CHAMBER MUSIC, a term obviously denoting music for performance in a room of a private house, has acquired the special meaning of large works in the sonata style for a group of indi vidual instruments; although it may be borne in mind that in the early 18th century vocal cantatas for solo voices were at least as important as purely instrumental compositions.
One feature of immaturity is common to all the chamber music, vocal and instrumental, between and including Corelli and Bach ; namely, that the harmonic background is left to the harpsichord player to extemporize from the indications given by a figured bass (q.v.). Even works with elaborate obligato harpsichord parts, have passages which presuppose this extempore element. Only the concerted music of the French clavecinists Couperin and Rameau consistently leaves nothing undetermined.
Works with Continuo.—The forms of chamber music are those of music at large, and it has no independent history. But it is very definite in the principles which determine its texture; and the element of the figured bass or continuo puts the earlier chamber music into an altogether different category from the art which arose with Haydn. As is shown in the articles IN STRUMENTATION, MUSIC and SONATA FORMS, the sonata-style of Haydn and Mozart irrevocably brought the dramatic element into music ; but in addition to this, it brought alike into chamber music and orchestral music a fundamental principle that all players in an instrumental combination should between them provide their own harmonic background without the aid of a continuo part.
The disappearance of the continuo in later chamber music marks the realization of the central classical idea of the style, according to which there is no part in the ensemble left either indeterminate or in permanent subordination.
With its disappearance must also disappear the conception of the ensemble as a group of treble instruments over a firm bass, requiring a middle mass of harmony on an altogether remoter plane to hold them together. The middle part must be on the same plane as the others, and all must be as ready to provide the background as to carry on the main lines. There were no string quartets in the continuo period; and, what is more significant, the viola parts in the orchestra of Bach and Handel are, except when accompanying a choral fugue, neither interesting in them selves nor sufficient to fill up the gap between violins and bass. Their function is to reinforce the continuo without going a step out of their way to make the harmony always complete.
Haydn's first Quartets.—Rightly understood and performed, the result is perfectly mature ; but it is worlds away from the crudest of Haydn's first quartets which, written before the death of Handel, show the criterion of self-sufficiency firmly established, so that there is no room for a continuo. The first string quartets are not clearly distinguished from orchestral music ; wind parts have been discovered for Haydn's op. 1, No. 5 and op. 2, No. 3, and Haydn throughout his life remained capable of occasionally forgetting that his quartet-violoncello was not supported by a double-bass. But few processes in the history of music are more fascinating than the steady emergence of Haydn's quartet-style from the matrix of orchestral habit. In the quartets of op. 9 which he afterwards wished to regard as the beginning of his work, the four string parts are equally necessary and equally alive. They are not equally prominent; because the criterion is not polyphony but self-sufficiency for the purposes of this kind of music ; and in this kind of music the normal place for melody is on the top.
In the very important six quartets, op. 20, Haydn discovers the character of the violoncello as something more than a bass to the violins—you can hear him discover it in the fourth bar of op. 20, No. I ; and with this discovery all possibility of the use of a double-bass vanishes, though miscalculations occur in the latest quartets. Had Haydn been a great violoncellist his first quartets might have been as luxurious as the quintets of Boc cherini (q.v.), and he might have dallied longer in the bypaths of a style which tries to give each instrument in turn its display of solo-work. But Haydn's line of progress is steady and direct, and no document in the history of music is more important than his op. 20, with its three fugues (which secure autonomy and equality of parts by a return to the old polyphony), its passages of turn-about solo, its experiments in rich and special effects, and, most important of all, its achievements in quite normal quartet writing such as pervades the remaining forty-odd quartets which end with his pathetic last fragment, op. 103.
Haydn's pianoforte trios also cover his whole career but they show, from first to last, no effort to achieve more than pianoforte sonatas with string accompaniment.
Mozart.—Mozart was an inveterate polyphonist by the time he was 12 years old, and the character of the viola, unnoticed by Haydn in his ripest quartets, is imaginatively realized in quartets written by Mozart at the age of 17. The point is not that the viola takes part in a more polyphonic style (though Mozart's early quartets are full of contrapuntal and canonic forms) but that the composer's imagination is attentive to the tone of the instrument in every note he writes for it.
Mozart's pianoforte trios, which are very insufficiently appreci ated by historians and players, are perfect examples of inde pendence of parts, no less than the two great pianoforte quartets (which should have been six but that the publisher cried off his bargain because of their difficulty) and the quintet for pianoforte and wind instruments. The set of six great string quartets (avowedly inspired by and affectionately dedicated to Haydn) contains some of the profoundest music outside Beethoven ; and of the four remaining quartets, the last three, written for the King of Prussia, who was a good violoncellist, gave his majesty a grateful and prominent part and showed that Mozart's wit was able to maintain the full greatness of his style even when he was restricted to a lighter vein of sentiment.
His string quintets are as great as the quartets. Mozart prefers a second viola as the fifth member; and the only case where he suggested a second violoncello was by way of substitute for the horn in a little quintet for the curious combination of one violin, two violas, violoncello and horn. The combination of wind instru ments with strings is a special problem the mention of which brings us back to reconsider the central idea of chamber music as now realized by Haydn and Mozart.
Vocal music has here dropped below the horizon. The human voice inevitably thrusts all instruments into the background; and we are now at the stage where the forces engaged in chamber music must be on planes sufficiently near to combine in one mental focus. A slight divergence of plane will give the mind pleasures analogous to those of stereoscopic vision. For example, the greatest masters of chamber music with pianoforte take pleasure in supporting heavy but incomplete pianoforte chords by the low notes of the violoncello : a procedure puzzling to self centred pianoforte virtuosos, and never risked by composers who have not attained a pure style. Again, the clarinet, in the wonder ful quintets by Mozart (A major) and Brahms (B minor) does not and is not intended to blend with the strings, but it nowhere gives a more intense pleasure than where it behaves as an inner part exactly like the others. These works belong to the highest regions of the art.
Wind and Other Combinations.—The flute blends with nothing; even among other wind instruments it is like water colour among oils. It accordingly plays a part in witty little works, such as Beethoven's serenade for flute, violin and viola (twice imitated by Reger), and Mozart's two quartets with strings. The oboe, once not much less important in continuo chamber music than the flute (Handel confessed to "writing like a devil for it" when he was a boy ) requires other wind instru ments to relieve the ear of its plaintive tone, though Mozart wrote a pretty little quartet for it with strings, and Beethoven achieved a remarkable tour-de-force in an early trio for two oboes and cor anglais. But the further consideration of wind instru ments brings us again to the borderland regions of chamber music. What are the smallest forces that can make a coherent combina tion for chamber music; and at what point do the forces become too large to cohere? The pianoforte, even when treated in Mozart's hard-pencil line-drawing style, provides a central mass of complete harmony that can absorb shocks and combine (pace the virtuoso player) with anything. The question begins to be interesting when we deal with the strings alone. Duets for two violins are obviously a tour-dc-force, since their bass can never go below a contralto G. This tour-de-force is executed on a large scale with a mastery and euphony beyond praise by Spohr. Mozart, coming to the rescue of Michael Haydn, who was prevented by illness from complet ing a set of six commissioned by the archbishop of Salzburg, wrote two for violin and viola, which profit greatly by the extra lower fifth and which are written with great zest and a reckless disregard (justified by personal knowledge) of the chance that the archbishop might detect their difference from the dutiful efforts of brother Michael.
Trios for two violins and any kind of bass but the viola, are ominously suggestive of a return to, or non-emergence from, the continuo method ; and indeed it may be doubted whether any Italian composer before Cherubini (q.v.) ever did quite emerge therefrom. Trios for violin, viola and violoncello are a very different matter. They represent the problem of the string quar tet intensified into a tour-de-force. Mozart's great example, the divertimento in E flat, is in all its six movements on a scale and a plane of thought that its title vainly belies. It inspired Beethoven to one of his biggest early works, the Trio op. 3; and the success of this encouraged Beethoven to write the three string Trios op. 9, of which the first, in G major, and the third, in C minor, are bolder in conception and execution than even the largest of the six string quartets, op. 18, and not less sonorous than any string quartet written before or since.
The string quartet represents the normal apparatus for a cham ber music work of homogeneous tone. String quintets are usually produced in Mozart's way by doubling the viola. Doubling the violoncello, as in Schubert's great C major quintet, produces a very rich tone and sets the first violoncello free to soar into the cantabile region without (as in other quintets and in quartets) depriving the ensemble of a deep bass. Sextets, for two violins, two violas and two violoncellos, are represented in the two great works of Brahms. Octets for strings show signs of clotting into an orchestral style. Spohr hit upon the device of dividing the eight into antiphonal quartets; and his four double quartets are much nearer to the true style of chamber music than his string quartets, where his lower parts have the simplicity of early Haydn while the first violin plays a concerto above them. Mendelssohn in the wonderful octet which he wrote at the age of i6, does not find Spohr's simple antiphonal scheme worth the trouble of specially grouping the players when he can use 255 different com binations of the eight without enquiring how they are seated.
As for the semi-orchestral borderland of septets and octets in which several wind instruments join and a double-bass adds depth without any normal capacity to rise into cantabile or solo work, this borderland (inhabited by Beethoven's septet, Schu bert's octet and many glorious serenades and divertimenti of Mozart) has a fascinating aesthetic of its own. Wind instruments by themselves are happiest in pairs, as their tones contrast too sharply otherwise to blend at all, though Reicha, who composed regularly for two hours before breakfast every morning, ground out over ioo quintets for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, all admirably euphonious, if they are up to the sample passages quoted by him in his treatise on composition. It is unreasonable to blame Mozart's glorious serenade for 13 wind instruments for sounding like a military band ; we ought rather to wish that a military band could sound like a Mozart serenade.
In modern times the sonata form no longer obstructs the view of other possibilities. Mr. W. W. Cobbett's prize competitions stimulated English composers to the production of fantasies in terse continuous-movement forms. Less important are the numerous experiments in the use of the human voice without words in an otherwise instrumental scheme. Nature responds cattishly to the pitchfork. Saint-Saens has a charming manner which puts the trumpet on its best behaviour in his amusing septet. The trombone and side-drums in the chamber music of Stravinsky will do well enough in a very smart house-party where all the conversation is carried on in an esoteric family slang and the guests are expected to enjoy booby-traps. Very different is the outlook of some of our younger masters such as Hindemith, Jarnach, and others whose renunciation of beauty is in itself a youthfully romantic gesture, and is accompanied by endless pains in securing adequate performance. The work of masterly performers can indeed alone save the new ideas from being swamped in a universal dullness which no external smartness can long distinguish from that commemorated in the Dunciad.
(D. F. T.)