This is the second installment in my overview of Louis Spohr’s string quartets. I’ll update this post to link to the other parts as I post them. Here I talk about the ones numbered 11 through 19.
Just how many quartets Spohr wrote is an interesting question. I came across a discussion of the quartets’ numbering while trying to find information on the missing opus numbers. According to the article, Spohr published 34 quartets with opus numbers, and there are two quartets in the WoO section of the catalogue, both of which Spohr numbered 34. Both of the WoO quartets exist in two different versions. That makes 36 distinct quartets. I’ll look at the last ones more closely when I get there.
Quartet 11
The eleventh quartet, Opus 43, is the second one that Spohr designated a “Quatuor Brillant.” like the Opus 11 quartet, it’s in three movements and treats the first violin as a solo instrument accompanied by the others. The subordinate parts are more interesting this time. The best part is the Adagio movement. Its ABAB form opens with a gloomy E minor melody. The second theme, in E major, has a sense of longing, and the first theme is significantly altered when it returns. The last movement is a minuet, which seems like an odd choice for a “Quatuor Brillant.” Maybe he was thinking of Mozart’s fifth violin concerto.
Quartets 12-14
Hearing the Opus 45, No. 1 quartet gave me the sense that Spohr finally found what he was aiming for. The best music gives us the unexpected while making us think we should have expected it. The Opus 45 quartets do this better than any of his earlier ones.
The first of these quartets is in C major. At the opening of the first movement, the meter is a bit tricky to pick up, but once you’ve got it, you can’t hear it any other way. Some nice touches are the pause with a question near the start of the development — which is followed by an enthusiastic answer — and the tentative efforts to recover the first theme in the lead-up to the recapitulation. The scherzo, which comes second here, is full of driving energy. It’s in C minor, but the coda leads to a surprisingly calm conclusion on a C major chord. The Andante features a calm melody alternating with agitated sections before coming to a quiet ending.
The next quartet, No. 13 in E minor, is also a winner. It has a warmth of sound, thanks largely to effective use of the viola and cello. The first movement is officially in E minor, but the first theme keeps trying to escape into G major. The second theme is really in G, and the movement ends in E major, so the major mode dominates the movement. The second movement plays the lyrical main theme against a syncopated figure for a nice effect. The minuet is unusual in that its return after the trio is varied with triplets and then sixteenth notes. In the development of the lively finale, the pace slows down and suddenly revives at the recapitulation. All the movements except the first end softly.
The F minor quartet (No. 14) is nominally in F minor, but after the mournful slow introduction that foreshadows the main theme, it’s really a work in F major. The slow movement features a rather sad melody in B flat major, punctuated by short trills handed back and forth in the different parts. The last two movements, both in F major, are lively and cheerful. All the movements end quietly except the first. The very end of the quartet is a unison F for the violins and viola, as if leaving a question hanging.
Quartets 15-17
The next quartets also come in a set of three, Opus 58. Quartet No. 15, in E-flat, features a slow movement which is really wonderful. It’s hymn-like with intense feeling. The scherzo in C minor does a lot with the motif in the first three measures, and the trio has another of those Haydn-like pauses that has to make the listener smile. The last movement skips along merrily and uses counterpoint to better effect than in the early quartets. As always, there’s some fancy work in the first violin part, but it doesn’t feel overdecorated.
The next quartet in the set (No. 16) gets more carried away in the lead violin, but it otherwise has a lot going for it. The first movement, in A minor, feels march-like; the first and second themes both build on a rising arpeggio with a dotted eighth and sixteenth. A nice touch is that the recapitulation is calmer; it starts pianissimo instead of piano and is harmonized differently. The second movement is an “Andante con variazioni” in F major. The first violin dominates the theme and first variation, then the second variation gives everyone in the ensemble a significant role. Then comes the big surprise: The third variation is the Scherzo, in A major! I can’t think of any other classical works that do this trick in the variation form while keeping distinct movements. The last variation returns to 4/4 time, F major, and “Tempo primo,” but its triplets make it feel faster than the original theme. The last movement is a “Rondo alla Espagnola.” The Spanish flavor may seem mild to us, but Chabrier, de Falla, and Rimsky-Korsakov hadn’t even been born yet.
Quartet No. 17, the last of Opus 58, has even more experimentation. The exposition in the first movement isn’t marked with a repeat, and the development is longer than usual. The minuet is in E-flat, showing Spohr’s fondness for jumping a major third from the main key (G major). It’s unusually formal in sound. The trio goes into 2/4 time twice. and the unwary listener may try to hear it as hemiolas (two against three). However, the numbers don’t come out right! Spohr may have decided to mess with the listeners by doing this.
The third and last movement is the most unusual. It starts out with a despairing Adagio molto in G minor, which is quite impressive. After just 17 measures the music goes into a G major Allegro, marked “Scherzando.” The dark mood keeps returning, giving the impression that the main theme is an attempt to mask some great pain. The quartet ends in a sad G major with one of Spohr’s characteristic chromatic cadences.
Quartet 18
After the earlier Quatuors Brillants, I wasn’t expecting much of the 18th quartet, Opus 61 in B minor, but it’s quite a gem. It’s in three movements, like the earlier quartets with this designation. The first violin dominates with a showy part, but expression isn’t sacrificed to virtuosity, and there are some nice exchanges with the other instruments. The first movement starts in B minor, but it’s largely in major keys and ends in B major. The second movement is in A flat, because why not? The main theme is a songful melody, with an agitated middle section. The return of the main theme is decorated, but in a way which works better than in many of the earlier quartets. The finale, in B major, is a rondo with a light main theme and some energetic episodes, reaching a well-earned fortissimo conclusion.
Quartet 19
The 19th quartet, Opus 68 in A major, is another Quatuor Brillant in three movements. This one doesn’t seem quite up to its predecessor. It’s hard to say what makes one piece work and other not, but when a piece has lots of trills, very high notes, and fast chromatic scales, they ought to feel as if they serve a musical purpose. Especially in the first movement, they give me the feeling of showing off for its own sake. The lower three parts don’t have much that’s interesting. The best part is the slow movement, which opens with a refreshingly simple tune in F after the first movement’s gymnastics. The middle section has a lot of virtuoso passages, but here they create a sense of agitation. The Rondo has a gentler mood than many of Spohr’s finales, but the first violinist still gets a workout.
Quartets 20 through 22 are another set, and they’re contemporaneous with Beethoven’s late quartets, so I’ll leave this post one short of twenty.