Emilie Mayer Piano Quartets 1&2: Mariani Klavierquartett (Chandos), 2021
The piano quartet has always seemed to me to occupy an idiosyncratic position in chamber music repertoire. It doesn’t accrue the gravitas of the piano trio, but neither does it seem as exotic as the quintet. In terms of numbers, the Grove Dictionary tells me that there are more quartets than quintets, but nowhere near as many trios.
Part of this may of course be economical – the simple arithmetic that says that paying four chamber musicians means less profit than paying three. But there’s also something here about collaborative creative enterprise and our fascination with the solitary artist – after all, it’s not that long ago that the narrative started changing about the role of the piano in even duo sonatas, from accompanist to ensemble partner.
Nineteenth-century women composers, however, seem to have embraced the genre almost as enthusiastically as the trio, although if one were to conduct a search of IMSLP by genre, one might not be aware of this fact – not a single composer on its algorithm-engendered list of quartet composers is female, despite the existence of several in its library, such as those by Louise Heritte-Viardot, Elfrida Andrée and Luise le Beau, to name but three. And this is not to mention other quartet writers whose works were performed during their lifetime, such as Alice Mary Smith and Mel Bonis, both of whom are represented on the site, although not the quartets. This is not to say that IMSLP is the sole arbiter of musical taste, but it’s a good way of seeing what is seen as ‘important’ in programming terms, given how many people use it at least as a first port of call for accumulating repertoire (I work with conservatoire students who would be the first to admit that this is the case, in the fast world they inhabit. When you’re in rehearsal tomorrow, immediate availability is everything.)
Emilie Mayer’s own output is a case in point, with her six trios all present, but both quartets absent. It’s a circular argument, as always with score availability – they are not as popular, so the reasoning goes, so we won’t offer the scores, making the works inaccessible and therefore remaining overlooked in repertoire building. Never mind that she was a widely-performed composer during her lifetime (1812-1883), with her symphonies and chamber music appearing across Europe, both in concert and in print, or that her close to 130 solo and part songs remained popular in British vocal circles into the early twentieth century. (Someone remind me how many works there are in Duparc’s available oeuvre?...)
Mayer studied music relatively late in life, moving to Berlin in 1847 to study with Adolph Bernhard Marx and Wilhelm Wieprecht. Afterwards she toured Europe with her brothers, in order to publicise her music (note the approval-consigning presence of the male relatives.). According to Grove, “Her music was performed in Brussels, Lyons, Budapest, Dessau, Halle, Leipzig and Munich, and was much acclaimed during her lifetime.” Such acclaim is certainly in evidence in the European press, although of course the language is heavily gendered. It’s notable that Mayer’s compositional skill is seen as an exception to the “women-can’t-create-from-scratch” trope, rather than proof that they can, with The Musical Times calling her output “an isolated achievement” and the Neue Berliner labelling her a “rare occurrence.” Two particular quotations are typical of the collision set up by the nineteenth-century press between public and private, especially in consigning both compositional and performance genres to each.
“We read in a letter from Halle of the great impression produced by a first performance of a Symphony in B minor from the pen of a lady, Mdlle. Emilie Mayer. The work in question is said to bear evidence of original power and thoroughly musicianlike workmanship; and the fact is the more worthy of notice, since the successful competition of lady composers with the opposite sex in the higher spheres of the art remains, at all events at present, but an isolated achievement. ”
“Miss E. Mayer is a rare occurrence. The female sex may have had numerous great achievements in musical reproduction and may compete for the greatest honours with the male sex – but production is the domain of the masculine creative spirit, and only rarely does a feminine personality show that this rule is not without exception. Here is such an exception, here is a female composer who not only writes for the pianoforte, but also solves the difficult exercise of orchestral composition that teems with thousands of secrets - and solves it so well! ”
Chamber music forms the largest part of Mayer’s output, all of it piano and/or strings. The two piano quartets were composed in the late 1850s, when she was resident in Berlin, enjoying recognition as a composer. Mayer’s writing in the quartets is sometimes conventional, although imbued with her own individual turn of phrase. This is not a criticism – there is something warmly comforting about hearing what we recognise, as so many writers (including Adorno, who was rather less tolerant of it than I am) have pointed out. What is clear is her early immersion in the writing of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, which bears fruit in her own writing, and her ability to manipulate large structures, both formally and harmonically. Also evident here is her curiosity in exploring new paths of expression. For example, while the first movement of the E flat major quartet is in sonata form, Mayer uses this form to tell an entirely different kind of story, allowing the second theme to dominate the shaping of her narrative. All eight movements of the two works traverse an extraordinary sweep of both formal structure and motivating emotion, from complex first movement forms to sweeping slow-movement melodies, from the dance of the scherzo to the inevitability of her finales.
The CD is recorded by the Mariani Klavierquartett, a German-based ensemble who have a broad repertoire, encompassing both “mainstream” composers and the lesser-known. Their discography covers from Schumann and Brahms to Enescu and Mayer, while their concert programmes typically range from early works to new commissions. While the manner of recording is conventional, particularly in the voicing, they opt for a clean sound that suits the repertoire well – it’s easy to follow the warp and weft of the texture, making for an exciting exploration of what will be new territory for many. Hopefully, recordings like this will help make not only the ensemble, but more specifically, Mayer’s works, more mainstream. It’s also worth mentioning the excellent sleeve notes, both in German and in English, which offer a way into an fresh understanding of both Mayer herself and of the two quartets.