← Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
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Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the classical music podcast. My name is Joshua Wylerstein. I'm a conductor and I'm the music director of the Orchestra Nacional de Lille and the chief conductor of the Aalborg Symphony. This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive into this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank my new Patreon sponsors, Ryan, Martine, Will, Deborah, James, Dan, Nico, Helen, Jack, Flavia, Natalie, Julian, and all of my other Patreon sponsors for making season 11 possible. If you'd like to support the show, please head over to patreon.com stickynotespodcast and if you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It is greatly appreciated. So I just had a wonderful week in Lille with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, get on Klein's Partita for Strings and Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto with the amazing Denis Kozhukin. But I actually just wanted to take another moment to talk about the sound levels and things on the show because I've received so much feedback and funnily enough, sometimes it's been kind of the opposite feedback, like my voice is too loud, the music is too soft, or the music is too loud and my voice is too soft. But I ended up getting in touch with a producer. Actually, he got in touch with me named Charlie, who has done an incredible job mastering the show. The Liszt Faust Symphony was the debut of that new sound. I hope that it worked for everybody. It sounded great to me and we're going to be continuing that relationship going forward. So a huge, huge thank you to Charlie for all of his work. I'm really happy to share this episode on one of the great masterpieces in chamber music, Mozart's Dissonance Quartet. Hope you enjoy it. I've been covering a lot of late Romantic music in the recent episodes of the Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Zelinsky, Rachmaninoff, with one diversion into Pergalesi along the way. So in thinking of what to do next, my thoughts immediately went to something cleansing to the ear, something with a little bit less searing emotion, something with maybe less chromaticism and even dissonance. Well, this is actually the first piece I thought of, and you might be wondering why on earth would I choose a piece that literally is called Dissonance, when I was looking for something a bit slight, simpler or cleaner to talk about on the show today. But actually Mozart's Dissonance Quartet, probably his most famous and beloved quartet, was not called Dissonance by Mozart, and the rest of the piece is thought of as one of Mozart's most outgoing and cheerful works, though I think there's a bit more to it than that. This quartet was part of a set of quartets that were dedicated to Mozart's friend and mentor, Joseph Haydn, the father of the String quartet and Mozart wrote to Haydn upon their behold here famous man and dearest friend, my six children. They are, to be sure, the fruit of long and arduous work. Yet some friends have encouraged me to assume that I shall see this work rewarded to some extent at least, and this flatters me into believing that these children shall one day offer me some comfort. The final one of this set of six quartets is the one we're going to talk about today, and it is the one that has been dubbed Dissonance. This single dissonance caused massive controversy in its time, which we'll get to later, but it is a fascinating insight into the rules of harmony at the time. And actually our sojourns to late romanticism over the last few weeks, and especially my conversation with KE Scaglione about Wagner and the Tristan chord, should help us understand the intensely heated debates that arose over that chord I just played you earlier. So today on the show, we'll spend some time on that famous Dissonance, and then we'll dive into the rest of this glorious quartet, exploring Mozart's unparalleled ability to write the most glorious of melodies and the most perfect of harmonies. All this and much more is coming right up on sticky notes. The string quartet as a genre before Haydn was essentially a show for the first violin, while the second violin, viola and cello accompanied. But Haydn's set of six Op. 33 quartets were a revolutionary gesture, essentially democratizing the string quartet and allowing for much more dialogue within the group. The first violin still very much had the leading voice, but those OPN quartets liberated the other instruments and allowed them to take on important melodic roles as well. This was one of the main inspirations for Mozart as he began to write his set of six string quartets, which were written four years after Haydn's Opus 33s. Like with the symphony, Haydn essentially invented the standard format of the string quartet with a sonataform first movement, sometimes with an introduction, either a slow movement or a minuet, an elegant dance. Then whichever movement wasn't used would be the third movement, and then a fast final. Now, within that form, Haydn created tons of Variety. But that standard format of string quartets held essentially until Beethoven's late quartets blew it up, something we've talked about before. On the show, Mozart occupied a sort of middle ground. His quartets were formally very much in line with Haydn's. But as he progressed, he further democratized the quartet, writing a series of later quartets that featured the cello far more than any composer had before. But that was later, for now, Mozart was writing essentially an homage to Haydn with these quartets. So the form and the predominance, though less predominant than before, of the first violin was still there. So how does Mozart distinguish himself in this quartet? Well, just take a listen to that opening. Again, Haydn wasn't wild about this opening, saying in a kind of backhanded way, if Mozart wrote it, he must have meant it. That's about as far as Haydn would go in criticizing Mozart, who Haydn had once called the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name. But Haydn certainly wasn't the only one who did not understand this opening. Some reviews complained about the complexity of the opening, while some called it downright ugly. One analysis said that Mozart's ears are lined with iron. And many commentators simply couldn't believe Mozart would write something like this. And so they assumed he had made a mistake or the publisher had made a mistake. 35 years after Mozart's death, the musicologist Francois Joseph Feti actually traveled to London, where the manuscript of the quartet was, to make sure that Mozart actually had written it this way. So you can see that even in 1830, three years after Beethoven's death, this opening was still causing controversy. Let's break it down now to see why it's so unusual and also perhaps, why so many commentators thought it was impossible. The quartet begins with pulsing notes in the cello on a C. The viola comes in on an ab, and then the second violin immediately after on an eb. Okay, no problem there. What we have is an AB major chord. It's spelled in an unusual way, though, for the beginning of a quartet, with the third in the bass, creating some initial instability. Now, this is a bit esoteric, but it's important to understand why people were so unsettled by this opening and why they are still today. The key that Mozart implies at the beginning is C minor, but what we get is the VI of C minor, ab, and not even in its normal position. Going to a VI chord in the midst of a key, especially when the home key is expected, is known as a deceptive cadence. And Mozart did this all the time. But here he does it right at the beginning of the piece. So he's beginning the piece with a deception. All this from just that one AB major chord. And we haven't even gotten to the dissonance yet. But now it an A natural in the first violin that is not part of an AB major chord. There are so many things about this that are remarkable. But I found a great YouTube video by the channel First Sight Analysis, which shows one of the coolest things about this. Let them explain.
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In any case, it's on the background of that A flat chord that the first violin comes in with that very surprising and harsh A natural. What's going on is that there is a note, the A flat, that is being inflected into a natural. That's why it's called chromatic inflection. But that inflection happens across two different voices. That's called a false relation. And it's usually avoided precisely for this reason, because it's an unprepared dissonance. It's just too harsh. It's not warranted by the motion of the lines. So those of us who've been in harmony class would get bad grades for something like this. The false relation in this case, that's obviously exactly what Mozart is after, that unprepared, shocking dissonance. Let me in fact play it without a false relation and you'll see how the progression is much milder. So what I'll do is the ab. I'll turn it into an A natural, but in the same voice, in the viola voice. So nothing.
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This is one of those things where that knowledge of theory really helps to explain why something sounds the way that it does. It also makes the efforts to correct it all the more silly. Obviously, this false relation is the point of this opening, this shock of the dissonance that tells us something is wrong here. There's so much more music theory to be discovered here, and I really recommend watching the rest of this video on First Sight Analysis channel. As even if you know nothing about music theory, the demonstrations really reveal more and more of the brilliance of this opening. The other thing that makes this opening so unsettling is not just that one dissonance, it's that the key is constantly changing and modulating. In the first bars, Mozart implies C minor, AB major, G minor, BB minor, F major and AB again, then eb, then BB again, but major this time, then C minor, etcetera, etcetera. Everything is in flux and it's all over. What is supposed to be one of the most stable rhythmic ideas in all of music. An ostinato, a repeated note. Now, listen again, and don't worry about identifying the keys. Don't worry about the VI chord, the dissonance, all of that. Just try to get the feeling of how unsettled this music.
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Sam.
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Now, it's unsurprising that Haydn would actually essentially quote this music in his Creation oratorio for the introduction titled Chaos. This is what this music represented to the ordered minds of the classical era, Chaos. And it was completely unprecedented. Even today, that feeling of unsettledness doesn't go away, and I think it explains why atonal music, truly atonal music, still sounds so unsettled to our ears. Mozart pushes the boundaries of what our ear finds acceptable, and he does it in this gorgeous and emotional way that gives us this feeling of gentle chaos, like we're pushing our way through a dense fog, never quite knowing where we are. There's no opening like it. And it's the reason I'm spending so much time on about 20 measures of music, by the way, I have no doubt that the Tristan chord would not exist without these 20 measures. Every dissonance opens a door to a new dissonance, from Jeswaldo to Mozart to Wagner, all the way to Schoenberg and beyond. But finally, Mozart will arrive on the resolving key to C major, which was ostensibly the key of this quartet, with painful stabs, with more dissonances, though much gentler now than the opening, Mozart slowly arrives on a G major seventh chord. We have no idea what is in store for us. We know the quartet is written in C major, but after that opening, anything could happen. But as always with string quartets, I turn to Mark Steinberg of the Brentano Quartet for a description of what happens here. First listen,
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Sam.
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Steinberg writes, and then, in the face of existential crisis, Mozart chooses to look to the horizon rather than to his own navel. At the appearance of the allegro main part of the movement, the ominous pulsation of the opening levitates liberated from the cello that told forth the prophecy of darkness. I love that idea of levitation. Mozart takes those repeated notes at the beginning of the piece and transforms them into a gently joyful pulsation. The theme here is full of hope, like the first morning light after a long night. It dispels the drama and tension of the opening and sends us off into this joyful movement. There are subtle allusions to the opening throughout this first theme in this sonata form movement, quick reminder about sonata form exposition with two themes development, where those two themes are turned over, upside down, inside out, sometimes until they're barely recognizable. A recapitulation where the themes come back in their original form. And then often a coda where everything is summed up in the introduction. The dissonances were created by layering the voices on top of each other in turn. Here, Mozart does the same thing, and there are dissonances hinted at, but they pass very quickly and the effect is completely different. But even if you're not listening in any sort of analytical way, I think the brain clocks this similarity with the opening. It's like a shadow or a cloud crossing over the sunlit atmosphere. The second theme moves to G major, as it's supposed to in a C major Sonata 4 movement. Interestingly, though, the theme is more energetic than the first theme, which is a bit unusual. Usually in a fast sonata form movement. The second theme tends to be a bit more lyrical here. As Mozart gets further distanced from the introduction, he becomes more confident. This is also a place where Mozart shows off that democratizing instinct when it comes to string quartet writing. The cello now takes over the 16th note line, while the first violin plays an achingly lyrical line over the top of it before entering into a playful dialogue with the second violin and viola. This quartet rarely just sits still. There's always somewhere new to get to. It's here that we might expect to either have a repeat of the exposition or go straight onto the development. But Mozart isn't done yet with his first two themes. We now will hear a sequence of development within the exposition. First, we hear a playful allusion to all of the chromaticism we heard in the introduction. I actually need to define a term before we continue, and that is chromaticism. A chromatic scale is just a scale that is built from a series of half steps. This comes from a Latin Greek word relating to color, and this is how it was thought of in the Baroque and classical chromatic notes colored the main key of whatever movement the composer was writing. Mozart is going to heavily use chromaticism throughout this quartet, and since I'm going to mention it a lot, I wanted everyone to be on the same page. So now, did you hear that moment? I'll play it for you on the piano now so you can catch it. It's an amazing bit of dissonance that passes by very quickly. It seems that Mozart won't let go of the introduction so easily and keeps looking back at it as if he can't quite put it out of his mind, though the first violin certainly tries with a virtuosic and confident leap and jump across the instrument. The most purely joyful moment of the quartet so far. And then Mozart does something truly unusual for the coda of the exposition. He returns to his first theme over those same repeated notes. Usually at this point we wouldn't hear from the first theme again until its distorted version in the development. But Mozart returns to it, increasing its importance, which makes sense since the second theme was barely a theme at all. Mozart is re centering lyricism in this quartet. This final appearance of the theme takes us to the traditional repeat of the exposition. The development is absolutely extraordinary in its harmonic daring. In my opinion, it's just about as daring as the opening of the piece. Mozart modulates the key four times and in two cases creates harsh dissonances like a C against a C. That once again reminds us that the shadows of the opening are not far away. The theme is a version of the first theme and we have those repeated notes again, a constant companion, not only in this movement, but in the whole piece. On my Patreon exclusive mini episode this week, I'll show you the chords here for the harmony of this moment. It's one of my favorite in the piece. Here is where we see the biggest difference between someone like Mozart and Beethoven. Beethoven would have built these dissonances into a roaring battle, squeezing out every bit of intensity from this music. Mozart's continuation is intense and energetic, but it's still within the clear boundaries of classical era emotions. It's all there, just not out in front. But we also do hear what Nikolas Harnenkur, the great conductor called Mozartien chiaroscuro. These blocks that are clearly separated. Often performers smooth these blocks out, but I don't think they should be. It's meant to be a stark contrast here, and I love it when quartets embrace that. With that said, Mozart's greatest moments are not usually his stormiest. Near the end of the development section, Mozart has the first violin and cello engage in an absolutely gorgeous dialogue. That to me, is a shining example of what makes Mozart so great. And then, with another layered entrance, this time on a G, the dominant key of C major, we return home. Another difference between Mozart and Beethoven. Beethoven loved writing hugely long and complex developments, while Mozart shied away from that kind of thing. Most of the time, the aims of these two composers were different, and it comes through in structural choices like these. Now a normal composer just writes the recapitulation in the same way as the exposition. But Mozart isn't normal. He writes constant small changes in the Exposition that the eagle eared listener will catch in this movement. Usually these moments are highly chromatic, another reminder of the opening of the piece. The coda of the movement is full of joy and energy, where Mozart doubles the value of those repeated 8th notes and creates 16th notes, giving a final infusion of energy before the movement evaporates. As always with those repeated notes,
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Sam,
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The second movement moves to F major, an especially warm key that tends to envelop the listener. And that's exactly what this movement does. I tend to think that the first movement has a fair amount of darkness inside of it and that these shadows are not so easy for Mozart to cast off. Well, if that's the case, then the beginning of the second movement can dispel any worries. There is still quite a bit of chromaticism, but it's all now in service of the tempo marking of the movement. Andante cantabile. Walking and singing. And now the repeated note idea will return in the second violin and viola as the cello and first violin begin a magical dialogue, tender and teasing in equal measure, with achingly beautiful harmonies provided by those repeated notes. As I've mentioned many times on the show before, Mozart lived in an age where major keys could just as easily express tragedy as they could something joyful. And it's possible that this is happening here. Now, I know I just said our worries have been dispelled, but I don't think of it as a huge contradiction. The greatness of this music lies in its constantly shifting perspectives and also the completely valid interpretation of any listener. Is this music peaceful and content, or does it contain a bit of tragedy? Neither is right or wrong,
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Sam.
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We now arrive at a second theme of sorts, which is nothing short of extraordinary. We land in C major, the key of the opening movement. The cello plays a kind of ostinato, while the theme itself is made up of almost solely repeated notes. Now, in a quarter note, four eighth note rhythm, Mozart has transformed accompaniment into melody. And as Mark Steinberg says, single notes vibrate and pulsate weightlessly, holding time as one instinctively holds breath to savor the perfection of the present moment. Tenderly, tremulous, intimate and still.
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Sam.
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This movement is in sonatina form, meaning essentially sonata form, but without a development section. So Mozart will have to find a way to get us back to our main theme from the opening of the movement. The way he does it is positively magical. First we hear hints of those dangerous chromatics from the first movement. Even here, we can't quite get away. And then the dialogue between cello and first violin returns, but this time it is full of a meditative stillness, since the second violin and viola now simply hold long notes rather than repeating the pulsations.
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And then we're home with variations just like in the first movement. Recapitulation. The coda in the first movement of the piece was joyous, an attempt to dispel the shadows of the opening. One would be forgiven for expecting the same thing here, but as Dakota begins, we hear something completely new in the silence. And then the repeated note melody starts up again, marked pinissimo as softly as possible, and the key soon turns to F minor. Darkness has invaded this piece once more. We hear repeated dissonances as the comforting tone of the opening and of much of this movement is cast aside. But Mozart, once again, at the precipice of Beethovenian darkness, turns away. He steers us gently back to F major, almost as if we had been in meditation and had come to a moment of doubt and pain. And then we're able to return to a feeling of gentle stillness. 16th notes again return, just like in the coda of the first movement, as the movement is guided to its tender close. It's quite unusual for there to be so many parallels between a first and second movement in this period of classical music. Beethoven, once again was one of the first to create profound relationships between movements. But here in this quartet, they are absolutely present. Though much more subtle than Beethoven, this is a movement of profound depth and is one of my favorites in all of Mozart. Let's go to the third movement now, a minuet. In the tradition that Haydn had created, This minuet is pretty unusual as well. For one, the opening, full of that same chromaticism we've been grappling with in the first two movements, isn't usually present in a very simple minuet. This reminds me that early critics didn't only take issue with the opening of the piece. They also felt that the piece in general was too complex to our ears. Now, the ears who have lived through Beethoven to Brahms to Wagner to Mahler to schoenberg to Boulez, etc. Laugh at that idea. But it's true that for the ears of the time, those chromatic scales had a new and surprising tinge. You might be saying, what about Bach and all of the medieval Renaissance composers who used chromaticism? Well, again, at this time, living composers were really all anyone cared about. And someone like Bach was meant to be studied by scholars and was never really heard in performance. So the classical style of mostly clean harmonies was what people expected to hear Mozart was playing with that in this movement. The other surprising thing is the disjointedness of this music. Six clear events in the first 30 seconds. And the second part of the minuet, A section is just as strange, with that chromatic melodic idea constantly invading the normal harmonies. Once again, I don't think this movement exists without the repeated chromaticism of the first two movements, making this little minuet a palate cleanser, essentially profoundly related to the first two movements, a relatively revolutionary idea in itself. The trio middle section of the movement reinforces this even more strongly. The key turns to C minor and the repeated note idea comes back as Mozart returns to that stormy character. This time, though, it doesn't feel quite as serious as it did in the first movement. All the same, it's powerfully exciting music that is once again tied directly to the through line of the repeated notes. As in all minuets, the A section returns exactly as it was the first time, and the movement ends in a glorious C major. The last movement begins in a similar mode, but now the chromaticism, while present, is finally tamed. This is purely playful music, where the chromatic scale becomes part of the fun, not something foreign and complex. There are moments where drama breaks out, but it's all in good fun. The chromatic ideas are more integrated into the texture, rather than mean moments of doubt. And the repeated notes, sometimes 16th notes, sometimes eighths, are as rambunctious as Mozart gets, giving us an injection of excitement. The second theme in this sonataform movement is also full of the half step chromatic idea, and it's full of repeated notes as well. Everything in this quartet is integrated. It's also full of virtuosity for the first violin, which leads to a magical moment where once again, as Mark Steinberg says, at two points, the music gets stuck in a furiously repeating pattern from which Mozart escapes simply by lifting up above a stalled note as one lifts above cloud cover to see the perennially blue skies.
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Sam.
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The development section begins with a move to C minor and an attempt, perhaps to rekindle some of the drama that clouded the earlier movements. And then Mozart really starts to remind us of the first movement with a series of key changes. I'll call them out as they happen. E flat, F minor, E minor, F sharp minor, G sharp minor, B major, E major, E minor, G major.
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Closure.
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Home. This is a remarkable amount of harmonic instability for a composer of the time, and it's also the last time we experience this in the quartet. Mozart gives us a gentle reminder of what this quartet has been about since the beginning, those rapid shifts of harmony and the dissonances and chromatics of the opening introduction. From here though, we're home with another recapitulation full of little tricks. The coda of the quartet is a perfect amalgam of everything we love about Mozart elegance, energy, lyricism, playfulness, and a feeling of rightness that no other composer could quite match. As I said at the beginning of the show, Mozart never called this quartet Dissonance. These names were always invented long after these pieces were written and performed, and often adopted after their composers deaths. All the same, it's an appropriate title. In some ways that Dissonance does define the piece, and I think the rest of the quartet grapples with its implications. With that said, of course, this quartet is much more consonant than it is dissonant. And perhaps the magic of this piece is the way Mozart integrates dissonance and chromaticism into the rest of the quartet and makes it all the more beautiful for it. I'll quote Mark Steinberg one final time as we end the show today. In Invisible Love, Emmanuel Schmidt says happiness isn't about hiding from suffering, but about integrating it into the fabric of our existence. We could have no better guide to this integration than Mozart. Thanks so much for listening to Sticky Notes today. We'll have some more exciting stuff for you in a couple of weeks, so don't miss our next episode. If you like what you heard today, please feel free to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show gain more visibility. And please send any questions to stickynotespodcastmail.com and I will get back to you as soon as I can. And if you'd like to support the podcast monetarily, just head over to patreon.com thanks and I'll talk to you again after a while.