Romanticism Revisited
Carl Maria von Weber, Trio in G Minor for Flute, Cello & Piano, op. 63
Weber was a 19th Century German Romantic composer
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Trio Élégiaque No. 1 in G Minor (for Violin, Cello & Piano)
Rachmaninoff was a 19th-20th Century Russian composer
Richard Strauss, Quartet in C Minor, op. 13 (for Piano, Violin, Viola & Cello)
Strauss was a 19th-20th Century German composer
Carl Maria von Weber, Trio in G Minor, op. 63, for Flute, Cello and Piano: “A good case can be made” that Weber (1786-1826) “was the first of the true Romantics. To the Romantics, Weber was the one who unleashed the storm” [Harold Schonberg]. He was one the greatest pianists and conductors of his era. He virtually invented the role of a conductor as the overall director of an opera. Weber’s compositions included virtuosic piano music, chamber music, and songs, all of which were enormously popular in the 19th Century. He had a huge impact on Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. He was a man of many talents as a writer, painter, lithographer and guitarist, and died prematurely (at age 39) of tuberculosis. Weber was an “aristocratic, intelligent, forceful man: an authentic genius whose greatest tragedy was that he was born about 30 years ahead of his time” [Schonberg]. In this Trio, composed in 1819, Weber substitutes the flute for the violin. Much of the Trio “has a melancholy flavor” to it [James Keller], reflecting difficult and even tragic family circumstances in Weber’s family that year. The title of Movement III refers to an 1802 poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, set by many composers, including Schubert. “Deep currents run beneath the surface simplicity” of this movement [Keller]. “Even within a classical framework, Weber’s Romantic imagination is running high” [John Warrack], appropriate for a late-Classical Era composer whose muse was running ahead of its time.
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Trio Élégiaque No. 1 in G Minor for Piano, Violin and Cello: Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was “the last link in the great chain of 19th Century Russian Romanticism” [David Dubal]. After his father squandered the family fortune, his family moved to a crowded flat in St. Petersburg, from where he entered the Moscow Conservatory at age 12. There, as a pianist, Rachmaninoff was “peerless” and “stupendous” [Schonberg]. By age 15, he was “the star of Anton Arensky’s composition class” [Dubal]. By age 19 (when he wrote this Elegiac Trio), “he was hardworking and serious but desperately prone to melancholy” [id.]. After the Revolution, Rachmaninoff fled Russia in 1918, never to return. By that time, had had written all but five of the major works that he would ever write [Alex Ross]. His musical style did not vary much throughout his life. “I cannot cast out my musical gods in a moment and bend the knee to new ones,” he wrote. “A strong Russian quality is the essence of Rachmaninoff’s music,” which features melodies of “authentic sweep” which “always evoke a response” [Schonberg]. He composed Trio Élégiaque No. 1 in 1892 at age 19, the same year as his famous Prelude in C-sharp Minor. Although the Trio was performed that year, Rachmaninoff didn’t assign it an opus number, and it was not published until four years after his death. As with most of his compositions, the piano features prominently in this single-movement work, creating passionate, yearning and nostalgic moods in a rare chamber ensemble with violin and cello. Rachmaninoff spent his final years in the United States, living in Beverly Hills, “in the center of the movie colony” [Ross]. On his deathbed, four days before his 70th birthday, he is said to have looked down at his gigantic hands and sighed, “My dear hands. Farewell, my dear hands!” He is buried in Valhalla, New York.
Richard Strauss, Quartet in C Minor, op. 13, for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello: In his book, The Lives of the Great Composers, Harold Schonberg titled his chapter about Richard Strauss, “Romanticism’s Long Coda.” Indeed, the career of Strauss (1864-1949) began in the latter days of the Austrian Empire and ended after the defeat of Germany in World War II. Strauss was the son of a well-known and highly opinionated hornist in the Munich Court Orchestra, who taught him that music had ended with Weber and Mendelssohn, and protected him against Wagner, Liszt and other such contaminations. The young Strauss studied privately and took a few classes at the University of Munich, but never received a conservatory education or degree. His mentor, Hans von Bülow, launched him in a double career as a composer and conductor. By the early 1900s, he was seen as an exponent of the revolt from the Romanticism that Weber had begun in the early 19th Century. Before he launched into his own unique style of tone poems and operas, the young Strauss demonstrated the ability to compose in a traditional Romantic style. His Piano Quartet in C Minor, written in 1885 at age 21, is such a piece. It is one of the early Strauss works that “are more than merely precocious; they show an extraordinary assimilation of Classical form” [Dubal]. The Quartet “might rank as the mature work of anyone but Strauss” [Arthur Johnstone, writing in 1904]. Its four movements “show a fusion of musical personalities – the sobriety and grandeur of Brahms are here wed to the fire and impetuous virtuosity of the young Strauss. It has a rich, dark sound, and it develops its ideas with a blazing energy” [Eric Bromberger]. “But this music represents a direction the young composer did not choose to follow. With his Violin Sonata of 1887, Strauss would say goodbye forever to chamber music” [id.].
