The music featured in the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra's EVOKE programme is linked together by a piece that does not (exactly) feature in the concert. In around 1799, Ludwig van Beethoven composed a Septet Op.20 in E-flat for clarinet, horn, bassoon and strings. It premiered in 1800 and immediately achieved a popularity that endures to this day.
The Septet was published in Vienna in 1802 and, as was usual at the time, publishers sought to capitalise on its popularity by issuing arrangements for different combinations of instruments. These included domestic ensembles such as string quintet, piano solo, and flute, violin, cello and piano, but also wind ensembles of various sizes, from sextet to the Swedish military band of flute, piccolo, three clarinets, brass and serpent.
The title page of the original manuscript for Beethoven’s Trio, Op.38
Though Beethoven himself is alleged to have later scorned the Septet’s popularity, he had no qualms about capitalising on it in 1802–3 by making his own arrangement for clarinet, cello and piano. The resulting ‘Grand Trio’, published in 1805 as Op.38, is a rare example of the composer issuing an arrangement of his own music.
The Trio, Op.38, was dedicated to Dr. Johann Adam Schmidt, who at the time was treating Beethoven for his encroaching deafness. Beethoven’s affection and regard for Schmidt can be seen in the warm thanks he extends to the doctor in his Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802. The first edition of Op. 8 includes a note in which Beethoven expresses his wish that Schmidt, an amateur violinist, be able to play the trio with his daughter, who was studying the piano: a charming example of the domestic and amateur use to which such arrangements were frequently put.
Map of Vienna, c. 1800. Credit Wikimedia Commons
However, both the original Septet and its legacy of arrangements also evidence the shift in the status of chamber music that was happening at the start of the 19th century. Until this point chamber music had primarily been a private pursuit, frequently involving a collaboration between accomplished noble amateurs and the professional musicians who attended them in their homes and courts. Private performances in the salons of the aristocracy and leading cultural figures were also common. However, the notion of a truly ‘public’ chamber music concert, given to a paying audience, offered a new and potentially lucrative income stream for increasingly entrepreneurial musicians such as Beethoven who recognized that it was no longer sustainable to rely solely on private patronage.
Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776-1830)
One of the pioneers of ‘public’ chamber music concerts in Vienna was Beethoven’s close friend, the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh. It was Schuppanzigh who gave the premiere of the original version of the Septet in 1800, and the work became one of the cornerstones of his chamber music concerts, which ran intermittently from 1804 until his death in 1830. A work such as the Septet was ideal for this setting. It reflected the eighteenth-century ‘divertimento’ tradition in its six-movement form, which includes two dance movements and a set of variations as well as the usual fast and slow movements. However, the appealing tunefulness of the serenade and the varied tonal palette of a mixed ensemble was combined with the compositional intricacy and instrumental dialogue of ‘serious’ chamber music. As a result, the Septet was well designed to satisfy the interests of the connoisseur while simultaneously keeping the attention of less demanding listeners. It is little surprise, then, that the Septet instigated a tradition of such large mixed chamber works in public chamber concerts. The most famous is Schubert’s Octet D.803, which adds a second violin to Beethoven’s original ensemble, while nonets by Louis Spohr (1813), Georges Onslow (c. 1829) and Louise Farrenc (1849) all include a full wind quintet along with the four strings. Composers who followed Beethoven’s original Septet line-up include the Viennese Archduke Rudolf (1830), Conradin Kreutzer (1822), and Adolf Blanc (1864).
Franz Berwald’s Grand Septet belongs to this tradition, though like many of the supposed ‘imitators’ of Beethoven’s Septet, its resemblance to the earlier work is superficial. The composition history of the work is complex: Berwald first composed a Septet for this combination in 1817, but after performances in 1818 and 1819, correspondence between the composer and his publishers suggests he was not satisfied with it. Indeed, early reviewers wrote of the piece, ‘one might wish the young, truly talented man would become more friendly with the rules of harmony and composition; that will take him more surely and quickly to his goal’. Berwald revised the work for a performance in Stockholm in 1828 where it was advertised as a ‘new’ Septet, including removing two extended passages in the finale.
Both the 1818 and 1828 performances were given by the clarinetist Bernhard Henrik Crusell, bassoonist Frans Preumayr and horn player Johann Hirschfeld, all members of the Royal Court Orchestra in Stockholm and virtuosi of international renown. The three had been performing Beethoven’s Septet together regularly in chamber concerts since at least 1805 and Crusell was responsible for the aforementioned arrangement of Beethoven’s work for military band. It is inconceivable that Berwald’s alterations to his Septet were to accommodate the limitations of his performers, not least because Crusell’s own compositions for his colleagues – including a concert-trio for clarinet, horn and bassoon and a sinfonia concertante for the same instruments – are among the most technically demanding works of the period. Berwald’s writing in his Septet is particularly notable for the high tessitura of the bassoon, a feature that appears in several other compositions written for Preumayr and appears to be a characteristic of his playing.
Photograph of Franz Berwald. Source - National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket)
Adventurous wind-instrument writing is a feature that distinguishes Berwald’s Septet from that of Beethoven, whose wind parts are more in keeping with late-eighteenth century expectations. Berwald’s knowledge of the instruments – and players – he was writing for becomes particularly apparent when his music is performed on period instruments. His creative, early-Romantic approach to harmony is enhanced by the difference in tone colour between the individual notes of each instrument – clearly audible in the shifting, chorale-like texture at the start of the Allegro molto. These differences are most obvious in the horn, which sounds open and full in the ‘home’ tonality of the piece but increasingly covered or buzzing in the more distant harmonies and the signature semitone movement that is heard throughout the work. This atmospheric use of tone colour is one of the characteristics that make Berwald most interesting to play, and why his music benefits so much from performance on the instruments of his time.
Program notes by Dr. Emily Worthington
Senior Lecturer in Music Performance and Co-Director of Research Centre in Performance Practices, University of Huddersfield
Hear Beethoven’s Trio, Op.38 and Berwald’s Grand Septet in our EVOKE program in April and May 2021.