November 9-10, 2025

November Concert

Johann David Heinichen
Concerto for Flute and Oboe in G minor, S.238

Amy Marcy Beach
Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet, Op.80

Benjamin Britten
Phantasy Quartet Op. 2

Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet No.11, Op.95

Sunday, November 9, 3 pm * Round Hill Community Church * 395 Round Hill Road, Greenwich, CT
Monday, November 10, 7:30 pm * Greenwich Historical Society * 47 Strickland Road, Cos Cob

Program Notes

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" Henry VI Part 2

If we had followed Dick the Butcher’s advice (yes, that is the character’s name), we would not have the music of Tchaikovsky, Handel, Stravinsky, Telemann, Schumann, Chabrier, W.F. and C.P.E. Bach, Paul Simon, and Hoagy Carmichael, all of whom studied law.

What is it about legal training that lends itself to composing music? Perhaps the law’s roots in the study of rhetoric (Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos), which fostered the skills needed to synthesize a clear statement by applying complex rules to hard facts, have a parallel in the work of composition.

Take, for example, the German lawyer turned composer Johann David Heinichen (1683 – 1729), who wrote more than briefs and music. He is best known for his treatises (which J.S. Bach sold in his music book side hustle) on techniques of the new Baroque style, especially his formulation of the concept of the “circle of fifths” (The circle of fifths became possible by the adoption of tuning systems that allowed composers to move freely between different keys. Ask any of today’s players for an exegesis on the topic). But his work as a composer deserves to be heard.

Heinichen received a thorough musical education as a child in Leipzig at the Thomasschule (later administered by Bach), studied law at Leipzig University, and relocated to Weissenfels in 1706 to practice. But the musical culture of that court led him to abandon law, and he returned to Leipzig in 1709 as a full-time musician. Moving to Venice in 1710 to absorb the latest currents of Italian music, he met (among others) Vivaldi and focused on (what else?) opera. His growing fame in Venice caught the attention of the Prince-Elector of Saxony, who hired Heinichen to come to Dresden as his Kapellmeister. For the remainder of his life Heinichen composed music, secular and sacred (though only one opera), for the court of August the Strong, home to one of Europe’s premiere musical establishments.

That music (mostly destroyed during WWII) combined Heinichen’s German and Italian influences which are evident in his Concerto for Flute and Oboe in G minor, S.238. In three movements (fast-slow-fast) and featuring two virtuoso wind parts, it uses all the devices Heinichen examined in his treatises while its form, virtuosity, rhythmic elan, and harmonic daring show that Heinichen’s time in Vivaldi’s Venice was well spent.

Publishers have often added nicknames to pieces of absolute music, such as symphonies and sonatas, hoping to pull in more scratch with an advertising hook (Haydn’s Symphony No. #101 – Now with “CLOCK”!) But occasionally composers provided the nickname, thereby adding context to the notes – Mendelssohn dubbed his Symphony No. 4 “Italian” and Mozart called his Serenade K. 525 “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) also added titles to some of his music, labeling the Symphony No. 3 “Eroica”, the Piano Sonata 29, Op. 106 “Hammerklavier”, and the String Quartet Op. 95 in f minor, “Serioso” (1810).

Op. 95 is one of the last works from Beethoven’s “middle period” (roughly 1802-1812) in which he wrote some of his most popular works, such as Symphony No. 7. But the heroic character of these pieces sometimes overshadows how Beethoven would forcefully and relentlessly explore the potential of his ideas. (Think of the opening of Symphony No. 5.) Indeed, Op. 95’s compression of musical ideas achieves a critical mass that explodes in an urgent, almost violent manner. Beethoven understood the extreme character of this music, writing to a friend that “The Quartet [Op. 95] is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public."

Beethoven eventually did allow a public performance in 1814 and publication in 1816. In four tightly knit movements, it is the shortest of Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets, clocking in under 20 minutes. The obsessive-compulsive motive that opens and dominates the first movement, the intense, chromatic second movement, and the almost schizophrenic, not at all funny, scherzo lead into a turbulent finale which ends with an ebullient coda, in F major. The release the coda provides feels as if “no bottle of champagne was ever uncorked at a better time.”

Britain has always had vigorous folk and popular music traditions. Yet, from the death of Purcell until the career of Elgar, it did not produce any composers of international stature. Instead, the Germanic courts of the House of Hanover and the mercantile middle class preferred to import and celebrate foreign-born composers such as Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn, rather than Thomas Arne, William Boyce, and William Sterndale Bennett.

Because these composers, the equivalent of invasive species, crowded out native varieties, there were considered efforts to build an infrastructure that would cultivate a rejuvenated English school of composition. Educational institutions, publishers, competitions, and festivals sprang up like weeds. Even Queen Victoria got in on the act, knighting Arthur Sullivan, commissioning a ballet from him for her Diamond Jubilee, and suggesting "You ought to write a grand opera – you would do it so well!"

Walter Willson Cobbett (1847–1937), the British founder and chair of the Scandinavia Belting Company and amateur violinist, focused his efforts on chamber music. He had a particular interest in reviving the principles of a type of Elizabethan viol consort music, written by composers such as Purcell and Gibbons, known as a fantasy or fancy. (Cobbett’s spelling was “phantasy”). The commissions and competitions he sponsored to promote phantasies required that “The (phantasy) parts must be of equal importance, and the duration of the piece should not exceed twelve minutes. Though the Phantasy is to be performed without a break, it may consist of different sections varying in tempi and rhythm.”

Many British composers wrote phantasies with prodding from Cobbett, including Frank Bridge and John Ireland, as well as their young student at the Royal College of Music (RCM) and Purcell enthusiast, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). In 1932 he wrote the Phantasy, Op. 2 for Oboe, Violin, Viola and Cello. It was a stunningly accomplished work for a 19-year-old undergraduate and attracted international attention with one of the world’s best oboists and RCM faculty member, Léon Goossens (1897–1988) playing the London premiere and the subsequent performance at an international festival in Florence.

Taking 15 minutes to perform, the music anchors its fantasy of expression with an arch form - march-fast-slow-fast-march – and simultaneously utilizes sonata principles. While a listener might notice Britten’s ingenuity, they will appreciate how Britten wrote music that, as Cobbett hoped, would be “of interest to the community at large.”

Name the composer.  Age 1: Discovered to have perfect pitch. Age 2: Sang improvised lower lines to a soprano melody. Age 3: Demonstrated synesthesia, asking for songs by color rather than by key (and taught self to read). Age 4: Mentally composed first piece and could play a piece after listening to it. Age 7: First piano recital. Etc.

Any guesses? Mozart? Mendelssohn? Prokofiev? Korngold? Nope. It was Amy Marcy Cheney, better known as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, and later, Amy Marcy Beach (1867-1944). This sequence of names suggests how society treated her prodigious talents.

Amy Cheney's early experiences in New Hampshire and Boston nurtured her remarkable gifts and she made her professional debut as a pianist 1883 at age 16. That concert career ended abruptly when, at age 18, she married the 41-year-old Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach. As Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, she agreed to limit her concert career to two charity performances a year and to provide her husband with the household and social support his social status required. Only after her husband’s death in 1910 could she resume her (successful) concert career as Mrs. Amy Marcy Beach.

Dr. Beach did encourage his wife to focus on composition but did not allow her to study with a tutor. Her subsequent autodidacticism was spectacularly successful, with her Mass (1892) and Gaelic Symphony (1896) cementing her reputation as one of American’s leading composers.

Among the more than 300 works Beach composed is the Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet, Op.80, commissioned by the San Francisco Chamber Music Society and premiered in 1916. Beach used a melody from her “An Indian Lullaby” Op. 57, No.3 as the basis of the work. While there is nothing “Indian” about the theme, it does provide a lyrical foundation for the six variations that show the full range of the skills Beach taught herself.

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