Author: Matthew

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The Key to a Generous Gift

It is no doubt widely known that, compared to that available to violinists, the repertoire of the solo viola player (how telling that there is no single-word noun for this species of musician) is somewhat attenuated. Violin-playing cynics might postulate that this is because their viola-playing counterparts cannot be trusted with the great works, and I have no wish to question their wisdom. A fairer explanation is probably that the range of the viola is better suited to ensemble music and is not flattered by the show-stopping demands of the violin concerto corpus. We do however have some gems, and one of these is Telemann’s Viola Concerto in G Major. Whether Telemann was moved to compose this work of glorious pastoral innocence by pity for the neglected viola player we cannot be sure. Hard-hearted though is the viola player who feels patronised by such a generous gift to his repertoire, for Telemann’s work comprises four movements of such simple pleasure that it is impossible to feel for it anything but the deepest goodwill.

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A Quartet for the Nuclear Age

One of our current projects is Shostakovich’s eighth quartet. Few members of the entire quartet repertoire have provoked such debate as this work of astonishing power blended with occasional moments of heart-breaking pathos. Written during the composer’s visit to Dresden after World War II, it comprises five contiguous movements which together evoke both the pitiful destruction of that conflict and the composer’s own thoughts of suicide at the time of writing in 1960. The quartet’s centrepiece is its second movement, a flurry of almost divine brutality which arguably stands as a kind of Holst’s Mars, the God of War for the nuclear age: inhuman, unrelenting, and total in its devastating force. The third and fourth movements can be seen as both fighting to escape the shadow of the second and zooming in from its panoramic horror to reveal its effects at closer proximity. The tragically distorted folk setting of the third speaks of cultures destroyed by what the composer himself described as “fascism and war”, while the fourth – which, with macabre irony, is both the most poignantly sad movement and the only one which spends any substantial time in a major key – consists of individual voices muted by war but made beautifully audible through music in a new, but comprehensible, heavenly language. These then give way to the final movement, a reprise of the bleak melancholy of the first corrupted by dissonant counterpoint and ending with a hopeless vision of death as the end of everything, the hints at salvation expressed in the previous movement now a distant memory.

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Mozart’s Frustrating Magic

As a quartet we play a lot of Mozart. At the moment we are concentrating on the earlier quartets, although the later Eine Kleine Nachtmusik remains a staple of any string repertoire. Like no other aspect of the Mozart musical corpus – save perhaps for the operas – the quartets reveal the true genius of Mozart in that they sound exactly as music should. Imagine a string quartet and you imagine them playing Mozart, probably a minuet in a jolly major key on a pleasant summer’s evening. There is an almost extraterrestrial perfection to so much of Mozart’s music, something which is particularly evident in the iconic opening movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Listening to this is the musical equivalent of hearing a speech whose words are inspirational and chime exactly with what the listener would say were he capable of such articulacy. With Eine Kleine Nachtmusik this impression derives partly from Mozart’s unmatched mastery of sonata form, but it is primarily a melodic effect, whereby each bar flows from the previous one as if it were the only natural and possible successor. With such organic melodic precision no other composer can compete, not even Beethoven.

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A few words from Matthew

Hello, my name is Matthew Smith and I am currently Tyne Consort’s resident viola player (and occasional violinist). From time to time I will use this space to write a few words (500, to be precise – you can count them if you like) on what we are doing at the moment, and my thoughts on some of the music that we play. The 500 words will be entirely my own view; I profess no expertise, and it might be that my fellow members of the ensemble use this space to cordially disagree with me and put forward their own opinions. Such variety of opinion would, I hope, be reflective of an ensemble whose members each bring different qualities to it, to the benefit of the whole. However my main hope is that you enjoy reading these occasional posts as much as I enjoy writing them. If having done so you feel like exploring the rest of the site, then so much the better.