Does Mazas count as sung or unsung?
As a composer of violin etudes and duos for students he is certainly well established. I have always liked his etudes and use them regularly for my daily practice sessions. To me they are much better compositions than the other "classic" etudes (mainly Kreutzer and Fiorillo, Rode--I admit it--is too hard for me).
His duos on the other hand (I know only a fraction of them) for all the melodic charm often present seem a little simple minded: Most of the time one violin plays the melody, the other some simple accompaniment, than they switch roles, often literally repeating the music in sections of maybe 16 measures or so. Maybe because they are written for children they tend to be much simpler harmonically than the etudes (where more advanced harmony must be used to provide opportunities for the training of intonation if for no other reasons).
Wondering what other compositions of his are around I checked IMSLP and found his three quartets op. 7 (parts from about 1822; together with the trios op.18 for 2 vln and viola they seem to be the only chamber pieces for more than two players in Mazas' output). I don't think there is a modern edition available, so I typeset the score to get a better picture and I was struck by the quality of these fully grown up pieces. Beyond the charm of his melodies we find: Imaginative use of the quartet medium, the four voices mostly nicely individualized. They are not quatuors brillants. Being a violin virtuoso Mazas included virtuoso episodes for the first fiddler--sometimes truly virtuoso like a whole variation in double stops--but so did Haydn and even Beethoven. These quartets remind me of Onslow--three quartets to an opus, each quartet with its individual character, similarities in the use of the medium, heavy use of chromaticism. However only Onslow's earliest quartets were already published when Mazas composed his set.
These quartets seem to have been completely forgotten--are therefore clearly unsung--and I think they ought to be played. I will post my finished scores and sets of parts on IMSLP when they are properly proof read and cleaned up (the copy of the old parts on IMSLP has not very good print quality and contains rather many errors--accidentals forgotten, incorrect dynamics, measures with too many beats in them, inconsistent articulation markings etc.--so a new typeset will help people who want to play).
Thanks! In any event I believe that retypesetting/editing is useful and difficult work (I am not good at it- yet- but have some experience).
Excellent post. I've thought highly of Mazas' etudes, and knew nothing of other works. This makes me very curious to hear. I'll download parts and arrange a reading. Hanks for engraving them; maybe you can create sound files while you're at it.
I use the playback option to check for errors; they usually scream out if you do that. I have considered making sound files, have so far no experience in it. But in order to sound anything even remotely like music they would have to be worked at measure by measure and so far I have been too lazy to do that.
I should mention that the copy on IMSLP is not complete (probably oversights when it was digitized). I got in contact with the library it came from and the administrator promised me to fix the errors. Until then some movements have only three parts and if you play them you have one person sitting out. The first quartet is complete and will be posted first.
Let me know when you make it available. BTW, are you using Finale or another notation program? Finale can make sound files relatively simply with the included Garritan Instruments for Finale. They sound quite good.
I am using Musescore (see musescore.org). It does provide the option to export sound files. Their quality is supposed to be determined by the sound font used, but I have done no work on that. What I mean is actually rubato: In those sound files "musicians" never take a breath, the music just goes on as if by metronome and that makes it dead.
Well, in my experience that's MIDI for you, unless I misunderstand you. (Even small rits.-- a tempi one has to program in very carefully in these things; when I used a copy of Finale to try to sequence the first movement of Schumann's first violin sonata, it took several tries to get maybe the most important such tempo change sort-of-right (just before start of recapitulation, of course), and I gave up on trying others.)
Finale's playback has come a very long way. I'll upload an example if there is interest.
Of course some pieces are naturally more "metronomic" than others, rubato apparently being an invention of the romantic period (I'm inviting debate here!). When multitracking myself playing string chamber music, the click track I play to is usually at least 95% metronomic, just the ritardando bars being progressively slowed. Certain pieces (e.g. most of Brahms's, but also some "unsungs" like Hermann Gradener) seem to invite distinct changes in the tempo primo, for example the second subject being taken slightly slower or faster than the first, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. So I don't actually think the maintenance of strict tempo is the chief reason synthetic sound files sound unmusical. Rather, it's the absence of subtle changes in dynamics, tone colour, accents etc - in short "humanity"!
Rubato: I am meaning small and subtle effects, e.g. the following:
- Minuet and trio: Before the trio a breather is necessary, an extra-rest of maybe up to a quaver long. Otherwise it sounds as if the music stumbled over its own feet by practically falling into the new section (this does not apply if a composed transition is present).
- Similarly at the end of phrases a little breather--enough to let a wind player or singer take breath--helps to clarify the structure of the piece and also the mark a clear new beginning. The necessary time is mostly taken away from the last note of the preceding phrase, sometimes also added in as extra-time.
- To mark a subito piano or subito forte you have to hesitate a little bit before playing the first note in the changed dynamic. This will do two things: heighten the effect of the surprise and a the same time, luckily for musicians, make the dynamic change easier to execute.
To achieve these in a sound file you have to either make the final measure a certain small value longer or reduce the final note by a small value, i.e. make a double dotted quaver plus a rest out of a crotchet for example or expand the final measure from 3/4 to 13/16 or 7/8 etc.
If you then also adjust the length of notes to reflect the many nuances between legato and staccato that exist (say in repeated quavers as accompanying figures which need to be longer and softer than staccato but ought to have some air between them nonetheless) you might get something quite acceptable, but it is a lot of work to change each of a string of quavers into a double dotted semiquaver plus rest.
Doing the grand things, ritardandos, fermatas and the like which occur only a small number of times in one piece is comparatively quick I'd imagine. But it is really the small and subtle things like breathing--which you will do almost "automatically" when you play your instrument--which make the music live.
You're completely right of course. These effects are a lot easier to realise by playing than by programming, praise be! For string and wind instruments I don't think any music notation/replay software is ever likely to pass the Turing test, but I've come close to being fooled by some piano simulations.
The typeset of op. 7/1 has now been posted on IMSLP.
A short description of this quartet (in e-minor) may wet somebody's appetite (one may dream).
It consists of the usual four movements. The first in sonata form features a slow introduction whose main rhythm resurfaces surprisingly at the beginning of the development section. Its first theme is very Mazasien (I hope you forgive this adjective): legato in flowing quavers with a large ambitus (lots of string crossings, a difficulty that is addressed in several of the etudes). The second theme begins in the second violin, then, as if by happenstance the two violins find themselves playing in octaves. The two violins play in octaves fairly regularly, reminding me of Arriaga, who was using the effect even more often.
The Minuetto is in second place and is a true minuet albeit a rather fast one. It is my favorite among the four, simple, but of a sort of simplicity that is hard to create, in a wistful e-minor with a much brighter trio in E-Major.
The Adagio in A-Major which follows is in somewhat truncated sonata form: The first theme is followed by an outbreak in forte with lots of demisemiquavers and some modulation (might be called a premature development section). It ends up in e-minor before the second theme--not much different in character from the first--appears as per the rulebook in E-Major. The development is short. In the reprise the first theme is played by the second violin (poco forte while the rest of the ensemble plays piano) while the first presents a counterpoint at higher pitch. Then the outbreak recurs, but this time with the first fiddle repeating the first theme in fortissimo over an accompaniment made up of demisemiquavers. About halfway through the melody the music stalls, then moves directly (no more second theme) into a coda in piano, a long pedal point on E leads diminuendo to the final A-Major chord.
The last movement , Allegretto, is in 6/8 in rondo form. The main theme keeps switching between hemiolas and regular 6/8 rhythm. Four very similar virtuoso episodes in the violin are possibly one too many and a cut might improve the effect of the movement which begins in e-minor and ends in E-Major.
It certainly looks worth a hearing. Like Double-A, I also found Mazas's violin studies much more enjoyable than Kreutzer's, which on the "no gain without pain" principle probably did my technique no good at all.
I'm struggling to come to terms with the metronome marks. In your transcript the agitato non troppo presto of the first movement feels right at 96 minims to the minute (the sextuplets are a bit of a challenge!), although Mazas actually gives 96 for a crotchet pulse. I think your tactful correction of what is probably a publisher's mistake is the right decision. But what to make of "minim 27" for the Minuetto is a complete mystery! Even a dotted minim at that tempo would be nowhere near allegro. Crotchet =144 seems about right to me. In the adagio non troppo the mark of 104 for a dotted quaver clearly suggests the pubslisher didn't know what Maelzel was all about. For the final allegretto, 112 dotted crotchets is surely too fast, pretty well unplayable. I'd go for about 84. I'm also finding a few little transcription errors that I'll make a list of.
But a nice job of work, well worth the effort!
The metronome figures are a source of doubt every time I do a typeset (and every time I find them in printed music for that matter). I generally include them if they are in the source as the MIGHT be the composer's (BTW: The Henle Publishers have a list with Schumann's own markings on their web site [google Schumann Metronome Markings]--those markings that are known--and argue for taking them seriously. Interestingly these markings are quite different from the markings that are in the Peters edition of the quartets, mostly slower while the Peters markings of the fast movements are almost all insane. Who is responsible for the Peters markings?).
In this case: The first movement seems plausible (I had just assumed that the crotchet in the agitato was a printing mishap; somehow the "hole" in the minim got filled with ink?), one may play a bit slower without "killing" the movement though. The introduction on the other hand must be faster than "quaver = 104" (I'd say at least "crotchet = 60")--the section ought to have been marked cut time. Otherwise the rhythm at the beginning won't be recognized when it returns in the development section of the agitato.
I tried hard to find a solution--a plausible or conceivable typo--to the marking for the minuet (such as "something = 127") but no luck. It should be more than twice as fast as "minim = 27" I think, about "one measure = 50 - 60". The adagio too is probably more effective a bit faster than marked, "crochet = 56" or so). I would like to do the last movement not much below dotted "crotchet = 100"; I'd rather simplify the double stop passages a bit to avoid double stop shifts in legato.
I've uploaded my rendition to imslp where it probably won't have cleared yet. It can also be downloaded here:
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/ld2xe46kwbojxx9/Mazas_String_quartet_No1.mp3
I also made a list of the transcription errors I found, listed here:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/tf9237852b83km8/Mazas_String_Quartet_No1_in_E_Minor.docx
It's a nice little piece, rather predictive I think of the general form that most string quartets were to take during the next half-century. Thanks for bringing it to light!
Best
Steve
Thanks for this! It sounds great, much better than my playback.
I think it confirms that the last movement ought to be cut; it is quite repetitive. If I may be allowed a slight criticism: I hear the middle two movements in my head somewhat faster. That way the minuet will get a Ländler-style lilt and e.g. the eighths in the second violin in measures 6 and 7 become a pattern rather than sounding out as single notes, which has a somewhat tedious effect (the little accents on the third beat come out beautifully though). In the adagio I think of the two passages with all the demisemiquavers as "wild inserts", the fast notes not to be taken as melody or ornament to be played out with care and taste, but as (almost) noise. I admit that I am having a phase where I want to play slow movements generally on the fast side, emphasizing the flow of the music over the tension you can generate by holding back the tempo, so I am biassed on this one.
I forgot this:
Thanks also for your list of errors. I'll correct them and re-upload the corrected music.
Not definitive by any means! I'll try speeding up the minuetto by 10% or so and see how it feels (in case you hadn't guessed, I cheated this way in the fast passages of I and IV and finally speeded up the whole recording of IV by 4%; more than 6% and the vibrato starts to sound funny). One thing I think this exercise proves beyond doubt is the fallibility of Mr Maelzel's device in its early years. But then to attempt to quantify time in such a finely graded way was quite a revolutionary thing, probably alien to how most people of the time thought about music.
I think Maelzel's device (and its electronic successors) has been a problem from day one to today. Yet it was very quickly adopted by lots of people (Beethoven, Onslow etc.). And also: Yet it is a useful instrument for the daily practice session.
Technically it has to be derived from watch / clock making, where the exact division of time is crucial for function; the underlying physics (pendulum swing frequency) has been known since Galilei.
I still believe that the one M.M. figure that is completely off in this quartet (minuet) is some sort of printing error; I just don't have a good hypothesis as to what error it specifically might be.
But: In the first movement the sextuplet passages are probably playable for a virtuoso at minim = 96, but probably not with the articulation markings given (or if playable they would sound ridiculous: I would certainly simplify them). What could that mean? The tempo might be given too fast (maybe by Mazas, maybe by the publisher, who knows?); the articulation might have been added by the publisher without thinking about the tempo; the passages might have been taken slower than the bulk of the movement (following my violin teacher's advice). Such questions surround a lot of metronome markings one finds in music from the last two centuries.
Here is the Minuetto again:
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/8oqi9dmikr12rn8/mazas_quartet_m2f.mp3
and the Adagio non troppo:
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/74ghr8vwaez77j6/mazas_quartet_m3f.mp3
both speeded up by 15%. And actually yes, I agree they both go better at this speed! My recording of the adagio definitely tends towards the "molto".
To return to the metronome with a piece of pure speculation, I wonder if it contributed to the increasing flexibility of tempo that characterized the romantic period? Did musicians come to appreciate that tempo could be varied in subtle steps, not necessarily abruptly? One might cite recitative as as an earlier example of flexible tempo, but (depending how it's delivered) that's more like the complete absence of a pulse.
Yes, this is very good.
Your idea about the metronome is interesting. It might be that the very fact that it brutally points out how much your tempo varies caused people to plan tempo variation more consciously, in such a way that e.g. Brahms explicitly demanded a somewhat slower tempo for the second subject of mvt. 1 of his a-minor quartet.
I am not sure people played with stubbornly constant tempi in the pre Maelzel era, though that is the impression we all have nowadays. And recitatives (only secco count in this context) are unique because language is involved in a major way. Good secco singing follows the rhythm of the language.
His two violins concertos along with the La Cloche fantasy have been on my list for quite a while. The scores are created now we need a violinist that can sing.
How did you discover those concertos? The Wikipedia entry on Mazas is extremely thin with only a small selection of works mentioned; the list of works on IMSLP, while evidently incomplete (or at least with many gaps in the sequence of opus numbers) is much more comprehensive, but no mention of concertos either. I checked the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and don't find concertos among the approx. 200 entries (sheet music only) on Mazas Jacques Fereol. All I find are some "Phantaisies" (or similar titles) with orchestra or more often "piano ou orchestre".
BTW I looked at the "etudes d'artistes". If they are any indication the violinist you are looking for has to be able to do more than just sing.
I found them by coincidence when I was collecting the Maurer violin concertos, just happened to notice them in an old card catalog :-)
Intriguing! I had been wondering why his list of works did not include any VCs. I suppose they are manuscripts, so no opus numbers.
Hrm? No, a check @BNF reveals that at least one was published by Naderman... see http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb43144880j/PUBLIC (http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb43144880j/PUBLIC).
if lists of his works don't include violin concertos, it's because people haven't done sufficient research.
(Certainly some- too many, but not all...- of the worklists at IMSLP were put together in a great hurry using, on the evidence, computer scraping software, from a very limited number of sources; I have spent a fair amount of time trying to improve them to my slight abilities, but it's frustrating...)
Yes, concerto #1 Naderman without opus (dedicated to Baillot); concerto #2 Armand op.23 without dedication.
Very curious about these concertos. It has been said on this forum that VCs written by violinists are mostly disappointing. I tend to agree at least for this period. Rode, Spohr etc. did not write very exciting concertos for themselves. So the question about Mazas' concertos would be--in light of the surprising quality of the quartets--Do they brake the mold? I am not too optimistic: Spohr has some very good quartets while his concertos are boring (even the Gesangsszene after a small number of listenings).
In Spohr's case, maybe it's the small number of listenings, or the choice of the concerto, that's more the problem (just because it's his most popular concerto doesn't mean it's the one you'll like best.) Though I do find his string quintets better than what I've heard of his works for larger ensemble, I wouldn't call the latter boring- my opinion, obviously. (I seem to recall he was influenced by Rode but perhaps not that much impressed by him- see Clive Brown's recent fine biography of Spohr (quoting Spohr's autobio), especially the part where he tries to introduce an early Beethoven quartet to a concert audience and both the (other) players and audience promptly lose attention/interest until he agrees to bring back the music they're used to, which is to say, indeed, Rode et al. ...)
As it happens I am just re-reading Spohr's autobio (in a miserable English translation available from Gutenberg Project; you find technical terms like "Quinte" and "Es-Major" in there, but beggars can't be choosers).
Spohr heard Rode when he was still studying with a teacher named Eck and traveled along with the teacher on a concert tour to France. He was so impressed that he worked on acquiring Rode's style--with success according to Spohr. A few years later he heard him again and found his technique had deteriorated and he was not nearly as good as the first time he heard him--and Spohr was cocky enough to tell him that to his face (which he admits freely in the book). (I believe Rode's playing hadn't changed much, but Spohr's standards had risen due to more and deeper experience.)
To be more precise about the problem with the VCs: First first has to listen to 1/3 of a first symphony-movement--often well composed and even inspired. Then the soloist comes in, often with a legato version of the first theme (an effect that is never more impressive than in Viotti's a-minor concerto). After that the music stalls for a while because Spohr must now demonstrate his technique, which happens with stock figurations over an extremely simple accompaniment lest the audience lose a single note of the solo part. And so on. Non-VCs by Spohr don't have this problem, even something similar like the harp/violin concertante. I have only listened to one of Rode's concerti. It follows the same recipe, only less well.
"Very curious about these concertos. It has been said on this forum that VCs written by violinists are mostly disappointing. I tend to agree at least for this period. Rode, Spohr etc. did not write very exciting concertos for themselves. So the question about Mazas' concertos would be--in light of the surprising quality of the quartets--Do they brake the mold? I am not too optimistic: Spohr has some very good quartets while his concertos are boring (even the Gesangsszene after a small number of listenings)."
The 19th century violinist concertos are typically pop music from the 19th century, music to excite and entertain the masses. I am never disappointed in what I hear when the projects are complete. Most disappointing are the "great" concertos that this forum so eagerly anticipates which turn out to be disappointing. I always get excited about the 19th century violinist composer recordings, this music and the techniques used are what inspired the "great" composers to compose for the instrument.
QuoteMost disappointing are the "great" concertos that this forum so eagerly anticipates which turn out to be disappointing.
For example?
Double-A writes:
"First ... has to listen to 1/3 of a first symphony-movement"
by the way, you do know that is not what's happening at the beginning of a classical concerto... (there's a very good reason why, with a few exceptions, the tutti of a concerto doesn't modulate, and the exposition of a sonata-structure does; a tutti is more like an orchestra-only pageant preceding the real argument to come, as Thorpe-Davie would put it a (a) solution to one of the concerto-problems faced by all serious composers (you have an orchestra, you have a soloist, how do you balance the need for each to be given center-stage at some point and not have their time wasted- etc. (since a concerto is not the same as an orchestra-accompanied sonata.)) (Those which do without the tutti altogether have to find their own solution to some of these issues, if they can do.)
I seem somewhat unsuccessful in making myself understood today. What I intended to point out was
1. The contrast between the often ambitious tutti (especially in Spohr who mostly chose a serious tone for his compositions) and the solo sections which often are nothing but showing off technical proficiency. The promise of the tutti is hardly ever kept in the rest of the movement.
2. At the same time: I don't understand the survival of the opening tutti in practically all VCs well into the 19th century--when they even become significantly longer than Mozart's (as early as in Bach's E-Major concerto you find composers who find a way to give the soloist something to play that is in fact part of the opening tutti, so there clearly are and were ways to get the soloist involved at an earlier stage). The audience wants to hear the soloist. The soloist wants to play, not wait 3 minutes while his/her nerves grow more and more jittery.
I have to apologize for a stupid error on my part: After using Steve's list of errors to correct the parts (and score) I erroneously posted the parts of the source rather than the new typeset, so that people could only find the score. I noticed this yesterday and the error has now been corrected. The four parts as well as the score of the typeset are now available.
Again, apologies to anyone who tried a download!
It has been a long time but it is still appropriate to include the following in this thread:
Quartet op. 7/2 (score and parts) is now posted (https://imslp.org/wiki/3_String_Quartets%2C_Op.7_(Mazas%2C_Jacques_F%C3%A9r%C3%A9ol)) on IMSLP (scroll down to find it).
This quartet seems closer to Haydn than the other two, especially the last movement which quotes (or at least I believe it to be a quote) from the Finale of Haydn's op. 76/5, though it does not repeat Haydn's joke (wisely, IMHO). Virtuoso episodes for the first fiddler occur only in the last movement (two), not in the first (two) and last (four) like in quartet no. 1 ("virtuoso" in the sense that the accompaniment is thinned down to a minimum in these episodes). The first movement has an opening theme I would not be surprised to find in Haydn--or Onslow; the second theme is a little more Mozartian. The "Minuetto" is actually a scherzo, again like in Haydn's op. 76 (in B flat with a nicely singing trio in G and four bars/beats G.P. before the trio). The (third) variation movement presents another violinistic challenge to the first violin which is however also an experiment in new texture: In the last variation the cello plays running quavers pizzicato, the middle voices alternate every crotchet with aggressively bowed chords while the first violin plays the melody in double stops throughout.
If someone wants to listen to an electronically generated (not overly good but better than nothing) sound track while reading along in the score you can find it here: Allegro non troppo (https://musescore.com/user/22214/scores/4908437), Minuetto (https://musescore.com/user/22214/scores/4908439), Andante (https://musescore.com/user/22214/scores/4908442), Finale (https://musescore.com/user/22214/scores/4908447). These will be taken down in a few weeks though.
This thread is already 2 years old but I believe the following belongs to it:
I finally got around to typeset the third of these quartets and post it on IMSLP (https://imslp.org/wiki/3_String_Quartets%2C_Op.7_(Mazas%2C_Jacques_F%C3%A9r%C3%A9ol)) (not yet approved at the time this post is being typed). Synthetic sound is here: Mvmt 1 (https://musescore.com/user/22214/scores/5934946), 2 (https://musescore.com/user/22214/scores/5934952), 3 (https://musescore.com/user/22214/scores/5934957), 4 (https://musescore.com/user/22214/scores/5937752). The score I worked from before had some gaps. Parts of those were fixed for me by the people who had posted that score to IMSLP. But in the cello part of number 3 two pages were still missing. Recently somebody posted another copy of the same edition of quartet 3 to IMSLP, allowing me to finish the score.
The most remarkable movement of this quartet is without a doubt the first. After a slow introduction of almost 2 minutes the main section begins and turns out to be a fugue. Main theme, counter theme and all. The movement is not at every point strictly contrapuntal, there are sections with maybe two leading voices responding to each other with the two other voices accompanying. These sections tend to sound somewhat less severe than the fugal sections which return throughout the movement. A sort of countertheme appears in A-Major about 2/3 through the movement (which has no repeats in it) and is then used in D-Major as the coda. This introduces some of the elements of sonata form. One has the impression that Mazas tried deliberately to write something old fashioned, especially as he ends the movement with a plagal cadence, sounding almost "religious".
The middle movements are less remarkable though certainly good music. The last movement is in sonata form and has a rather stormy main theme, somewhat reminding me of the last movement of Viotti's a-minor violin concerto (no. 22). It barrels right through the movement in spite of the contrasting second theme. The quartet ends still stormily in d-minor.