Four Viennese String Quintets

Ignace Pleyel

After the string quartet, the string quintet was the most popular chamber music genre of the eighteenth century, and its prominence continued well into the nineteenth century, through the time of Brahms. The rich repertory of the Viennese string quintet, previously little studied, casts new light upon Mozart’s and Beethoven’s contributions to the genre. Many composers of the time composed string quintets, and several stand out for their excellent works in this medium. This edition contains string quintets by four of these composers: Ignace Pleyel (1757–1831), Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754–1812), Franz Krommer (1759–1831), and Adalbert Gyrowetz (1763–1850).

Ignace Pleyel was among Haydn’s most important and successful pupils, and his first set of quartets (Benton 301–306), composed in 1782–83 and dedicated to Count Erdödy, were highly praised by Mozart in a letter to his father of 24 April 1784: “I must tell you that some quartets have just appeared, composed by a certain Pleyel, a pupil of Joseph Haydn. If you do not know them, do try to get hold of them; you will find them worth the trouble. They are very well written and most pleasing to listen to.”

The Quintet in F minor (Benton 277) is one of approximately fifteen string quintets by Pleyel composed or copied in Vienna between 1785 and 1789. The F minor quintet may in fact be one of Pleyel’s earlier works in the genre. A coherent collection of his quintets, now part of the music collection at the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, lists it as the third in the series. The text here is based on the first edition, published by André in 1788.

Franz Anton Hoffmeister is best known today as among the most important Viennese publishers of the 1780s; having arrived in Vienna ca. 1768 to study law, he soon took up music, opening his own independent publishing house in 1784 or 1785. But Hoffmeister was also active as a composer of instrumental music in particular; his output includes more than 60 symphonies and concertos (many for flute) and a large quantity of chamber music, including at least a dozen quintets, the earliest of which predate Mozart’s.

The Quintet in A major, the third of a set of six published in 1787 or 1788, betrays the influence of Mozart as much as that of Haydn: the lyricism, cadential gestures, and sometimes imaginative use of the quintet texture in the first movement is closer to the younger master’s style. At the same time, the four-squareness of the Andante variation movement (a common feature of Viennese quintets, also used prominently by Mozart in K.614) seems to derive more from Haydn. The edition here is based on Hoffmeister’s own print.

Franz Krommer [František Vincent Kramár] was born in Kamenice u Trebice, now part of the Czech Republic, and from about 1777 served as temporary organist in Turan, where his uncle, the choirmaster Anton Matthias Krommer, worked. Krommer moved to Vienna in 1785 but soon found employment as a violinist in the orchestra of the Duke of Styrum in Simontornya, Hungary; from 1790 he served as organist at Pécs Cathedral and later as kapellmeister in the service of a certain Duke Karolyi and Prince Antal Grassalkovich de Gyarak. Krommer returned to Vienna in 1795, and in 1798 he was appointed kapellmeister to Duke Ignaz Fuchs; after 1810 he was employed as Ballett-Kapellmeister at the Hoftheater. He was appointed Kammertürbüter to the emperor in 1815, and from 1818 until his death in 1831 he served as director of chamber music and court composer to the Habsburg emperors, succeeding Leopold Kozeluch.

Krommer was a prolific composer: his output included approximately ten symphonies (some of them lost, numerous violin concertos, and a large quantity of chamber works including 26 string quintets published between 1797 and the mid-1820s (second in number only to his string quartets, of which more than 70 are known). All of them are scored for two violins, two violas, and violoncello. His second set of quintets, op. 11, published first by Gombart in Munich and then by André in Offenbach, was advertised in the Frankfurter Staatsristretto on 30 January 1798. These prints, the André in particular, would have reached Vienna only shortly after publication.

Adalbert Gyrowetz, String Quintet in C Major, first movement, opening measures.

Like Krommer, Adalbert Gyrowetz was also born in Bohemia (Ceske Budejovice). He, too, studied with a family member, his father, who was a choirmaster in his home town. Gyrowetz first moved to Vienna in 1784 or 1785, where his works were champoined by Mozart, who performed a symphony by Gyrowetz at one of his Mehlgrube concerts.

From the mid 1790s to about the mid 1800s, he was also a prolific composer of instrumental music, including symphonies, concertos, and more than 45 each of string quartets and piano trios. Apparently Gyrowetz composed only two string quintets, both composed ca. 1800–1801: op. 36, advertised in manuscript copies by Johann Traeg in 1801 and later published by Gombart in Augsburg; and op. 45, published in Offenbach by André in 1802.

The second of these, the Quintet in C major, op. 45, is immediately striking not only for its size, but also for its Beethovenian gestures, including the harmonic boldness and disjunctions of tyhe Adagio introduction to the first movement, as well as the phrase structure of the Allegro, with its repetitio of the head motive on adjacent scale steps (C major at m. 28 and D minor at m. 45). More orchestral than inteimate, it nevertheless exploits the chamber style in its slow movement, which is typically a set of variations.♦