Sonata op.113 for harp and violin (Spohr)

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The Sonata op. 113 for harp and violin is the best known of the duos that Louis Spohr composed for the concert tours undertaken with his wife, the harpist Dorette Spohr . It was created in 1806, but was only published in 1841 by Schuberth und Comp. published in print and thus received its high number of opus. The piece is in D major; However, due to the transposed harp part, the key is often incorrectly stated as E flat major.

First printing

The title of the first print is:

"SONATE CONCERTANTE pour Harpe ou Pianoforte et Violon ou Violoncelle composée par LOUIS SPOHR."

The three pieces of information are shown next to each other: “O. 113 "," O. 114 "and" O. 115 ”, the first of which is underlined by hand. Schuberth therefore had a single title page engraved for the three sonatas op.113, 114 and 115, which belonged together but were published in separate issues , on which the piece contained in the respective issue was then marked by hand - a process that music publishers continued into the 20th century. Century was common.

Notation, key and scoring

The first print is not a score - but a part print. It consists of a harp part (in which, unlike today, the violin part is not printed), which is in E flat major, as well as two violin parts, one in D major and one a semitone higher in E flat major. On the first page of the D major part there is the note:

“This original violin part is intended by the composer for the harps that are usually half a tone lower, hence the concert pitch of the harp, either half a tone lower or the violin so much higher. In the case of pianoforte statements by name, however, the violinist has to tune a half tone higher or use the voice provided by the publisher free of charge. "

This “free added part” is the E flat major violin part; In it, some double stops , which in the D major version can only be performed with the help of open strings, are placed differently. The wording of the note as well as the fact that the D major part contains fingerings , as Spohr always gave his violin parts, but the fingerings are missing in the E flat major part, indicate that the transposition of the violin part is evident E flat major does not go back to the composer himself, but was arranged by the publisher. The key Spohr meant is D major. At the beginning of the 19th century, the still imperfectly developed harp strings tended to break. Presumably Spohr therefore set the piece for a harp tuned a semitone lower - the strings of which were thus under less tension - and consequently notated the harp part a semitone higher, in E flat major. When he gave the piece for publication thirty-five years later, it no longer had any performance value for him (Dorette Spohr had died in 1834, but had to give up playing the harp for health reasons); perhaps he had developed too far from it compositionally to be interested in it. For example, he could have given the publisher the freedom to arrange the piece from the point of view of profitability - neither the unfavorable transposing notation nor the less popular harp instrument meant that the original version would be expected to be a cost-covering sales success.

For this reason alone it is also questionable whether the arrangement of the harp part for piano goes back to Spohr. Page 1 of the harp part contains the footnote: "The systems engraved with small notes are more comfortable on the pianoforte and in some cases easier for the harp." For a number of individual bars, but also for longer passages, alternatives are given in Ossia systems Especially those chords that cannot be performed on the piano because of the larger handspan on the harp, merge or shorten to a measure that can be played on the keyboard instrument. They make a timid impression, however, and are also absent from all structures that can be played on the piano but sound bad. They consistently leave the harp part in an extremely high register, which Spohr may have chosen to lighten the sound, which has become duller due to the lower tuning of the harp, and forego the reduction of chords that are too thick, full on the harp but clumpy on the piano. In a whole series of chamber music works with the piano, Spohr has proven that he could very well write an idiomatic , excellent-sounding piano setting. Presumably these changes were not made by himself either.

Musical structure

As the order of the instruments in the original title - first the harp, then the violin - suggests in 1841, Spohr's sonata is part of the tradition of the accompanied piano sonata, which dates back to the mid-18th century . Nevertheless, the dominance of the piano, known from many of Mozart's violin sonatas and in particular from the piano trios by Joseph Haydn, which was written a little earlier than Spohr's composition , has already largely dissolved. It shines through when in the exposition of the first movement - which, as usual, is in the sonata form - the modulation into the dominant (T.17-24), the expansion of the half-close before the secondary theme (T.32-38) and the first Presentation of the secondary theme (T.39-46), that is, most of the decisive formal events dominated by the harp. On the other hand, the violin takes the lead in the first tonic - cadence that the main subject decides (T.15-16) and includes the long spread main cadence in the dominant from (T.70-73).

Compared to the first movement, for which the requirements of the time called for a more closed structure, the middle movement (Adagio) and the final movement are built more loosely. Accordingly, the freedom of distributing the musical events to the instruments is much greater. For the final movement, a rondo , Spohr chose a clear distribution of tasks in which the violin takes on the actual themes , i.e. H. Structures that show a clear hierarchy of (violin) main line and (harp) accompaniment; the harp, on the other hand, is assigned modulation sections and virtuoso drive.

Footnotes

  1. The adaptation of the piece for flute and piano (in E flat major) published by Wiltrud Bruns in 1979 by Verlag Zimmermann (Frankfurt / Main) gives the title in the wrong form in its foreword - according to the publisher's correct information "Schuberth-Verlag": "Sonate concertante pour Harpe ou Piano [sic] et Violon ou Violoncello [sic] ou Flûte" (italics not original). The harp part is then performed (with a quote from the note on p. 1; despite the different title, it actually means the first edition), “a violin part” - probably the D major part - and a “flute part, the 1841 was set up by Otto Kressner. It largely coincides with the violin part. ” There is just as little such a flute part as the addition“ ou flûte ”in the title. What is obviously meant is the E flat major violin part, whose double stops, which have been changed compared to Spohr, are even referred to in footnotes. - With regard to the piano part, too, the edition disguises how deep the editing interventions in the original text are.

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