Flute Quartets

PROGRAM NOTES

When we think of instrumental chamber music from the late eighteenth-century, the first works likely to come to mind are string quartets (two violins, viola, and cello) or piano trios (violin, cello, and piano). But other instrumental configurations enjoyed a similar degree of popularity at the time, and our program explores two of these: the flute quartet (with a flute replacing the first violin) and the string trio (violin, viola, and cello).

Mozart’s flute quartet in A major is the last of four such works by him. He composed it in Vienna in 1786 or 1787, using themes of other composers in each of the three movements. First comes a set of variations on a song by the popular composer Franz Anton Hoffmeister (“An die Natur” or “To Nature”). The second movement is based on a traditional French rondeau (“Il a des bottes, des bottes Bastien” or “He has some boots, has Bastien”), and the finale quotes an aria from the opera Le gare generose (The Generous Rivals) by the Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello. Mozart’s jesting attitude in this last movement is captured in a heading that translates roughly as “Rondo-meow/Allegretto grazioso but not too presto, but not too adagio either. So-so–with much charm and expression.”

François Devienne may not be as well known today as the other composers on our program, but he was among the leading French musicians in the decades surrounding the Revolution. Arriving in Paris in 1779, he played bassoon and flute with the opera orchestra, the Concert Spirituel, the masonic orchestra Loge Olympique, and other ensembles. During the 1780s and 1790s he was also active as a composer of instrumental works and operas. Upon the establishment of the Paris Conservatoire in 1795, Devienne was appointed as the school’s first professor of flute. He died at age forty-four following a long illness. His “Six quatuors concertans” for flute, violin, viola, and cello appeared as Op. 66 around 1794, the year in which he published his method book for the flute. The third of these works combines graceful melodies with passages intended to display the flutist’s technique. Here a “serious” first movement and a jocular rondeau frame an expressive slow movement in the parallel minor key.

Boccherini’s six trios for violin, viola, and cello G. 95-100 were published in Paris as Op. 14 in 1773. At the time, he was serving as “composer and chamber virtuoso” to Don Luis, brother of King Charles III of Spain. This well-paid position, at the palace in Aranjuez near Madrid, inspired an increase in Boccherini’s compositional activity, including numerous string trios, quartets, and quintets, as well as concertos and symphonies. If his contemporaries Mozart and Devienne were apt to fill their music with an abundance of melodies, Boccherini tended to offer what has been called “a plate of momentary delicacies” that are repeated to such an extent that the music “goes nowhere except where it already is.” The composer himself supposedly commented that this sense of stasis is mitigated by the instruments’ conversational interactions with each other. Taking the place of singable melodies is a preoccupation with a “textile-like” approach to sound in which instruments often take on unconventional roles. For instance the cello (Boccherini’s own instrument) might suddenly act like a viola, playing in close harmony with the violin, while the viola is pressed into service as the bass voice of the ensemble. All these aspects can be heard in our trio, particularly in the first movement’s abundance of momentary delicacies, in the witty second movement’s repetitive, textile-like approach to material, and in the finale’s rapid shifting of instrumental roles.

Mozart completed his flute quartet in D major on Christmas Day 1777, while he was in Mannheim. He had been commissioned earlier that month by the Dutch amateur flutist Ferdinand de Jean to write “three short, simple concertos and a couple of quartets for flute.” What initially appeared to be a straightforward task ended up taking longer than anticipated. In mid-February, with only some of the works completed, de Jean paid Mozart less than half of the agreed-upon fee. The frustrated composer wrote to his father that “I . . . quickly become disgusted as soon as I must write continually for one instrument, which I cannot bear.” The end of this passage has often been mistranslated as “an instrument I cannot bear,” leading to the false impression that Mozart disliked the flute. Rather, he was complaining about composing too much music for a single instrument! The quartet in D major has become the most popular of Mozart’s flute quartets, and it is not hard to understand why. The first movement is filled with memorable melodies, and the second movement is a beautiful “aria” for flute with pizzicato string accompaniment. Mozart links this aria to the concluding rondo, which includes a variety of intricate musical textures that, one imagines, would have met with Boccherini’s approval.