Johannes Brahms -현악4중주 전곡[1,2,3 번]

 

Johannes Brahms

 

(1833~1897)

 

[전곡 모음]

요하네스 브람스는 고전주의 형식을 견지했던 낭만파의 거장. 그의 작품세계에서 실내악은 매우 중요한 위치를 차지한다. 당시 유명 작곡가들이 다른 장르에 매달려 있을 때 브람스는 실내악에 천착했고, 7곡의 소나타, 3중주, 4중주, 5중주, 6중주 등 17곡의 실내악 작품들을 하나같이 걸작으로 탄생시킨 것이다.
실내악에서도 완벽주의자로서의 면모를 보인 브람스는 스스로 실패작이라고 생각되는 모든 습작들과 초고들을 없앰으로써, 수련기 작품들의 흔적을 남기지 않았다. 현악 4중주곡도 모두 23곡을 썼지만 20곡을 파기하고 3곡만 남겼을 정도로 창작에 신중을 기했다.
1865년 이후 8년 동안 브람스는 한 곡의 실내악 작품도 완성을 보지 못했다. 그만큼 브람스는 현악 4중주의 완성을 위해 힘겨운 산고를 겪었다. 무려 20곡이나 파기한 끝에 드디어 1873년에 2곡의 현악 4중주 작품 51을 세상에 내놓았다. 8년의 장고 끝에 완성한 브람스 현악 4중주곡들이다.
작품 51의 힘들었던 구성의 어려움은 브람스가 현악4중주의 필요한 요건들에 대해 느끼는 의식과 깊게 연관이 있는데, 그러한 의식은 작품 51의 두 곡에서 진정한 형식의 절약, 집중의 집요한 탐구로 나타나고 있다.
Op.51-1은 c단조, Op.51-2는 a단조로, 두 작품은 대립적인 특성을 보여준다. Op.51-1은 c단조의 조성과 연결되는 음울하고 극적인 긴장감이 있으며, 피날레에서 나타나는 순환적 성향은 엄격한 표현적 집중, 철저한 논리적 성격을 갖고 있다.
반면 Op.51-2는 테마적 개념들의 풍성함, 대위법적인 작곡의 풍부함 속에서 비교적 느슨한 양상을 보인다. 1악장은 비애감, 애가, 엄청난 동요 사이에서 방황하는, 무어라 정의할 수 없는 표현적인 태도를 보여준다. 즉 브람스의 '자유로우면서도 유쾌한' 모토와 요하임의 '자유로우면서도 유일한' 모토의 조합을 포함하는 모토에서 실마리를 이끌어낸다.
반면 피날레에서는 빈의 사랑스러운 랜틀러(느린 왈츠)와 '헝가리적 테마'를 나란히 놓음으로써 대중성을 강조하고 있다. 1번은 베토벤의 영향을, 2번은 바흐의 정신을 이어받은 것으로 평가되고 있다.
브람스의 마지막 현악4중주곡인 제3번 내림B장조 Op.67은 최대한 단순한 작곡을 그 특징으로 한다. 1876년 봄부터 여름에 걸쳐 브람스는 하이델브르크 부근에서 휴양을 하면서 이 곡을 작곡한 것으로 전한다. 그곳에서 브람스는 많은 친구들을 만나며 유쾌한 날들을 보냈다.
그 같은 생활이 반영된 듯 작품에서도 전원적이며 목가적인 정서가 풍기며, 밝은 기운이 드러난다. 브람스 연구가들은 이 작품을 베토벤의 현악4중주 Op.135와 비유하곤 하는데, 유연하면서도 섬세하고, 그러면서도 신비로운 심오함이 그런 요소들이다.
이 3곡의 현악4중주곡은 브람스의 작품 세계에서 매우 중요한 위치를 차지한다. 브람스가 청년기에 보여준 작품들의 팽창성에서 벗어나 보다 엄격한 작곡서법에 의한 성숙의 단계로 접어드는 길목 역할을 하고 있기 때문이다.[우리말 자료 출처: 블로그 박연서원]

 

 

 

 

String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1

Johannes Brahms's String Quartets Nos. 1 in C minor and 2 in A minor were completed in Tutzing, Bavaria, during the summer of 1873, and published together that autumn as Opus 51. They are dedicated to his friend Theodor Billroth.

Brahms was slow in writing his first two string quartets. We know from a letter from Joseph Joachim that a C-minor quartet was in progress in 1865, but it may not have been the same work that would become Opus 51 No. 1 in 1873. Four years before publication, however, in 1869, we know for certain that the two quartets were complete enough to be played through. But the composer remained unsatisfied. Years passed. New practice runs then occurred in Munich, probably in June 1873, and Brahms ventured south of the city to the small lakeside town of Tutzing for a summer respite. There, with the Würmsee (as Lake Starnberg was then called) and the Bavarian Prealps as backdrop, he put the finishing touches on the two quartets.

 

He was 40 years old at the time of publication. Brahms regarded the string quartet as a particularly important genre. He reportedly destroyed some twenty string quartets before allowing the two Op. 51 quartets to be published.^[1] At least one of the quartets (No. 1 in C minor) had been complete as early as 1865 but Brahms continued to revise it for nearly a decade.^[1]

Explaining his slow progress to a publisher in 1869, Brahms wrote that as Mozart had taken "particular trouble" over the six "beautiful" Haydn Quartets, he intended to do his "very best to turn out one or two passably decent ones."^[1] According to his friend Max Kalbeck, Brahms insisted on hearing a secret performance of the Op. 51 quartets before they were published, after which he substantially revised them.

 

During Brahms's lifetime, the string quartet, like the symphony, was a genre dominated by the contributions of Ludwig van Beethoven. In choosing the key of C minor for the first of his quartets, Brahms may have been seeking to acknowledge as well as break free from Beethoven's paralyzing influence, since Beethoven composed some of his greatest and most characteristic works in that key.^[1] (Brahms likewise chose the key of C minor for his First Symphony.)

Structure

The "terse," "tragic"^[2] String Quartet No. 1 in C minor is remarkable for its organic unity and for

the harmonically sophisticated, "orchestrally inclined" outer movements that bracket its more intimate inner movements.^[1] Structurally and thematically, the first movement shows the influence of Schubert's Quartettsatz, D. 703, also in C minor.^[2] The quartet consists of four movements:

1. Allegro (C minor, ends in C major)
2. Romanze: Poco adagio (A-flat major)
3. Allegretto molto moderato e comodo (F minor, ends in F major)
4. Allegro (C minor)

String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51 No. 2

The String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, also highly unified thematically, is comparatively lyrical, although culminating in a dramatic and propulsive finale whose tension "derives...from a metrical conflict between theme and accompaniment."^[3] Like Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 1 and Violin Concerto, the A minor quartet has a final movement modeled on a Hungarian folk dance, in this case a czárdás.^[4] The quartet consists of four movements:

1. Allegro non troppo (A minor)
2. Andante moderato (A major)
3. Quasi Minuetto, moderato (A minor)
4. Finale. Allegro non assai (A minor)

With all the movements in A minor or A major, the String Quartet No. 2 is therefore homotonal. Each quartet lasts about half an hour in performance.

Critical reception

The Op. 51 string quartets were received "respectfully if without great enthusiasm" at their respective premieres in October and December 1873.^[5] While the quartets have enjoyed less popularity than some of Brahms's other chamber music, they helped revitalize "the great but moribund tradition" of the string quartet that had stagnated after Beethoven and Schubert, and helped inspire the quartets of Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, and other twentieth century composers.^[5] In his famous essay "Brahms the Progressive", Schoenberg praised the quartets for their advanced harmony and for the unprecedented completeness with which Brahms derives each movement from a tiny motif.^[6]

The Op. 51 quartets have been recorded by such ensembles as the Amadeus Quartet, Quartetto Italiano, Alban Berg Quartet, Cleveland Quartet, Tokyo Quartet, Emerson Quartet and Takács Quartet.

String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat major, Op. 67

 

 

The String Quartet No. 3 in B flat major, Op. 67, was composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1875 and published by the firm of Fritz Simrock.^[1] It received its premiere performance on October 30, 1876 in Berlin.^[2] The work is scored for two violins, viola, and cello, and has four movements:

• I. Vivace
• II. Andante
• III. Agitato (Allegretto non troppo) – Trio – Coda
• IV. Poco Allegretto con Variazioni

Brahms composed the work in Ziegelhausen, near Heidelberg, and dedicated it to Professor Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann, an amateur cellist who had hosted Brahms on a visit to Utrecht. Brahms was at the time the artistic director of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.^[1][2] The work is light-hearted and cheerful, "a useless trifle," as he put it, "to avoid facing the serious countenance of a symphony", referring to the work on his first symphony which debuted a week later.^[1]