Notes on the Program by DR. RICHARD E. RODDA
Sonata in G major for Two Cellos
Jean Barrière
Born May 2, 1707 in Bordeaux.
Died June 6, 1747 in Paris.
Composed in 1739.
Duration: 10 minutes
“The famous Barrière,” wrote Pierre-Louis Daquin de Chateau-Lyon in his 1753 survey of French artists and
writers during the reign of Louis XV, “possessed all that one can desire ... few could perform as well as he.” Cellist
and composer Jean Barrière was born in 1707 in Bordeaux and began his musical career playing the viol da gamba,
which had then been out of fashion in Italy for at least two decades and was rapidly giving way in France to the
modern cello. Nothing more is known of Barrière’s early life until he arrived in Paris in 1730 to join, as a cellist, the
Académie Royale de Musique, the orchestra of the royal opera and ballet. He quickly built a reputation not only as a
performer but also as a composer, and in 1733 King Louis granted him a six-year privilege to publish Sonates et
autres ouvrages [other works] de musique instrumentale; his first book of sonatas for cello and continuo appeared
later that year and his second in 1735. From 1736 to 1739, Barrière was in Rome, becoming acquainted at first hand
with that country’s fashionable musical styles and perhaps studying with the celebrated cellist Francesco Alborea.
Barrière returned to Paris in 1739, becoming known as a soloist at the Concerts Spirituels, the city’s foremost
concert series, and having his publication privilege renewed for another 12 years. He composed during the following
years in a style influenced by his musical experiences in Italy and issued two more books of sonatas for cello and
continuo (1739, 1740), one for Pardessus de Viole (a treble viol, 1739) and one for harpsichord (1740). Barrière
died in Paris in 1747.
Barrière’s cello sonatas, which date from the decades when an idiomatic style was first being defined for the
instrument, often present such pioneering technical challenges as double stops, arpeggios, and extreme range. The
Sonata in G major for Two Cellos (Book 4, No. 4) is characteristic of his music in its elegance, polish, and emotional
reserve. In the work’s opening Andante, the cellos alternate between providing background for each other’s graceful
melodic flights and playing together in euphonious harmonies. The Adagio is a melancholy, elaborately decorated
aria for the first cello. The closing Allegro prestissimo, with its flying scales, close harmonies, cross-string
figurations, and reminiscence of the preceding Adagio unexpectedly inserted into the second section as a sort-of
cadenza, is a display piece for paired cellos.
Quintet in C major for Two Violins, Viola, and Two Cellos
Luigi Boccherini
Born February 19, 1743 in Lucca.
Died May 28, 1805 in Madrid.
Arranged by Johann Christoph Lauterbach
Composed 1779-89.
Duration: 19 minutes
Luigi Boccherini was the foremost Italian composer of instrumental music of the late 18th century. The son of a
cellist, he learned his father’s instrument early and well, and made his public debut in his native Lucca at the age of
13. The following year, 1757, he and his father took up appointments in the orchestra of the court theater in Vienna,
where Luigi’s reputation as a performer began to be matched by that of his compositions. In April 1764, he returned
to Lucca as composer and cellist at the church of St. Maria Corteorlandini. At the end of 1766, Boccherini embarked
on a concert tour which ended several months later in Paris, where his playing and compositions were much admired
and many of his works, mostly chamber music for strings, were printed by local publishing houses. In 1768, he
moved to Madrid at the urging of the Spanish ambassador to Paris. The following year he composed and dedicated to
Don Luis, the Spanish Infante, younger brother of King Charles III, a set of quartets, and was rewarded with an
appointment beginning in November 1770 to serve the Infante as virtuoso di camera [chamber virtuoso] e
compositor de musica. The next 15 years were a time of security and steady activity for Boccherini, but this happy
period came to an end in 1785, when both his wife and Don Luis died. The following year Boccherini won an
appointment as chamber music composer to Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia.
The records of Boccherini’s activities for the decade following 1786 are scarce, but he seems to have remained
in Madrid, where he filled Friedrich’s commissions as well as those from several Portuguese, Spanish, and French
patrons. Following Friedrich’s death in 1796, and the refusal of his successor to continue Boccherini’s employment,
Boccherini’s income became undependable. Occasional commissions came his way, as did a small pension granted
to him by Don Luis, but the pianist and composer Sophie Gail reported finding him in distress during her visit to
Madrid in 1803. His condition had been exacerbated by the deaths the preceding year of two daughters; his second
wife and another daughter passed away in 1804. Boccherini died in Madrid on May 28, 1805, from respiratory
failure; in 1927, his remains were returned to Lucca.
During the decades around the turn of the 20th century, when the vast but then largely unknown treasury of
18th-century music was just beginning to be revived, some enterprising musicians cobbled together anthologies of
movements by Baroque and Classical composers for concert presentation: Mahler culled several pieces from Bach’s
orchestral suites and conducted them on his programs with the New York Philharmonic in 1909; British conductor
Sir Thomas Beecham raided Handel in the 1920s for a half-dozen “ballet suites for orchestra” with fanciful titles
(Love in Bath, The Great Elopement, The Gods Go A-Begging); and around 1900, Johann Christoph Lauterbach
published a String Quintet in C major that gathered together movements from five different such works by Luigi
Boccherini. Lauterbach (1832-1918), one of the most respected violinists of his day, was born in Bavaria, studied at
the conservatories in Würzburg and Brussels, toured through northern Europe, taught at the Royal Conservatory in
Munich, and then spent almost 30 years in Dresden as concertmaster with the court orchestra and a faculty member
of the city’s conservatory. Lauterbach, who composed a few chamber works and also edited pieces by Schumann,
Mozart, Dittersdorf, and Goldmark for publication, left the substance of Boccherini’s music intact but altered details
of voicing, register, and phrasing, and made several cuts in the final movement.
The main theme of the opening Andante con moto (movement I of the Quintet in C major, Gérard 349 [1789]) is
largely built from phrases of quiet, subtly shifting harmonies; the second theme begins in a similar vein but becomes
more animated in the first violin. The brief development section treats a rising arpeggio and an expressive
complementary figure in a thoughtful manner before the events of the exposition, appropriately adjusted as to key,
are recounted in the recapitulation. The delicate Menuett is borrowed from the Quintet in C minor, G. 314 (1779),
while the central trio, in a contrasting minor key, is from the Quintet in G minor, G. 318 (1779). In the Grave (from
the Quintet in E-flat major, G. 325 [1780]), a deeply expressive cello melody in the movement’s outer sections is
balanced in the movement’s central episode by more elaborate figurations for the first violin. The closing Rondo,
whose playful returning theme is led by the first cello, is based on the finale of the Quintet in C major, G. 310
(1779).
Quintet in C major for Two Violins, Viola, and Two Cellos, D. 956, Op. 163
Franz Schubert
Born January 31, 1797 in Lichtenthal, near Vienna.
Died November 19, 1828 in Vienna.
Composed in 1828.
Duration: 54 minutes
In the hall of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna on March 26, 1828, immediately after completing his
magnificent C major Symphony (justifiably dubbed “The Great” by later generations), Franz Schubert gave the only
public concert entirely of his works held during his lifetime. The event, prompted and sponsored by his circle of
devoted friends, was a significant artistic and financial success, and he used the proceeds to celebrate the occasion at
a local tavern, pay off some old debts, acquire a new piano, and buy tickets for Niccolò Paganini’s sensational debut
in Vienna three days later. Despite the renewed enthusiasm that that concert inspired in him for creative work, and
encouraging signs that his music was beginning to receive recognition outside of Vienna, Schubert was much
troubled during the following months by his health. His constitution, never robust, had been undermined by syphilis,
and by the summer of 1828, he was suffering from headaches, exhaustion, and frequent digestive distress. Despite his
discomforts, he continued to compose, completing the Mass in E-flat, a setting in Hebrew of Psalm 92 for the City
Synagogue of Vienna, and the Schwanengesang, doing extensive work on what proved to be his last three piano
sonatas (D. 958-960), and beginning his C major String Quintet.
At the end of August, Schubert felt unwell, complaining of dizziness and loss of appetite, and his physician
advised that he move for a time to a new house outside the city recently acquired by the composer’s brother
Ferdinand. Though Ferdinand’s dwelling was damp and uncomfortable and hardly conducive to his recovery, Franz
felt better during the following days, and he was able to participate in an active social life and attend the premiere of
a comedy by his friend Eduard von Bauernfeld on September 5th. Schubert also continued to compose incessantly,
completing the three piano sonatas on August 26th, and performing them at the house of Dr. Ignaz Menz the
following day. The C major Quintet was finished at that same time; it and the sonatas were the last instrumental
works that he completed. On October 31, 1828, Schubert fell seriously ill, his syphilitic condition perhaps
exacerbated by the typhus then epidemic in Vienna, and he died on November 19, 1828, at the age of 31.
The opening of the quintet’s first movement, according to J.A. Westrup, “is remarkable not for its melodic
interest but for the expectancy it creates.” The work’s main theme comprises a simple, unadorned tonic chord that
swells and changes harmonic color, and a melodic extension in the first violin. The second theme, initiated by the
cellos, is among the greatest lyrical inspirations in all of instrumental music. A group of closing motives and another
hint of the second theme complete the exposition. The development section is largely based on one of the closing
motives.
The Adagio opens with a gesture that is as much thought as theme, an ethereal stillness created by long-held
notes in the inner voices, subtle pizzicatos in the second cello, and tiny motivic flickers from the first violin. This sort
of nearly motionless music cannot, however, sustain the formal requirements of a slow movement in a piece the size
of this quintet, so Schubert provided an extended middle section that offers a strong contrast to the surrounding
music in the intensity of its feeling and the stern animation of its rhythmic motion. Emotion spent, the music quiets
again, sighs, and returns to the opening theme, decorated this time with delicate filigree from the second cello and
first violin. As the movement glides towards its end, it is overcome once again by the hushed tranquility of its
beginning.
The vivacious, open-air Scherzo provides a magnificent foil to the preceding movement. The main theme, a
scintillating combination of leaping village dance and hunting-horn call that requires considerable individual and
ensemble virtuosity from the players, launches the miniature sonata form that makes up the first section of the
movement. The central trio occupies a completely different emotional world, one of shadows and uncertainty.
The deeper emotions of the two preceding movements are banished by the bursting high spirits of the finale. A
rousing theme of Gypsy inflection opens the movement, and eventually gives way to a more lyrical melody for first
violin and first cello enlivened with sparkling triplet figurations. A third melodic idea, a cousin to the flowing second
theme of the opening movement, is announced by the paired cellos. All three themes are traversed again in
heightened settings before a bounding coda in faster tempo closes this peerless masterwork.
©2012 Dr. Richard E. Rodda