Classical Music | Music for Quartet

Recorded on 10/27/2010, uploaded on 03/11/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In 1782-83, Mozart made an intense study of the works of Bach and Handel. Gottfried van Swieten, who possessed a collection of manuscripts by both composers, introduced Mozart to the works of the Baroque masters and invited Mozart to visit him regularly to study and perform them. During this time, Mozart composed a number of pieces imitating the contrapuntal style of Bach. Many of these were insubstantial, being merely study pieces; some Mozart even left incomplete. One piece, however, a fugue in c minor for two pianos, Mozart revisited later in 1788.

The Adagio and Fugue in C minor for string quartet was the result of Mozart’s revision of the earlier fugue for two pianos. The Adagio introduction was added in 1788. It is based on a dramatically rising melodic idea that, while contrapuntal in nature, it shows that by 1788 Mozart had assimilated Bach’s contrapuntal style into his own musical technique. After a close on a half-cadence in C minor, the fugue begins with the subject announced in the cello. Immediately, the dark, mysterious quality of so many of Bach’s fugue is recognizable. The exposition is quite regular with a tonal answer and a regular countersubject. The middle portion, however, is quite extensive. After one set of middle entries, the inversion of subject is thrown into the fray. Before long, both subject and inversion are combined in multiple instances of stretto. The culmination comes when both are presented simultaneously, not in stretto, but beginning and ending at the same time. It is an impressive feat to produce a fugue subject capable of being accompanied so perfectly by its own inversion—a feat worthy of the great Leipzig master himself. Like two intersecting lines that meet for only a brief point, the subject and its inversion separate after their meeting to once again pursue their own paths of development. A final, fragmentary statement of the subject and full chords bring the fugue to a close.     Joseph DuBose

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Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546    W.A. Mozart

The fugue was originally composed for keyboard duet in 1783, a period during which Mozart was greatly interested in studying and learning from the contrapuntal techniques of Bach and Handel. In 1788, Mozart arranged this austere fugue for strings, prefacing it with what he termed in his thematic catalog "a brief Adagio" whose profundity belies its comparative brevity. In its two-part structure, the work belongs to the tradition of Viennese church music. Why Mozart returned to his earlier fugue is not clear, and no practical purpose for the new work is known. It is worth, however, pointing out that the summer of 1788 was also when Mozart composed his three great final symphonies, No. 39 in E flat, No. 40 in G minor, and No. 41 in C, "Jupiter.       Hausmann String Quartet

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.