186

The GRA ..\ 10PHONE

October 1937

music combination is the difficulty of that extra player, and I think it would be fair to say that it was not until the gramophone came along that most of us got an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the great string quintets. When Haydn was asked why he never wrote a quintet he replied, "Because I was never commissioned to write a quintet." I will take this opportunity to remind the recording companies who have so nobly served . us over quintets that there are still a few unrecorded to which their attention should be given. Perhaps the most conspicuous absentee in the catalogue is Brahms's F major (with second viola), but when we remember the popularity of Dvorak's Nigger Quartet there seems room for a recording of his Nigger Quintet in E flat. I have never heard it, but what I have read about i t is most attractive. Then there are the two Mendelssohn Quintets in A major and B flat. All the above-mentioned are quintets with a second viola. The greatest string quintet ever written is Schubert's C major, and this has a second 'cello instead of a second viola. Glazounov also wrote a quintet with this combination. And so did another Russian, Taneiev. It is high time that some of this composer's chamber music was recorded. He was considered able to hold his own with Brahms, and his piano quintet is spoken of as a masterpiece of the first rank. Perhaps some reader who knows Taneiev's chamber music will support my suggestion from a first-hand knowledge of this composer's work which I regrettably lack. Incidentally Beethoven arranged the septet which started off this discussion as a string quintet, and a charming arrangement I believe i t is. I have not yet paid a more than well-merited tribute to the playing and recording of the septet, both of which are absolutely first class.

Equally good is the Columbia album of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet played by the Roth String Quart<.>t and Simeon Bellison. I note that A.R. in his review writes that" the clarinet is, by reason of its compelling timbre, the unquestioned leader," and alludes further to "its rhapsodical character and its capacity for passionate expression." Now I think we get a hint here why the saxophone makes such strong emotional appeal to so many people. To my ear the clarinet when it has opportunities such as Mozart and Brahms have given i t is certainly rhapsodical, but I find i t too inhuman an instrument to be credited with passionate expression, if by passionate expression we are to understand the poignancy which always touches passion with a sense of fugacity, and which is expressed to my ear most perfectly by the violin. The clarinet at its most rhapsodical gives me the impression of being without beginning or end. If I listen to Mozart or Brahms's Clarinet Quintets I always feel when they begin as if I had come upon music which had already begun and as if when it finished I turned away from music that was still playing. I t is like approaching birdsong in a garden at dawn or the sound of the sea in a gap of a cliff. And I fancy that perhaps the emotional appeal of the saxophone is the way i t seems to provide the natural music of mankind overheard in a sudden lull of contemporary noise. I t may have an impersonality which appeals to a life like that of to-day where personality grows ever more and more faint.

I may be denying definite expression to the clarinet or saxophone, or for that matter to any wind instrument, because I do not believe that the instrumentalist can do more than execute with faultless technique the music written for him to perform. Between one clarinettist and another the only difference is the perfection of technique. When Mozart wrote his clarinet quintet for Anton Stadler he was writing for an accomplished clarinettist. Brahms was writing for another accomplished clarinettist when he wrote his quintet for Muhlfeld. We do not know whether Simeon Bellison is technically a better clarinettist than Stadler, but we are justified in believing that the interpretation m\lst have been fundamentally the same. The nearest approach I know to passionate expression from any wind instrumentalist is the performance of Leon Goossens upon the oboe, but I realize that this is due to a supreme technical accomplishment and a perfect mastery over the instrument.

Some of the greatest dramatic effects in opera have been secured by contrasting the pastoral tones of the oboe or the cor anglais with the passion of the music preceding and succeeding it. The plaintive piping of the shepherd in the third act of Tristan and Isolde occurs immediately as an example of this dramatic contrast. Reverse the effect and give the wood-wind the passion with a solo violin to express the contrast and the dramatic effect would vanish in a bathos of sentiment.

I recognize that the opportunities given to wind instrumentalists to display solo virtuosity combined with emotional power are rare compared with those given to the violinist, the 'cellist and the pianist, but i t will have to be admitted that the very lack of those opportunities are an indication of their limited power of emotional expression . Mere technical virtuosity in a violinist or pianist ,,,ill leave listeners with the impression of what some call soullessness, others lack of temperament. And it is this very capacity for expressing soul or temperament or passion, or whatever you choose to call it, which is one of the pitfalls of the violinist or pianist. Nothing shows up the second-rate violinist or pianist more quickly than the facile emotionalism he can add even to the greatest music. The clarinettist or oboeist is free from this snare. He can merely play badly.

Not so, however, the cornet player, \"ho with quivering fingers can sentimentalize his instrument like the worst cheapjack of a violinist, and the refusal of composers to give the cornet a place in the orchestra is not without significance in this connection. The young Mozart's ears were so sensitive that the first t ime he heard a trumpet he fainted. One asks what would have, been the effect on the child of hearing a sentimental