String Quintet in G minor, K.516
Allegro
Menuetto: Allegretto
Adagio ma non troppo
Adagio - Allegro
While Mozart’s standing as an artist per se has never seriously been questioned, he has not generally been viewed as one of musical history’s great innovators. This need not worry us; every one of his mature works is of itself as much a re-invention of its form as anything by Haydn or Beethoven. But there are certain less common mediums in which his achievement was so inspirational that he did effectively establish them as viable expressive forms. The 18th Century string quintet was predominantly the domain of Luigi Boccherini, whose rococo quintets with two ‘cellos were dominated by virtuoso writing for the first ‘cello. That this medium had expressive potential was supremely demonstrated two generations later by Schubert with his C major Quintet; but by then Mozart’s preferred quintet medium – two violins, two violas and cello – had, through Mozart’s example, established itself. Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak and Bruch produced some of their most convincing chamber music achievements in their two-viola quintets and nineteenth-century chamber music reached one of its pinnacles in Bruckner’s F major quintet (1879), that composer’s only mature chamber work. Each of these works can trace its ancestry back to Mozart’s six string quintets, and particularly the three in C major K.515, G minor K.516 and D major K.593. It is fair to paraphrase Hans Keller’s words on Haydn and say that, so far as the art of string quintet writing is concerned, Mozart was the first composer of any significance, "and actually turned what seemed an unpromising medium into what was to become one of the most expressive forms of western instrumental composition – and it became that in his own hands too!"
Mozart is thought to have derived his initial experience of the medium through two quintets published by his Salzburg colleague Michael Haydn in 1773; at the end of that year the 17-year old Mozart produced his own first quintet, K.174 in B flat. He then wrote no string quintets for 14 years, before writing the C major quintet K.515 in April 1787 and completing the G minor, K.516 barely four weeks later on 16th May. We do not know why Mozart returned to the string quintet at this particular time. It does not appear that these two works were written to any commission - although chamber music of all sorts was always very saleable in 18th century Europe. They certainly do seem to have arisen from some particularly strong personal impulse; something that prompted both the choice of medium and the nature of the inspiration which Mozart channelled through it. The viola was Mozart’s own preferred instrument when playing chamber music. Keller has pointed out how the viola player in a string quartet is in the best position to perceive the inner balance of the ensemble, but from the nature of his writing, it is also reasonable to assume that Mozart felt drawn to the instrument in its own right. He clearly loved the expressive warmth and depth of viola tone – the same qualities he also found in the clarinet in later years. As well as expanding the texture of the ensemble, the extra viola in Mozart’s quintets acts as a second leader of the group, as if, at times, Mozart saw viola and violin as different aspects of the same personality – an idea he had already explored to magnificent effect in the Sinfonia Concertante K.364 (1779).
And in Mozart’s output there are numerous instances of groups of sharply contrasted masterworks in the same form. Only the previous year, Mozart had completed a pair of superb piano quartets in E flat major and G minor, and there is the famous example of his final three symphonies, written in three consecutive months during 1788. It is almost as if, when engaged with particular musical forms, Mozart’s creative energy impelled him to explore every possibility which occurred to him in that form. There can certainly be no doubt that the two string quintets were written under powerful and extremely personal inspiration. The C major work has a remarkable breadth and maturity of style; spacious in layout and optimistic in mood, it is actually Mozart’s longest four-movement chamber work. The G minor quintet expresses a depth of personal anguish with which many nineteenth-century musicians found it hard to credit this composer; it ranks amongst his supreme achievements in instrumental music. We do know that in April 1787, while working on the C major quintet, news that his father was seriously ill had prompted Mozart to thoughts of death. In a moving letter of consolation that month he expounded a characteristically optimistic "enlightenment" view of the afterlife based on his Masonic beliefs. Some commentators have seen the C major quintet as a reflection of these thoughts – with the G minor as an almost instinctive reflex action, a passionate outpouring of the pain and anxiety he had otherwise kept to himself.
Verbal commentary is more than usually superfluous when dealing with the G minor quintet, but certain features warrant some additional attention – the way, for example, in which the intense and despairing mood of the first movement is carried over into the minuet (usually light relief), and the way the muted instruments in the E flat major Adagio create a hushed and tranquil sound-world to match the change in emotional mood. This is in fact the only time mutes are used in any string chamber work by Mozart, Haydn, or Beethoven; and the only place in Mozart’s work where two radically contrasted Adagio movements in succession require him to make such a marked differentiation in tone-colour. The Adagio introduction to the finale is likewise unique in Mozart’s chamber music, its dark G minor resolving into a sunlit G major Allegro. The overt happiness of this finale shocked the work’s romantic-era admirers. But to a man of the Enlightenment, especially one with Mozart’s spirit, an optimistic conclusion was the only rational – indeed moral - way to resolve the sorrows made so explicit in the first half of the quintet. There is no rhetoric or triumphant peroration; but the simple 6/8 dance, after what has come before it, is anything but a trivial resolution to this profoundly emotional work.
R.G.Bratby, 2001
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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