Classical Music | Music for Quartet

Recorded on 09/23/2009, uploaded on 11/21/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Italian Serenade in G Major for String Quartet          Hugo Wolf

Among nineteenth century chamber works, we find an unusual subcategory of pieces by composers more often associated with other genres. One example is Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade for string quartet.  Wolf is primarily known as a composer of songs.

Wolf created a new genre of a type of "comic" serenades with the work. The comic atmosphere is established right at the beginning with some preliminary strumming on open fifths and repeated notes as if to check tuning, rather like a band readying itself before the music actually gets under way. The mock-tuning lasts for eight whole measures.

The movement is in rondo form, cleverly adapted so that the players seem like personalities in an amorous comedy, with the entire first episode devoted to the lover preparing his declaration. In the development section, there are elaborate new countermelodies (second violin), and a recitative-like idea for cello, answered (at first mockingly, then more compliantly) by the other instruments. After more dance-like digressions, and a return of the rondo theme, the Serenade ends as it began, amid the thrumming of imaginary guitars.     The Avalon Quartet