Lovers of chamber music form an extremely refined and cultured
class, and, like all highly refined and cultured people, are very
conservative. They are the purists among music-lovers, the last
people who would care to see the classical forms abandoned, and who
would be disturbed, not to say shocked, by any great departure
from the sonata form. For the string quartet is to chamber music what
the symphony is to orchestra and the sonata to the pianoforte--is, in
fact, a sonata for two violins, viola and violoncello, just as the
symphony is a sonata for orchestra.
Oddly enough, a pianoforte solo is more effective in a large hall than
a string quartet, although the latter employs four times as many
instruments; and the same is true of those pieces of chamber music in
which the pianoforte is used, such as sonatas for pianoforte and
violin or violoncello, pianoforte trios, quartets, quintets, and so
on. A fine soloist on the pianoforte will be more at home in a large
auditorium like Carnegie Hall or even the Metropolitan Opera House
than would a string quartet or any other combination of chamber-music
players. Paderewski plays in Carnegie Hall, and, I am sure, would be
equally effective in the Opera House. But an organization of
chamber-music players would be lost in either place. The Kneisel
Quartet plays in New York in Mendelssohn Hall, a small auditorium
which is just about correctly proportioned for music of this kind.
Indeed, compared with the opera, the orchestra and even with the
pianoforte, chamber music requires a setting like a jewel. For just as
its devotees are the purists among music-lovers, so chamber music
itself is something very "precious." It certainly is a most charming
and intimate form of musical entertainment and the constituency of a
well-established string quartet inevitably consists of the musical
elite.
The same opinions that have been expressed regarding the sonatas and
the symphonies of the great composers apply in a general way to their
chamber music. Haydn's is naive; Mozart's more emotional in
expression; Beethoven's, among that of classical composers, the most
dramatic. In fact, Beethoven's last quartets, in which the instruments
are employed quite independently and in which roles practically of
equal importance are assigned to each, are regarded by Richard Strauss
as having given the cue to Wagner for his polyphonic treatment of the
orchestra, and Wagner himself spoke of them as works through which
"Music first raised herself to an equal height with the poetry and
painting of the greatest periods of the past." Nevertheless, there are
many who hold that in his last quartets Beethoven sought to accomplish
more than can be expressed with four stringed instruments, and prefer
his earlier works of this class, like the three "Rasumovski" quartets,
Opus 59, dedicated by the composer to Count Rasumovski, who
maintained a private string quartet in which he played second violin,
the others being professionals.
Schubert's most famous quartet is the one in D minor with the lovely
slow movement, a theme with variations, the theme being his own song,
"Death and the Maiden." One of the greatest works in the whole range
of chamber music is his string quintet with two violoncellos. His
pianoforte trios also are noble contributions to this branch of
musical art. "One glance at this trio," writes Schumann of the
Schubert trio in B flat major, "and all the wretchedness of existence
is put to flight and the world seems young again.... Many and
beautiful as are the things Time brings forth, it will be long ere it
produces another Schubert."
Mendelssohn's chamber music is as polished, affable and gentlemanly as
most of his other productions, and rapidly falling into the same
state of unlamented desuetude. Schumann has given us his lovely
pianoforte quintet in E flat. Brahms has contributed much that is
noteworthy to chamber music, and, as a rule, it is less complex and
more intelligently scored than his orchestral music. Dvorak in his E
flat major quartet (Opus 51) introduces as the second movement a Dumka
or Bohemian elegy, one of the most exquisite of his compositions.
Fascinating in his national musical tints, he was genius enough for
his music to be universal in its expression; and he who used the
folksongs of his native Bohemia so skillfully was no less artistic
in the results he accomplished when, during his residence in New
York, he wrote his string quartet in F (Opus 96) on Negro themes.
Tschaikowsky and neo-Russians like Arensky, and the Frenchmen,
Cesar Franck, Saint-Saens, d'Indy and Debussy, are some of the modern
names that figure on chamber-music programs.