Divertimento in E flat for String Trio, K.563
Allegro
Adagio
Menuetto: Allegretto
Andante
Menuetto: Allegretto
Allegro
For composer and performer alike, the string trio is one of the supreme challenges in chamber music. The string quartet, with its second violin, gives the composer sufficient parts to complete the texture and still have leeway to omit instruments or double lines; conversely the very limitations of a duo go some way to solving the composer’s problems for him – precisely because his options are so restricted! With a string trio he has the absoulute minimum necessary to create a complete harmony, and no more. Although string instruments are capable of playing two or more notes simultaneously, this creates its own technical and textural problems; effectively, a successful string trio requires a constant, carefully balanced interplay between three separate parts. And when a composer achieves this, the demands upon the players are amongst the highest in all music. Where all three parts are crucial and clearly audible, throughout an extended work, the concentration required from the performers is intense – there is simply no place to hide! And so if Mozart’s ambition in writing his longest chamber work for this combination is in itself remarkable, the scope of his success is breathtaking. Although the quality of his inspiration is so consistently high that one could easily miss the fact, the Divertimento for String Trio is a technical tour-de-force on a par with the finale of the "Jupiter" symphony or the Act II finale of "Figaro". The piece tackles and overcomes every problem inherent in the String Trio medium and sustains its variety and musical interest over a span of six movements, "a brilliant technical compendium of the art of the string trio" (H. Neville). Only Beethoven (in his Op.9) and Schönberg have since come close to its achievement. Beethoven wrote his Op.3 – a six-movement string trio in E flat – as an explicit act of homage to this work.
Entering it in his personal catalogue on 27 September 1788, Mozart described the piece as "Ein Divertimento à 1 violino, 1 viola e violoncello; di sei Pezzi" and its six-movement layout is typical of the divertimento form. Certain characteristics of the work also reflect its divertimento ancestry; many of the themes have a "popular" character, for example, the ländler (German Dance)–like Trio-sections of the second minuet, and the opening themes of both the Andante and the final Allegro, are all similar to Austrian popular songs. But the overwhelming impression that the piece makes is of profound seriousness and superb artistry, far removed from a genre, the divertimento, which existed principally to provide relaxed background music. It was written for Mozart’s brother–Freemason Michael Puchberg, a prosperous Viennese merchant to whom he had appealed for loans throughout the summer of 1788. Mozart’s frequent begging-letters make uncomfortable reading and the humiliation of having to provide for his family in this manner must have compounded a series of distressing events to hit Mozart that year; the failure of the Viennese premiere of "Don Giovanni" in May had been followed, a month later, by the death of his baby daughter Theresia. In these circumstances Mozart produced his last three symphonies and then this trio, a gift to Puchberg as a gesture of thanks for his financial support. Mozart often used the key signature of E flat as a Masonic symbol, and so in this trio it is a reminder of the bond of obligation between the two men, of which the composer must have been so painfully aware. Little wonder, then, that an ostensibly light-hearted gift should become something so much more thoughtful than its name implied and that Mozart should employ upon it the very highest skills of his craft.
Unsurprisingly, the level of concentration required from the players is high; a brilliant and fluent violin line is matched by one of his warmest and most rewarding viola parts and the most sophisticated cello-writing in any of his works; prefiguring the virtuosic cello parts of the "Prussian" String Quartets (1789-90) it is integrated into the ensemble even more successfully than in those three masterpieces. The writing for the ensemble as a whole is, as we’ve already seen, a tour-de-force; to hear just one example of Mozart’s masterful ear for texture, listen to the way in which he presents the variation-theme of the Andante - the melody is presented in spare two-part harmony so that the effect when it blossoms into three parts is all the more magical. Examples of such resourcefulness abound – and all inseparable from the sheer inspiration of the work’s thematic content and development, with which verbal commentary becomes superfluous. A sonata form opening Allegro is followed by a hymn-like Adagio in A flat major. This searching, deeply affecting slow movement is the work’s centre of gravity and one of Mozart’s most profound single movements. The first of the Divertimento’s two minuets is a big-boned, energetic dance which anticipates Haydn’s late quartets in its energetic play with cross-rhythms; next comes the Andante, a 32-bar-long theme and four variations of which the third, in B flat minor, strikes a deep vein of expressive melancholy. The second minuet playfully evokes the sound of horns; it has two Trio sections, in the first of which the viola takes the lead. The work finishes with a sonata-rondo Allegro in 6/8 time, a "great, free-wheeling country dance" in which the air of relaxation belies the mastery with which Mozart handles ensemble and material to balance out the first movement, now nearly 40 minutes behind us.
The first known performance of the Divertimento was in Mozart’s hotel room in Dresden on 13th April 1789. Although Puchberg must already have heard the piece by that time, we do not know of his reaction, but he continued to subsidise Mozart for the remaining two years of the composer’s life. While Mozart was never in a position to repay his benefactor, he dedicated further works to him and, unknown to either of them, ensured that Puchberg’s name would enter musical history as the man whose generosity enabled Mozart to give him, and us, this perfect work of art.
R.G.Bratby, 2002
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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