Tor Aulin

[Alan Howe]

I suspect that there is a performers' point of view and a listeners' point of view - which may not coincide.

If contributors wish to post about Valborg Aulin, please see this new thread:
http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,7673.msg80304.html#new

[Mark Thomas]

the great bulk of chamber music concert goers as well as chamber music cd purchasers are themselves chamber music players

Really, Santo? Is there any proof of that?

[Santo Neuenwelt]

Well, anecdotal proof perhaps. I ran a fairly large chamber music series in Chicago for 25 years and most of our audience which averaged 200-300 per concert, eight concerts per year were chamber music players. And I personally knew most of the audience from playing with them or knowing who they played with. Not everyone, of course, but certainly a great many people played.

And I ran another series, somewhat smaller in Syracuse New York back in the mid 1970s average attendance 100-150, most were either amateurs or students from from the music school.

Ask around Mark, maybe not at Wigmore Hall, but other venues and I think you will find that what I said is basically true. It was when I was a student at Oxford and actually performed regularly in a chamber music series there.

I was very familiar with the people running two series one in Munich, one in Salzburg and was pretty sure the audiences were mostly players. But as I said it is anecdotal.

But I can say, I think without fear of contradiction that most people who go to the opera are not amateur singers and most people who go to hear symphonic music probably are not playing in amateur orchestras...

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks Santo, that's interesting. I can see the strength of anecdotal evidence as far as audiences are concerned, but I do wonder about extending that to buyers of chamber music recordings.

[Alan Howe]

I'm sceptical. I don't know any chamber music players - only those who buy chamber music recordings.

[Santo Neuenwelt]

Well Mark and Alan, you could be right about cd purchases, certainly with regard to the quartets of the famous like Haydn, Mozart Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms. Dvorak, Bartok, Shostakovich and so on. But I'm not so sure about quartets by more obscure composers like those we discuss here. I still think mostly players buy the cds of lesser known composers with a view to hearing whether they want to obtain the sheet music.

Consider this, from the very beginning, Haydn's time on, chamber music was intended for players, amateurs to play at home. Home music making was the an important entertainment medium before the advent of such things as radio and television. Professional quartets and piano trios, not to mention symphony orchestras, only really started to exist in the early 19th century. And even then, when you read reports of chamber music concerts in the palais of the Lobkowitzes and others, for example, by such people as Zmeskal, Beethoven's friend, supporter and himself an amateur player and composer, it is pretty clear that most in attendance did play.

Before the rise of any middle class, it was the aristos who regularly played a string instrument or the piano. Then, with the rise of the middle classes in Germany, Austria and to a lesser extent elsewhere, it became de rigueur for children to be given music lessons, growing up to amuse themselves with home music making.

Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven et. al.---their symphonies, concerti and opera were their public music which made their name and paid their bills. But they saved their best, their most intimate musical thoughts and ideas for chamber music in which they themselves often took part. I would have paid a lot to have heard the quartet consisting of Dittersdorf on first violin, Haydn on second, Mozart on viola and Vanhal on cello. I envy that lucky Irish tenor Michael Kelly who got to hear them...

There are very few composers who made their name solely on the basis of their chamber music, Boccherini and Onslow, and how well-known is he, come to mind but composers most had to write operas or symphonies to get traction...how well known would Mozart have been and would be if he had only written string quartets?

[eschiss1]

Actually, it's safe to say Mendelssohn's quartets sell less well than Borodin's. Which composer is more famous?

[Santo Neuenwelt]

Borodin No.2 Yes. No.1 No. Few know of No.1 and only find it if the cd bundles it with No.2...for the famous Kiss Me Kate slow movement....

But as you moderators usually correctly remind us, we are a long way from Tor Aulin.

From the Swedish Musical Heritage Foundation
Tor Bernhard Wilhelm Aulin was born on 10 September 1866 in Stockholm and died in the nearby coastal resort of Saltsjöbaden on 1 March 1914. He was the most prominent violinist of his time in Sweden, one of the foremost conductors and a champion of chamber music. His oeuvre contains three concertante works for violin and orchestra, incidental music, songs and chamber music. In 1887 he formed the Aulin Quartet. Between 1889 and 1902 he was concert master for the Royal Court Orchestra, after which he formed and led numerous ensembles, including the Swedish Musicians' Society Orchestra (1900), the Stockholm Concert Society (1902−09), the orchestra of the Royal Dramatic Theatre (1907–09) and the Southern Sweden Philharmonic Society (1907−08). He was conductor of the Gothenburg Orchestra Society from 1909 to 1911 and became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 1895.

He wrote, according to them, one work for string quartet, his Op.1 Serenade described as follows.
Serenade
opus 1
1. Prelude: Allegro Moderato
2. Theme with Variations: Andante sostenuto
3. Scherzo: Allegro vivace
4. Finale: Allegro brillant
Year of composition: Berlin-Düsseldorf 1895
Dedication: Dedicated to Skoglar Bergström
Location for score and part material
Copy of score and parts at Sveriges Radios Musikbibliotek (no. 31489)
Location autograph: Musik- och teaterbiblioteket

The string quartet was a form that Aulin knew very well from his experience with the Aulin Quartet, formed in 1887. The quartet's programming was ambitious, not only in individual concerts, but also in terms of
a whole year's planning, which could feature a specific composer, such as Beethoven or Berwald. Any influence of this tradition can scarcely be felt in Aulin's only contribution to the string quartet repertoire 
Although entitled Serenade, Aulin chose a four-movement form, with a fast initial movement, a slow variation movement, a scherzo, together with a quick finale.
The first movement, in F Major, entitled Prelude, has the first violin as the central focus. The variation movement, in D minor, allows the melancholy theme to wander between the instruments, with the theme's presentation in the first violin, and the faster moving first variation having it placed in the secondary voice. The second variation presents a subtle, tightly-woven texture, where the cello now carries the theme, and the third variation, where the viola's theme is set against the other parts' light sixteenth notes, leading eventually to a major-key variation in adagio tempo. The scherzo in A minor contains elements reminiscent of the lightning agility found in Mendelssohn's string writing, and is interrupted by a trio, Più tranquillo. Strong fluctuations in both tempo and dynamics entail that a tension-filled drama emerges, that can often be found in Aulin's more ambitious compositions. The concluding Allegro brillant has a main theme, reminiscent of the first movement's character, but now with a more verveful approach. Again, there is a contrasting idea, Maestoso but, as previously, these two opposing elements are transformed into more melodious material. In this movement the virtuosity is more evenly distributed, not least through the energetic sixteenth-note passages in all of the parts. The work is dedicated to Skoglar Bergström ("my old friend and 'quartet- brother'", as Aulin writes in the dedication), who worked at the National Library and was a member of the Mazer Quartet Society. Although the first part has its difficulties, it is well-suited for the instruments and the quartet may very well have been adapted for the society's most skilled amateurs, and not only for its professional members.