History of the Viola (Rebecca Clarke)
The History of the Viola in Quartet Writing Author(s): Rebecca Clarke Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan., 1923
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The History of the Viola in Quartet Writing Author(s): Rebecca Clarke Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan., 1923), pp. 6-17 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/726173 Accessed: 05-04-2017 03:40 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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THE HISTORY OF THE VIOLA IN QUARTET WRITING IT is a curious fact that, although the viola is probably the oldest instrumelnt of the quartet, it has been the longest in coming into its
owi1; alnd one feels, in reviewing its history in chamber music, that, unlike that of the violin and 'cello, it is, indeed, its life history. Many
efforts have, it is true, been made to establish it as a solo instrument, but these have been of recent years only; so, although it has always appeared in democratic numbers in the orchestra, its chief scope of utterance as a personal entity has beeni, and still is, in chamber music, and the quartet in particular. Whether for so long no parts of importance were written for it because
there were no good viola players, or whether there were no good viola players because no parts of importance were written for it, is one
of those puzzles, like the problem of the hen and the egg, that are not easy to solve. Good viola players have always been scarce, and
in the early days of the quartet must have been practically non-existent. Even up to the present generation the standard was so low that it was
almost accounited a confession of failure to play the viola at all; and teachers of stringed instruments have been known quite seriously to advise parents wishing for family chamber music, to make their most unmusical child learn to play the viola, leaving the violin and the 'cello to its more gifted brothers and sisters. Of late, however, conditions have greatly changed, and the much-
snubbed viola has developed from the humdrum, but necessary, drudge to the petted darling of the modern composer; in fact, no quartet of
to-day is found that does not give it great, and sometimes almost sensational, prominence. Probably one of the chief factors in its advancement has been the personal interest taken in it by the composers themselves; for, often anxious to take part in concerted music, yet not wanting to spend much time acquiring the technique of a too exacting instrument, many
of them very natuirally took up the viola. Indeed, the list of writers for quartet who did so is surprisingly long and complete, ranging through Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Dvorak, to
such fine present-day players as Eug?ene Goossens, Fra.nk Bridge, Waldo Warner, and many others.
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THE HISTORY OF THE VIOLA 7 It can easily be understood how the affection felt by the composer
for his own instrument was reflected in its growing importance in chamber music, and Mozart in particular was the one who first realised that it might have something of its own to say. Before him, Haydn, generally looked upon as the father of the string quartet, had, in his
earlier works, treated the viola merely as a necessary filling-in for the four-part harmony; occasionally he gave it a crumb-often a very beautiful crumb-to itself; or, sometimes, in a set of variations, it would take its turn with the others in playing the tune, according to the fashion of those days. But, on the whole, one feels that Haydn, discouraged, perhaps, by the results of writing anything difficult for the tenor in vocal music, fought shy of the corresponding part in string quartets, and found it more satisfactory to treat the viola as an instrument that should be seen rather than heard.
The advent of Mozart, with his more polyphonic style, however, changed things considerably. His extraordinary gift for mnaking every part interesting in itself, and his inborn understanding of the essential characteristics of each instrument, brought out undreamt-of possibilities in the string quartet. It is not alone that he promoted the viola to a position of interest and responsibility, he promoted each of the three lower instruments to a position equal in dignity and importance to that of the first violin, hitherto the acknowledged autocrat of the quartet. But the change was perhaps most striking in the case of the viola, which had up to that time been considered unfit to be entrusted with an important part. One can imagine Mozart, indulgently fond of his own instrument, thinking: " We really
must give a nice part to the poor old viola now and then," and straightway proceeding to write in his quartets-and still more so in his string quintets-passages such as it had never before been confronted with. Whereupon the poor old viola player of the day, startled, had to emerge from his comfortable obscurity, and begin to practise, thus helping to lay the foundation on which the viola has risen to its present position. A passage like this, for instance, from the first movement of the quartet in E flat (K. No. 428)
(As
-
.iJ
7Zii1L., 14
in which the viola is for the moment the prominent instrument-
may well have seemed difficult in its time, and indeed, to this day
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8 MUSIC AND LETTERS
most viola players agree that it is harder t than to cope with the complexities of mode this supreme writer are so full of import that it is hard to decide which to choose fo example, the variation allotted to it in the l quartet in D minor (K. No. 421), and the pr
the first movement of that in D major (
quartet in F (K. No. 590), it creates an unex movement by taking the subject in the min
But perhaps the most beautiful pasage of simplest, is in the first movement of th
No. 465), when, at the beginning of the dev and the viola answer each other with fragme
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