely in the character of a dance of death; ghastly visions whirl past in the inexorable uniform rhythm of the tarantella." (The Tarantella is the traditional dance to ward off madness and death.)

Others have seen the quartet as a musical expression of Judaeo-Christian religious myths with each movement being about a different episode in the mythic process of death and resurrection.

Fascinating stuff, right?

Well, without further ado, I bring you the quartet! Performed here by the Alban Berg Quartet.

I. Allegro
II. Andante con moto
III. Scherzo Allegro molto
IV. Presto

If you'd like to hear the original Death and the Maiden song written by Schubert, you can find it here. The accompanist here, by the way, is the great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, an amazing singer who has recorded many of Schubert's songs. He just recently passed away, making the world a much sadder place.

Prelude in Db Major, Op. 28, No. 15 by Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

At first glance you may not realize you probably know this work.  Or, at the very least, you've heard of it.  This prelude is more commonly known as "The Raindrop Prelude."  I can't remember when I first heard this work, but the first time I did, the middle section of it caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up.

It still does every single time I listen to it.

The work is one from a set of 24 preludes Chopin wrote and while they're all lovely, this is certainly the most famous.  It's a beautiful, fairly straight-forward work in ABA form.  The opening and closing sections are a sweet and lovely Db major.  The middle, more dramatic section, switches to its parallel minor (C# minor).

So why "raindrop"?  Where did that come from?  Chopin himself did not subtitle the work.  In fact, Chopin was far too much of an "absolute" composer to give any of his works subtitles.  ("Absolute" music is music written for music's sake alone, as opposed to program music which is intended to tell a story or give the listener some sort of atmospheric idea.)

There are two thoughts, both of which combined have given it this name.  The first came from George Sand, his lover of many years, who said upon arriving home in a rainstorm one evening that she came across a distraught Chopin who had had a horrible dream when he fell asleep at the piano.

He saw himself drowned in a lake. Heavy drops of icy water fell in a regular rhythm on his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water indeed falling in rhythm on the roof, he denied having heard it. He was even angry that I should interpret this in terms of imitative sounds. He protested with all his might – and he was right to – against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds.

Chopin himself vehemently denied that any of his music had such a picturesque idea.  But the idea of the "raindrop" aspect persisted.  He was certainly working on some prelude during this time.  But which one?  Why did this one end up with the subtitle and not another one?

Well, the other aspect of this piece that gives it its name is the near constant repetition of the pitch Ab (which turns into G# in the middle section).  It floats through nearly the entire work, coming in and out through the quieter A sections and becoming insistent in the middle.  If you concentrate though you can almost always pick it up.  Some have said this mimics the "gentle patter of rain."  Chopin would likely argue otherwise.  Unfortunately for Chopin, it is likely to always retain this nickname.

No matter which way you look at it, it's a lovely piece of music.

You can listen to it here on youtube.

Symphony No. 7 in A Major by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

I can't really remember when or how I was introduced to this piece. It very well might have been through Mr. Holland's Opus. There's a heartbreaking scene in the movie where the main character discovers his son is deaf and discusses Beethoven's deafness with his class. Playing in the background is the second movement of the Symphony No. 7.

Strangely enough, this was not the only movie to make use of this particular movement to highlight their child's deafness. Some years later, I discovered it was used in the Nicolas Cage movie, Knowing.

At any rate, whatever drew my attention to it, I found myself instantly in love with it. Enough so that I ended up using it as my senior music theory project. That's right, I spent an entire semester analyzing the work back in the Fall of 1996. I guess it's always had a special place in my heart.

The work was written in 1811-1812. Despite the emphasis on deaf children, Beethoven was not completely deaf at this time, though he had given up performing by this time and was almost entirely focused entirely on his inner world of composition. (If you want to envision what Beethoven's hearing might have been like around this time, check out this page).

Immediately after its first performance (which Beethoven himself conducted), Beethoven remarked that it was one of his best works and the second movement, marked Allegretto, was so popular at the time that it was immediately encored (ahh the days of people applauding between movements of a piece!) and was often performed on its own even though it begins and ends on an entirely unstable cadence.

Richard Wagner described the work as the "apotheosis of the dance."

I have a special affinity for Beethoven, as many folks here know. I've always loved his works but somehow losing my hearing, quite possibly from the same malady that afflicted Beethoven, has drawn me even more into his music. I've spoken of my love for Beethoven's music here many times before (check my Beethoven tag) and so it should come as no surprise to find something by him high on my list of great works that everyone should know.

My favourite performance of the work is the one done by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, which is no doubt blasphemy in some Beethoven circles. The 2nd movement is technically marked "Allegretto" (moderately fast), while Bernstein takes it closer to Andante ("walking tempo"). But I admit to liking it slower better. Somehow it draws out the beauty of it even more for me.

You can listen to each movement on youtube if you would like to.

I. Poco sostenuto – Vivace This movement begins with a very long slow introduction before launching into the faster part of the movement...Vivace means "lively and fast." One contemporary thought that the chromatic bass line at the end of this movement meant Beethoven was "ripe for the madhouse."

II. Allegretto (Though played more Andante here!) Listen for the awesome buildup starting around 6 minutes in -- the syncopation, those off the beat notes, used to build up tension is just sublime.

III. Presto – Assai meno presto (Presto means "very fast") Thomas Beecham, a 20th century conductor said of this movement: "What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about."

IV. Allegro con brio ("Fast with vigor and spirit")