Beethoven: Serenade in D Major, Op. 8; Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 16 – Cantilena Chamber Players

Description

The two works on this recording, both dating from 1797 and therefore representative of the composer’s early manner, attained sufficient popularity to enjoy (or suffer) the attentions of arrangers and publishers. Of many versions of the Serenade we mention only one curiosity: Two Songs adapted from the third and sixth movements, entitled, respectively, “Liebe und Wein” (“Love and Wine”) and “An Mein Liebchen” (“To my little Dear”). The Quartet presented here arouses perhaps more immediate interest, since it is itself an arrangement, by Beethoven, of his own piano and wind Quintet, a work of prime importance and great attractiveness.

Beethoven’s generation was the last for which certain aesthetic principles and artistic forms developed in the second half of the eighteenth century still retained vitality and interest. Some, like the sonata and symphony, continued to evolve while others, the entertainment types especially, ceased to have any real viability, at least not in the sense of their original contexts. The serenade is a quintessentially eighteenth-century form, the product of a society that valued and demanded all varieties of music in very large measure and appreciated diversion above all. Symptomatically, Beethoven’s contributions to the genre date from the formative years, when his receptivity to the outside world in. general and to the influence of Haydn, Mozart, and less renown figures in particular was strongest. After the “Eroica” Symphony and Appasionata” Sonata, to name but two familiar examples, music took on a more profound import for the composer and consequently the lighter forms recede into the past.