Presents
Anton Reicha
La Pantomime, a Fantasia for String Quartet-New Edition
La Pantomime dates from 1806. It lay mouldering, like a great number of his works, in the French National Library (Bibliotheque National) in Paris until the 20th century when it was finally published. This in and of itself explains why Reicha never received the credit he deserved for being a musical pioneer. In some respects he was a musical renegade, even more ahead of his time than Beethoven. Famous for singlehandedly creating the wind quintet, the rest of his compositional legacy has been largely overlooked.
Scholars are divided as to whether La Pantomime was intended to be the first part of a longer work which became his Quatuor Scientifique and which was composed immediately after La Pantomime. Quatuor Scientifique began with an introduction which Reicha also titled La Pantomime. While it resembles to some extent the first one he wrote, it also very different. He not only reworked it, but also shortened it substantially so that it could serve as an introduction to a longer work. This, his first La Pantomime, is a subtantial stand alone movement lasting over 10 minutes, far too long to be an introduction to a longer work. This has led some scholars to opine that he simply discarded his first effort. But others believe, because he never discarded the manuscript that he intended it as a stand alone piece.
Pantomime is the same word in French as it is in English and has the same meaning--a story told without words by means of gestures and facial expressions. That said, presumably Reicha intended to tell a tale by means of music alone. This mostly likely explains the several changes of tempo within the work and it has led some pundits claiming La Pantomime was meant to recount mythological stories. Just how they came to this conclusion or which stories they had in mind, none have ventured to elaborate. That aside, it remains a unique and very interesting work, especially when one considers it was composed in 1806.
Anton Reicha, (1770-1836, Antonin Rejcha in the Czech form) was born in Prague. Orphaned at an early age, he went to Bavaria and was adopted by his uncle, Joseph Reicha, a concert cellist and music director. He studied violin, flute, piano and composition while with his uncle. In 1785, his family moved to Bonn, where Joseph became music director at the electoral court. There, Anton got to know Beethoven with whom he became life-long friends. He traveled extensively. After living in Paris and Hamburg, in 1801 he moved to Vienna where he studied with Albrechtsberger and Salieri and resumed his friendship with Beethoven and Haydn. In 1806, in part because of the Napoleonic invasion of Vienna, he decided to move to Paris where he spent the rest of his life, eventually becoming a naturalized French citizen. He became a professor at the Paris Conservatory and was one of the most famous teachers of his time. George Onslow, Louise Farrenc, Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Cesar Franck and Charles Gounod were among his many students. He also gained fame as a theorist. He was an innovator in many areas. Though perhaps not the inventor of the Wind Quintet, he was the first to popularize it. A prolific composer, he wrote in virtually every genre. Chamber music is a very important part of his oeuvre. He was always interested in experimenting and in many respects was way ahead of his time dabbling with polytonality and quarter tones. He wrote that he felt the most creative when he experimented trying new things rather than following traditional forms.
This is a highly interesting work. Our new edition is based on the manuscript in the Bibliotheque National of Paris.
Parts: $19.95
Parts & Score: $24.95
