Presents
Ferdinand Ries
String Quartet No.19 in C Major, WoO.37
Today, Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) is primarily remembered as a friend and student of Beethoven, as well as his first biographer. However, during his lifetime and for much of the 19 century, Ries was remembered as a fine composer and virtuoso pianist. He showed musical promise from an early age, studying both violin and piano with his father, and the cello with Bernhard Romberg. In 1801, he went to Vienna and studied piano and composition with Beethoven for five years. Like Beethoven, Ries composed string quartets throughout his entire life, some 26 in all. He wrote many more string quartets than any other type of work and one is forced to conclude that like Beethoven, he harbored a real ambition to make a significant contribution to the genre most composers of the time considered to be the most important.
Of the 26 string quartets Ries composed, only 11 were published during his lifetime. The rest remained unpublished. The String Quartet in C Major, WoO.37, which dates from 1827, was actually the 19th quartet he composed and his third to the last such work he would pen. It is perhaps no accident that this quartet, composed in the year of Beethoven's death, should show the influence of his master and friend. Critics have noted that the opening movement, Allegro con brio, shows a remarkable similarity in style to Beethoven's Op.59 No.1, not only with the cello opening but also with the rising melody which serves as the main theme. But there, the similarity ends as Ries employs a technicque in which each of the themes gets quickly replaced. The marking of the second movement, Andantino con moto, which is in the minor, seems to be a misnomer in that there is a sense of lugubriousness brought about by the lower voices. The music moves along at a rather slow pace certainly not con moto. The Menuetto, moderato which follows sounds nothing like a classical minuet but comes closer to the feel of a scherzo. A drum-like rhythm dominates the finale, Allegro. One might well image a marching band strolling down the street.
Ries has sometimes been criticized as writing too much like Beethoven, and Beethoven himself complained of this though half in jest. And while it is not surprising that Ries found much in Beethoven's writing that influenced his musical thinking, Ries moved on and there is not much here that brings Beethoven to mind. Our edition is based on the composer's manuscript, a copy of which we obtained from the library of the Staatliches Institut fur Musikforschung (State institute for musical research) which is part of the Stiftung Preussicher Besitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) in Berlin.
Parts: $29.95
Parts & Score: $38.95
