Notes for: August 4, 2009
Most of the great works for clarinet – those by Mozart and Brahms, for example – were written for particular clarinet virtuosos. This was also true of Weber’s several compositions for clarinet, the musician in that case being Heinrich Joseph Baermann. Weber, an itinerant composer who traveled from city to city composing and conducting, met Baermann in 1811 in Darmstadt and a few months later in Munich. At that time, Munich was the leading virtuoso orchestra of Europe, and Baermann was its principal clarinetist.
Two years older than Weber, Baermann was already a musician of wide experience. He had been captured by Napoleon’s army at the battle of Jena and had been held as a prisoner of war. On his release, he had joined the Munich orchestra and had earned great acclaim in its tours of England, France, Italy and Russia for his technique and velvety tone. Further, he owned a 10-key clarinet, one of the new and improved wind instruments then being developed to meet the growing technical demands of composers and performers.
Weber and Baermann took to each other at once, becoming lifelong friends, and Weber immediately turned out a Clarinet Concertino to show off Baermann’s remarkable skills. To perform the new concertino, they embarked on a four-month concert tour to Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Gotha, Weimar, back to Dresden, and finally to Berlin.
Over the next five years Weber wrote four more works for Baermann – two concertos, a grand duo concertante with piano, and this quintet. Given his busy travel and concert schedule, Weber worked on the quintet, on and off, over a two-year period, finally completing it in Prague in August, 1815, just in time for the premiere by Baermann the following day.
Weber took as his model Mozart’s great Clarinet Quintet, but departed from that model in critical ways. Mozart’s work blended the clarinet with the string quartet in a balanced piece of chamber music; Weber’s Quintet, in contrast, is a miniature concerto for the clarinet with the string quartet mainly in accompaniment. The result is a virtuoso piece, with an elaborate clarinet part featuring brilliant passage work and taxing chromatic (half-step) runs. Furthermore, Weber, the father of German romantic opera, makes his points through explicit musical contrasts rather than through the subtle development of musical materials.
Following Mozart’s lead, the quintet opens quietly in the strings, and the clarinet enters with genial grace. However, the clarinet soon takes off in fast rocketing figures, becoming more and more the center of attention. Further, the restrained musical texture gives way to the surging passages, leaping dotted rhythms and the general restlessness we associate with the overtures to Weber’s operas Euryanthe and Oberon.
The second movement, entitled “Fantasia,” is in the minor mode and provides an opportunity to show off the clarinet’s darker tone color. The clarinet twice interrupts itself to introduce a pair of contrasting chromatic scales, one as loud as possible and the other pianissimo, rising in one quick breath from low D to the B-flat almost three octaves above.
Clarinet pyrotechnics again dominate the minuet, with the clarinet a bit more subdued in the trio. The clarinetist needs the respite to prepare for the breathtaking demands of the rondo finale, played at the galloping clip of Rossini’s William Tell overture.