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Circular dances
Jan. 23rd, 2011 12:34 amOn Thursday evening, I went to hear some Beethoven string quartets at the Wigmore Hall.
This is a bit of a departure for me. If I'm at the Wigmore Hall, I'm normally there to hear lieder or other vocal music. But my mother's in town, and she loves the wild-haired deaf guy, so we got tickets for the Artemis Quartet's show. On the menu: op. 18 no.6 in B flat; op. 18 no. 3 in D; op. 130 in B flat with the Grosse Fuge.
I first heard the late Beethoven quartets in the autumn of my very first year in Britain, at the house of an English tutor who was helping me prepare for the Oxford exam. I'd asked my friends what this tutor was like, and they said "He basically is Chaucer." So I rang the doorbell and was met by, essentially, the Franklin, with a floridly pink face and a shock of tousled white hair. He offered me a drink-- and insisted when I demurred, a marked contrast with every single American high school teacher from my past.
This chap did have a reputation for constant inebriation-- but he was a mellow drunk, and generally cheerful, so it was cool. He knew I was a classical-music sort, so after our study sessions he'd get out vinyl records of the late Beethoven quartets, and he'd hand me the score to follow-- he knew them all by heart-- and we'd listen to them. His very favourite was opus 130, and I still remember how lovingly he pronounced the words "alla danza tedesca", the heading of the fourth movement ("in the manner of a German dance").
I had hardly thought about those evenings until I glanced at the programme from my seat in the Wigmore. There, again, was alla danza tedesca. The esteemed Chaucerian tutor is, of course, long dead; I don't think I properly grieved for him until now, or thanked him nearly enough while he lived.
And only now do I have the years, and the regrets, to understand what those Beethoven quartets are saying to me.
(A coda: I knew I'd heard the melody from the alla danza tedesca movement used as shorthand for "posh people dancing" in the soundtrack to... a film? A Jane Austen TV series? I couldn't place it, until I finally realised that it's the music for the ball scene in the Firefly episode "Shindig": an elegant touch by series composer Greg Edmonson.)
This is a bit of a departure for me. If I'm at the Wigmore Hall, I'm normally there to hear lieder or other vocal music. But my mother's in town, and she loves the wild-haired deaf guy, so we got tickets for the Artemis Quartet's show. On the menu: op. 18 no.6 in B flat; op. 18 no. 3 in D; op. 130 in B flat with the Grosse Fuge.
I first heard the late Beethoven quartets in the autumn of my very first year in Britain, at the house of an English tutor who was helping me prepare for the Oxford exam. I'd asked my friends what this tutor was like, and they said "He basically is Chaucer." So I rang the doorbell and was met by, essentially, the Franklin, with a floridly pink face and a shock of tousled white hair. He offered me a drink-- and insisted when I demurred, a marked contrast with every single American high school teacher from my past.
This chap did have a reputation for constant inebriation-- but he was a mellow drunk, and generally cheerful, so it was cool. He knew I was a classical-music sort, so after our study sessions he'd get out vinyl records of the late Beethoven quartets, and he'd hand me the score to follow-- he knew them all by heart-- and we'd listen to them. His very favourite was opus 130, and I still remember how lovingly he pronounced the words "alla danza tedesca", the heading of the fourth movement ("in the manner of a German dance").
I had hardly thought about those evenings until I glanced at the programme from my seat in the Wigmore. There, again, was alla danza tedesca. The esteemed Chaucerian tutor is, of course, long dead; I don't think I properly grieved for him until now, or thanked him nearly enough while he lived.
And only now do I have the years, and the regrets, to understand what those Beethoven quartets are saying to me.
(A coda: I knew I'd heard the melody from the alla danza tedesca movement used as shorthand for "posh people dancing" in the soundtrack to... a film? A Jane Austen TV series? I couldn't place it, until I finally realised that it's the music for the ball scene in the Firefly episode "Shindig": an elegant touch by series composer Greg Edmonson.)