Playing Chamber Music
Jens Peter Larsen suggests that "quartet playing was central to the contact between Haydn and Mozart", though the documentation of the occasions in which the two composers played or heard quartets or other chamber music together is slim. One report of such an occasion comes from the Reminiscences (1826) of the tenor Michael Kelly.
Storace gave a quartet party to his friends. The players were tolerable; not one of them excelled on the instrument he played, but there was a little science among them, which I dare say will be acknowledged when I name them:
- First Violin: Haydn
- Second Violin: Baron Dittersdorf
- Violoncello: Vanhal
- Viola: Mozart.
- I was there, and a greater treat, or a more remarkable one, cannot be imagined.
Both Dittersdorf and Vanhal, though little-remembered now, were well-known composers of the time.
The composer Maximilian Stadler also remembered chamber music performances in which Haydn and Mozart participated: the two of them took the viola parts in performances of Mozart's string quintets, K. 515, 516, and 593.
Read more about this topic: Haydn And Mozart
Famous quotes containing the words playing, chamber and/or music:
“I am now quite lame, from scuffling, all my fingers stiffened by playing ball. Pretty business for a law student. Yes, pretty enough; why not? Good exercise and great sport.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.
One who the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)