A maiden voyage with late Beethoven

Since I was a teenager, I have lived in states of both complete reverence for and utter fear of Beethoven's late string string quartets (some of the last music he wrote - Opp. 127, 130, 131, 132, 135). I was hooked, and my fear was begun, upon hearing his monumental c# minor quartet, Op. 131, for the first time. At that point, I ran out and got myself a score and recordings, and pored over this music in a similar way that a theologian must look at religious texts. I found the music fascinating, confounding and incredibly moving. As a teenager, and then a young college music student, I understood that I had a connection with late Beethoven, but I was too intimidated to actually play it.

Fast forward, um, a lot of years, and here I am, getting ready to play the Op. 132 String Quartet in a minor with SSQ, this weekend at the University of Delaware, the first late quartet I will have performed. The interesting thing: I'm still fascinated, confounded, moved, and terribly intimidated by this music. When I was a student at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, at the ripe old age of 20, I had expressed my late-Beethoven fears to Ron Copes, who is currently the 2nd violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet and was my chamber music coach at the time. His advice to me: "Don't be scared, dig in!" He said that this music will always be challenging and difficult, and never completely understood, so play it early and often. Did I listen to this sage advice? D'oh!

I guess I have some catching up to do. And I'm excited to get started on my late journey with my wonderful Serafin colleagues. Op. 132 is an expansive work of over 45 minutes, consisting of five movements in a kind of arch form. The outer movements are big, driven and intense. The 2nd and 4th movements are stylized versions of popular older forms (the 2nd being a minuet of sorts, and the 4th actually titled "Alla marcia", or "like a march"), with unusual twists and turns, particularly in the presentation of meter and rhythm. But where this work draws its greatest power is the central slow movement, which is, without exaggeration, one of the most moving musical utterances ever created. The full title, believe it or not, is "A Convalescent's Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode". The Lydian mode is one of the ancient "church" modes, a way of organizing music harmonically and melodically back in the Medieval and Renaissance eras of music, before the advent of major and minor scales and keys. So this music, while reaching out to the divine, also reaches back in time. The third movement, often referred to simply as "Heiliger Dankgesang",  is by far the largest of the entire quartet, and reflects Beethoven's thanks and renewed energy having been gravely ill in prior months. Whatever one's view is of the Divine, it is most certainly touched in this moment.

Here's a sampling of the movement, performed by the Stradivari Quartet:

So, if you're around Newark, Delaware on Sunday (March 10th, 3:00 PM, Gore Recital Hall at the University of Delaware), come hear us as we journey together through my inaugural Late Beethoven Quartet performance. We hope to make you fascinated, confounded and moved, too. (but don't be intimidated!)

Cheers,

Larry

Musical Decision-making

I confess, I didn’t learn what this was until freshman year of college. I remember a friend saying to me “oh you know when you play a certain piece a lot, and all the decisions you’ve made seem really final, then you play with someone else and you have to make new decisions?”.  I was a bit confused because I had innocently thought “you just play a piece like it’s supposed to go.”

In my mind, the great performances I had heard were just artists who “REALLY played it how it’s supposed to go.”

Obviously I had a lot to learn about communicating in a chamber ensemble!  In truth, I had been making musical decisions my whole life.  Anytime you play music, whether it’s intentional or not, you are making thousands of little decisions about how to play it.  Anyone, musician or not who happens to hum a tune they know is making musical decisions.  These decisions about how you hear something, and eventually what makes your “voice” unique come from thousands of factors, all affecting your judgement of what seems right for that bit of music. 

Some examples of musical aspects we make decisions about are: Where do notes lead? Over a phrase, where do groups of notes lead (that is grow or move into each other), what is their overall shape? How connected are notes? Do they have stronger or more gentle articulation?  Timing: do you stay steady? Linger on an important moment, do you have a sense of rushing or moving forward?  What kind of sound quality are you trying to produce? A dark tone? Rich and warm tone?  Silky or feathery tone?  The questions are infinite, but most musicians have strong opinions about all these factors because they hear the piece as a “whole.”

Your decisions might be affected by what you’ve listened to, what you think the spirit of the music is, or what it means to you.  It’s truly amazing how differently people can hear things.  I’ll never forget a hilarious instance when I borrowed a colleagues part for the Bartok concerto and in a section where I had pencilled in “warm”, she had pencilled in “tortured”.  We joke that both markings really meant “use more vibrato.”

If composers tried to mark all these details into the score, the music would be covered in ink and practically illegible.  It would also take a lot of the creativity and fun out of interpretation.

I took a wonderful class at the University of Montreal one year called “interpretation” where we listened to various recordings of great artists and literally tried to notate all their musical decisions.  We had to blow up the scores to be able to fit all the subtle details in.  It was also remarkable to see from this perspective how “plain” the music really is.

Sometimes, the music is downright illogical, or confusing.  At the end of the famous 3^rd movement “Heiliger Dankgesang” of Beethoven’s Op. 132 quartet that we will play this coming season, Beethoven writes a series of repeated notes, but ties them together with slur markings.  Usually, when you see this marking connecting two notes that are the same, it means there is no separation, that is play it like one long note.  However, Beethoven could easily have just written one long note instead of tying together smaller note divisions.  Does this mean you are supposed to make tiny separations?  Pulse each note division?  Perhaps Beethoven wanted the subdivisions of the beat felt more strongly but not emphasized under a long held note? Larry decided to research what other quartets had chosen to do and listened to a myriad of recordings from all different time periods.  He notated their solutions on a separate piece of paper and brought them to rehearsal.  There were almost as many interpretations as there were quartet recordings!  We still have not come to a final decision about how we will play that one important bar, but look forward to lively discussion and experimentation to test ideas and come to a unified musical decision. 

Until next time,

Esme

"Why We Do It – Reflections on Opening Night”

After our recent concert opening The Arts at Trinity series in Wilmington (DE), my quartet mates and I shared an exchange of messages from several concert-goers that was especially gratifying. It highlighted for me, rather dramatically, and certainly very movingly, “why we do it”.

Why do we do it? Why do we play string quartets??  Well - for the music, for the art, for the process , of course!

But …let me tell you what happened this time.

Larry’s message was from a father who is seeking the best spot for his daughter, a high-school cellist, to attend college as a music major.   The father was relating how special it was for his daughter to be there, to talk with Larry afterwards, and to hear “the wonderful music Serafin String Quartet provided”. The gentleman said he drove almost 100 miles to get there will do it again in April (when SSQ will return to close Trinity’s season). “Every mile was worth driving,” the man wrote. How heartwarming for us to connect with this caring and attentive father, and how exciting that we were able to deliver an experience for his daughter, and for him, that they both want to repeat!!

Tim received a message from an adult amateur violinist who plays in the Community Orchestra. Hearing us play the Dohnanyi Piano Quintet triggered a touching reminiscence of her dear, life-long pianist friend, now in elder years and experiencing dementia. Today, her pianist friend can only poke a few notes out here and there, but at the time she “played a pretty mean piano!”  This listener was spirited back 25 years, recalling how she and her friend, with some devoted others, read through the Dohnanyi from time to time,  Hearing the quintet flooded this listener with memories of reading through the piece with this friend and their happy satisfaction at exploring this wonderful work together. “I treasure those times,” she wrote, “they were some of the most valuable times of my life. It’s what I call feeding the soul.” How gratifying for us to be a conduit for this listener to recall and reconnect with “what matters”.

I also received a message – mine from one of my nearest and dearest friends, who described herself as an “unsophisticated” listener, new to classical music. She shared with us her amazing experience of finding a thrilling and profound connection to her emotions while listening to the Mozart, Beethoven and Dohnanyi – each one evoking in her a different landscape of feelings, images and ideas. It was one of the most “tuned-in” expressions of the connecting to the content of the music that I have heard – and prompted me to assure her that, far from “unsophisticated”, she actually is tapped in to the real essence of the music - and completely “getting it” at the most important level –  listening with a sophisticated heart!! For more than 30 years she believed she did not, would not, or could not appreciate classical music.  How thrilling for us to be part of her discovery of the varied, deep, and expansive world of classical music and the riches it delivers to the attentive listener!!

These messages spanned 3 generations – and each was dramatic, heartfelt and enthusiastic – reinforcing my confidence in the greatness of the artworks of chamber music that we are so privileged to perform. And, more importantly - it reinforced to me their inherent accessibility and ability to touch any receptive heart!   This, I must say, is why we do it!!

-Kate Ransom  

A Musical Welcome

Last fall, I made a big life change: moving from Canada to the US indefinitely to join the faculty of the University of Delaware.  Luckily, the first people I got to know in my new home were the Serafin String Quartet.  Before I was a member, before even beginning to teach at the University of Delaware, my first experience here was preparing for a concert with them when former violist Molly Carr had a conflict.  I was immediately drawn into their special world of music-making.  Apparently, I was also on trial for the job, and I can assure everyone that if you are going to audition for anything, it's best to be unconscious of the fact.  Much more pleasant! 

I want to talk a little about the rehearsal process I dove into last August, as I feel that's at the heart of what makes this group so wonderful.  Quartet playing is about communication: you are all trying to craft a powerful message to the audience, and as anyone who watched the recent presidential debates can attest, there are thousands of tiny details that affect the impact and the presentation of this message. The way four different people with vastly different backgrounds, perspectives, and talents arrive at a unified concept is fascinating. Firstly, there are the raw materials.  Everyone has their own unique way of hearing the piece they are playing together.  How they hear their own line, but also how they hear the group’s message can be very different at times.  What's amazing is that before any words are even spoken, with sensitive listening, quartet musicians respond to what the others are playing, and thus communicate their intentions.  Like good friends or family members who bring out the best in you, quartet mates challenge your ideas.  I’m an idealist, believing that though the best product comes from experimentation with many ideas, we can still arrive at a consensus.  The curiosity and openness of this group, but moreover  the dedication to excellence when musical ideas are formed, is truly inspirational.  Right away, the Serafins felt like the best musical friends I could hope for.  

I can’t resist taking a second here as I introduce myself to say a word about the viola.  Canadians are notoriously poor self-promoters, likewise violists, but I think I can get away with it in this, my first blog-post.  For me, the middle voices are the heart, the inner warmth of chamber music.  Of course we have our solo moments and, like all instruments in a string quartet, have to play many roles at different times.  But the essential role in much of the classical repertoire we play is a contrapuntal inner voice, representing the tenor or alto voice.  In the works of great composers (e.g.  Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, all on the menu this delicious season!) the inner voices add an amazing dimension.  They are often the parts lending subtle harmonic colour to a melody, or providing some rhythmic undercurrent that transforms the meaning of the piece’s main line.  In the case of Beethoven’s Harp Quartet, which we will perform October 20^th at Trinity Episcopal Church, the viola provides a harrowing counterpart  to the first violin’s serene opening melody in the second movement.   When I am an audience member and I catch myself emotionally disengaged, I take a moment and listen to the workings of the inner voices.  Usually in moments I am a weepy puddle.  In fact this technique is not recommended on dates, or any moments where you would prefer to look respectable post-concert.  However, if you are seeking an intense, overwhelming classical music experience, the inner voices are where it’s at!

Until next time,
Esme Allen-Creighton

Next Season: Beethoven to Beethoven, and everything in between

So, while it might seem that we simply left our blog on the vine to die, we are very much here, and excited to announce repertoire for our 2012-13 season! Here goes:

We begin with a couple of exciting collage concerts, one for a second annual Beethoven & Brewskies event at the Twin Lakes Brewery in Greenville, Delaware (a private affair - sorry), where we'll give a sampler of works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (and as I type this on my iPhone, it keeps getting mis-typed as "Beerthoven", which I suppose is appropriate!).

If "Beerthoven" existed, he'd look like this.

On Saturday, September 22, we take our String Quartet Time Machine to the Kennett Flash in Kennett Square, PA, giving a dash through history from Haydn to Higdon (with Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Dvořák, Ravel and Martinů in between). The Flash is a very fun, hip venue, and we're delighted to make our debut there.

This will mark our second season providing bookend concerts for the Arts at Trinity series in Wilmington, with some exciting repertoire and guests. October 20, 2012 (Saturday) will offer a delightful early work of Mozart (the D Major Divertimento), a middle-Beethoven classic (the "Harp" Quartet) and very youthful Dohnanyi (the Op. 1 Piano Quintet - with the fantastic pianist Victor Asuncion). We finish the Trinity season on April 20, 2013, with Puccini's gorgeous Crysanthemi, Mozart's g minor Piano Quartet (with our friend & colleague, the wonderful Julie Nishimura) and the thrilling a minor string quartet of Robert Schumann.

In March, we've got some very exciting university-related activities.  At the end of the month, we will be at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, for a residency.  We will be working with students, giving workshops, and presenting a performance including Haydn's "Sunrise" Quartet and the monumental Beethoven Op. 132 a minor Quartet, on March 23, 2013 (time and exact location TBA).

Earlier in March, we will present our annual concert celebrating our ongoing residency at the University of Delaware. We are delighted and honored to be Quartet-in-Residence again at UD's Department of Music, where we will continue to work with students in chamber music and give on-campus concerts and "informances".  Our formal UD concert will be in the lovely Gore Recital Hall on Sunday, March 10, 2013, at 3:00 PM, featuring the Beethoven Op. 132 and the hauntingly beautiful Il Tramonto of Respighi, with the wonderful soprano Noël Archambeault, who serves on the UD voice faculty.

Other concerts will be popping up from time to time, and members of the quartet have interesting individual and joint projects planned, but we'll save all that for another post.  Hope to see you at our concerts this coming season!

Cheers,
Larry

How Tweet is is

So, earlier this season, we in the quartet were trying to think of interesting ways to present ourselves at our new concert series, called "ClassicAlive!" at Wilmington, Delaware's newly refurbished Queen Theater (run by World Café Live). Kate had put together a wonderful script for our first concert in December (the title of which was "Quartet Time Machine"), but we were trying to think of yet other ways to connect with our audience in this less formal, more intimate setting than an average concert.

Earlier that year, during the Super Bowl halftime show, I had a wonderful time following many people on Twitter who were making fun of the band The Black-Eyed Peas (good band, bad halftime show - still trying to wrap my head around what the heck the box-headed dancers were all about).  For some reason, the fun of this popped into my head when we were discussing the Queen Theater concerts, as did a senior recital of one of my students at the University of Delaware, who had her audience tweet about her program.  So, I said, "Hey, I could 'live-tweet' the concert while you guys are reading the script!" To my great surprise, my colleagues thought this was a really good idea. To my greater surprise, they seemed to understand what I was talking about.

So, I was off on the concept. As a trial run for the first concert, I decided to cheat a little bit.  I mostly pre-wrote my tweets to correspond to where we were in the program, adding extra tidbits like:

While Debussy loved Ravel’s 4tet, Gabriel Fauré, for whom it was written, hated it, called it a failure. Can’t please everybody! #SSQatWCL

and

In addition to being a truly wonderful composer, Jennifer #Higdon is also a truly lovely person. Double win for us! #SSQatWCL

And, some commentary about my fellow Serafins:

I promise not to tweet while Kate and Molly are playing their glorious #Mozart Duo! If you see me doing it, throw some food at me. #SSQatWCL

and

No, Kate didn't suddenly get taller. That's Tim sitting in the 1st violin seat. They share that duty - some 4tets do, most don't. #SSQatWCL

If you're unfamiliar with the weird, wacky world of Twitter, it is a site where individuals do what is called "micro-blogging", with individual "tweets" containing no more than 140 characters. The "#" sign, called a hashtag in the Twitterverse, can draw attention to a word, or comment on a tweet (in the above tweets, the hashtag simply labeled the concert).

As this concert went on, I started to feel just a bit more confident to tweet more spontaneously, and added brilliant gems like:

Yep, Kate's socks are pretty cool, indeed. #SSQatWCL

Pure poetry, huh?

The Twitter experiment was fun for me, and was sort of an exhilarating challenge, making sure I could do this stuff on my iPhone and still get myself ready to focus and play. So, I was ready to try it again for our second concert in February, a Valentine-themed concert we were calling "Romp through Romanticism". Little did I know that the idea would draw the attention of journalist Peter Bothum of the Delaware News Journal, who featured SSQ in a huge article profiling the concert and (more so) the tweeting.  Now, with pictures of the quartet, and me with my phone onstage, were all over the paper, the stakes were raised. I needed to tweet like I'd never tweeted before.  Okay, not really, but I did feel that I should be at least as active as I was the previous time out.

Some tweets from the Romanticism concert, again clearly inspired genius in 140 characters or less:

Holy cow, that Mendelssohn movement *was* fast.  My fingers are almost too tired to tweet! #repetitivestress #justkiddingimfine #SSQatWCL

Fun fact: this Ravel quartet was debuted on Tim's birthday (March 5). But Tim's not 108 years old. #SSQatWCL

and, returning to the well:

Not related to Schumann, but Kate is wearing those fabulous socks again! #SSQatWCL

The Twitter response during this concert was amazing, with people at the concert tweeting along with me, and I even got into a couple of Twitter conversations. Luckily, I always was able to get the phone down in time to play!  All in all, I had a great time doing it.

So, if you want to come and see me tweet on Sunday, March 11 at 12:00 noon at the Queen Theater (with doors opening at 11:00 for brunch), we'd love to see you.  Even if you don't come, you can always see what we're doing during the concert by following us on Twitter: @serafin4tet (you're also welcome to follow yours truly: @larrystomberg). I'll do what I can to be entertaining and informative, and maybe just a bit silly (except after we play the Barber Adagio on that concert - I'll likely be too sad to tweet).

Cheers from the quartet's head "Twit",
Larry

The Devil Is In The Details

The process of “study” is a wonderful journey. As familiarity with a subject becomes more intense, its meaning becomes clearer and richer. And as performers work into the details they find the essence of the style, structure and coherence that lies within every great work! I always took that saying “the devil is in the details” to mean that the most challenging part of playing a piece well lies in getting the details to speak and be heard!

I have equated this the experience, on some more simple level, to doing a jigsaw puzzle that replicates a great work of art or a photograph of an intricate scene. When I begin, I am primarily just matching color schemes, or connecting the most obvious and distinctive lines. But, as I get further into the process, I find myself studying the subtle nuances of the subject and getting to know the painting or photograph in great detail. My appreciation for its elements increases and my understanding of it becomes more complete. I see things to which I was initially blind – textures, figures, lines, shades of color.

Studying and mastering a musical work has something in common with this process. As I get to know a work and become more and more familiarized with the details of its elements of construction, it jumps to life at a whole new level! The process of understanding a work more and more in its intricate detail is enormously gratifying!

It is as if time slows down and I can hear the piece with more and more attention to the smallest figures. It feels as if my ears get bigger in the process – equivalent to seeing something through a magnifying glass - and I hear the elements in greater detail and I tune-in more keenly to the turn of a phrase, the articulation, the intonation of chords and scale patterns, and the unique structure and inflection of each motive and line.

Whoever it was who famously said, “the devil is in the details” (and later someone modified to say “God is in the details”), they made a compelling point. I think this is the “artist’s comment” about how attention to the intricacies elevates one’s experience of studying, playing, performing and/or listening to music! The sharper and closer is one’s perception of its elements, the more intimately we “know it”, the more deeply we experience all that it has to offer.

When a teen-ager listens over and over to his favorite song, I am sure it is not with the idea that the song is being “studied”. But I would maintain that it is exactly what is happening – with the result that the more one intently listens, the better one hears! The better one hears, the more one experiences the universe within a single musical selection.

Whether formal and “serious” or casual and for the “hobbyist”, “study” is what leads to a more and more thrilling understanding of a work of music. Familiarity is key to comprehension. So – the moral of the story is: listen often and listen intently - with your ears wide open! And, enjoy the journey to the center of each musical universe!!

-Kate

HOW DO I LOOK?

As musicians, we often spend 95% of our effort on how we sound.  But for the average audience member, a concert consists of both a visual and an audio experience.  When this involves a small ensemble looking coordinated is also a challenge.

What you wear says a lot about you. To some people, wearing jeans and a T-shirt to a performance says you do not care about the concert. But to other people it might be a “hip” statement. Pianist Awadagin Pratt often soloed with major symphonies in jeans and a T-shirt (however, he did not do this until after he won the Naumburg Competition). The Kronos Quartet also wears “non-traditional” clothes such as leather jackets and jeans. In the case of Awadagin, his fame at winning a major competition took some (but not all) of the edge off of the criticism of his dress code, and gave him a persona of an “edgy” performer. In the case of the Kronos Quartet, their dress really reflects their choice of programming, which is mainly contemporary music.

Whatever you or your group decides to wear, there are two important things to remember: 1) It needs to look like you care and 2) It needs to be true to the individual and/or the group. I personally despise performing in a tuxedo or even a suit. For me, it adds a barrier between me and the audience that I strive to remove. However, there have been times that I do perform in a suit with my quartet, because as groups there are times we want to portray a very conservative look. At other times we might perform in jeans, because the venue is different and we want to portray a different feeling. But whatever I wear, if I think I look good I will go into a concert with more confidence and security then if I am embarrassed by my dress.

-Tim Schwarz

LISTENING

In my last blog I talked about the power of silence. Another powerful tool is listening. Like silence, there are different levels of listening. Think about two people having a conversation. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and feel like they are really hearing you? Contrast that with someone who is just waiting for you to stop talking so they can say what they want to say. Or talking on the phone with someone and knowing they are typing an e-mail to someone else while “listening” to you.

Music, and especially chamber music, is very similar. If I am sight-reading a piece, I spend most of my effort counting to make sure I am not off rhythmically. While this basically keeps me in the correct spot, obsession with counting can actually make me listen less. Likewise, when I really begin to listen, then it is possible I might miss-count a phrase at first. But the rewards are much greater in the end.

In order to truly listen, you have to have some knowledge of what your partners are doing. Are you with them rhythmically or tonally? What is the function of the chord or rhythm? Are you the most important voice? If not, who is? Going into a rehearsal with all of that knowledge can free you to hear the individual style and playing of the instrumentalist. And then you are truly free to communicate with each other in a meaningful way.

-Tim Schwarz