On 10th December 1941, Royal Marine bandsman Robert Braga, grandfather of Haldon violinist Lindsay, found himself fighting for survival when the battleship he was serving on, HMS Prince of Wales, was sunk by Japanese bomber aircraft.
The attack must have been a terrifying ordeal, and attempting to escape from such a dire situation would have been desperate. The loss of life, of colleagues and friends, must have left survivors traumatised. In hindsight, it is clear that there was a lack of awareness of the vulnerability of shipping to aerial attack by the enemy – a new development in tactical warfare at this stage of the war. Bob Braga managed to escape (although his instruments, a clarinet, saxophone and viola sank to the bottom of the South China Sea) and once the war was over he resumed his career as a classical musician, becoming the much respected principle viola of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, serving in that capacity for many years.
Military music is integrated into the rituals and routines around training, discipline and above all, morale. Could music be considered to be a weapon? (Many musicians would reply; “Very much so, if it is music played on the viola. That’s enough to terrify the most hardened of soldiers.” ) Are instruments potentially lethal? As teachers, and as professional players, we have many close calls with exploding violins, flying conductors’ batons, drums that become battering rams, double bass necks that break, piano strings that snap – so much that is under extreme tension that has the potential to wreak havoc. However, maybe it’s more that when played they can produce sounds that are able to devastate and penetrate to the core of our emotional being, and therein lies their extraordinary potential to bring about transformation.
In a wider sense, can music be used as a ‘weapon’ of cultural and political change and protest? Music is sometimes seen, or rather heard, as passive. Perhaps it is one of the most challenging and disruptive of arts too, as well as being a conduit of healing. The current programme offers a reflection on music’s auditory arsenal.
One very plausible theory about the origin of the violin is that it came into being when it was realised that the shape and design of a medieval longbow could be adapted without much alteration – mainly size – to stroke a string into oscillation and thus into sound. By the time Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang’s father and teacher, was playing and teaching, and writing about violin technique, the violin and bow had developed largely into the form that we know it today. It is possible, though, to see that Leopold’s bow in the above picture retains the basic shape and curve of an archer’s bow.
The Mozarts were a family who were constantly making music together. Leopold and Wolfgang would have played violin and violin-viola duets. Wolfgang’s sister Maria Anna ’Nannerl’ was a brilliant pianist. This picture, a tour de force of period hairstyles and period musical instruments, was painted after Anna Maria had died. She presides over her husband Leopold (right) and Nannerl and Wolfgang who are enjoying playing a piano duet.
It is clear from their family letters how much they joked and chatted together. Wolfgang’s music often has a chatty, witty quality, and the violin and viola duet is very much in this spirit of quick repartee and sharing deeper thoughts and feelings.
Wolfgang wrote his two violin-viola duets (1783) as a favour for his friend Michael Haydn (above), brother of Joseph Haydn, who was unable to fulfil a commission to write six. In comparison to Michael Haydn’s duets, Wolfgang’s are far richer in invention and the two instruments have a greater share of the musical material. As such, they are works that are quite late in Mozart’s ouevre, written after his violin concertos and the crowning glory of the Sinfonia Concertante in Eb. It is thought that he was using the duos as a springboard for writing his later string quartets.
In contrast to the rocket-like trajectory of Wolfgang’s career, Nannerl disappeared off the musical scene, as was the way for women musicians at the time, although she was a highly regarded piano teacher. On her death, in a curious twist of the tale, she was laid to rest in the same communal grave as Michael Haydn.
Perhaps the only other instrument (apart from the viola) most likely to be used in anger in war are the bagpipes. The sheer volume of a group of pipers playing in unison, and the sight of kilts swaying and sporrans dangling must have made opposing armies quake. One such bagpiper was James Reid, a member of Prince Charlie’s Jacobite army, who most likely fought at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Captured by the English, he pled not guilty because he carried no weapons into battle. However, a judge classified the bagpipes as a weapon. “Highland regiments never marched without a piper; and therefor [Reid’s] bagpipe, in the eye of the law, was an instrument of war.” Reid was executed. Amazingly (or not), until 1996, the British government considered the bagpipes to be a bona fide weapon of war. They (bagpipes) symbolised a subversive challenge to the status quo of oppression and political repression. Perhaps James Reid should be a more celebrated figure as somebody who used music to bring about political change.
Bagpipers Trio by Dame Judith Weir (Master of the King’s Music 2014-2024) is a string trio version of Sketches from a Bagpiper’s Album, originally for clarinet and piano, written in 1984. She draws fervently on her Scottish background. The three short movements form what she calls “a very short instrumental opera” based on the life of James Reid. All three instruments play highly ornamented swirls of notes imitating the technique used in traditional Scottish music. Such ornamentation is synonymous with the expressive intensity of such traditional music; not just extra trills and frills added on top of the main melody but totally integrated into the core of the music’s identity.
All of the music in the programme that we are playing, including the Mozart and Schubert works, contains ornamentation and embellishment, sometimes built into the notation, and sometimes added spontaneously by the players in the spur of the moment. Music is a living art, and live music can take unexpected turns and provokes a response. It is not surprising to discover that this mercurial piece was used by the choreographer Stephen Shropshire for a contemporary dance work for The New York Choreographic Institute in 2022.
Franz Schubert was a close friend of the celebrated singer Johann Michael Vogl. (Vogl seen in front of Schubert, above.)
In 1819, Schubert and Vogl visited Vogl’s home in Steyr, east of Vienna, a town known for its iron industry and armaments manufacture. Sylvester Paumgartner, a mining engineer and friend of Vogl’s, was a local musical amateur who held musical evenings at his home. He asked Schubert to write a work using the same combination of instruments as Hummel’s quintet – violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano – and he specified the inclusion of a reference to Schubert’s song Die Forelle (The Trout), a setting of Christian Schubart’s poem. Schubert made the fourth movement of his quintet a set of variations on the ‘Forelle’ tune.
In a bright little stream
Shooting past in carefree haste
Was a capricious trout,
Going off like an arrow:
I stood by the edge of the water
And in sweet peace I watched
The lively little fish as it bathed
In the clear little stream.
A fisherman with his rod
Was standing on the bank, though,
And cold bloodedly he watched
As the little fish twisted.
So long as the bright water
Is not disturbed, I thought,
He won’t be able to catch the trout
With his fishing rod.
But in the end the thief felt
That it was taking too long; he made
The little stream treacherously cloudy:
Before I realised it,
His rod started twitching;
The little fish wriggled about on it;
And I, with my blood boiling,
Watched on as she was tricked.
Those of you who are still near the source
Of confident youth, waiting there,
Remember that trout;
When you see danger, then hurry away!
The main danger for you is a lack
Of wisdom; Girls, look out for
Seducers with their rods –
Otherwise it will be too late and you will bleed.
(Translated by Malcolm Wren. Source: schubertsong.uk)
Schubert didn’t include the last verse in his setting. Perhaps he felt that it was unduly moralising. It is certainly a poem of complex imagery, relevant to the activities and preoccupations of Schubert’s circle – friendship, nature, good living, and the ever present proximity to illness and death.
The instrumentation of Schubert’s ‘Trout’ quintet means that the sound is distinctive and quite unlike other chamber music of the period. In particular, the double bass part, independent of the cello, is freed up to add its own voice within the group, and its role is very much a part of the piece’s characteristic sound. (A double bass player on the loose is a force to contend with. My piano teacher told me that when he was doing national service in a military band one of the bass players was so annoyed with the shambolic conducting of the music director that he loaded his bow onto one of the bass strings like an archer and let it fly towards the conductor. Imagine that coming towards you, especially if your name was Harold. You would certainly get the message, via that up arrow down arrow trajectory.)
All five parts in the ‘Trout’ have clearly defined roles that blend together in the group dynamic, much like the party games that Schubert and his friends played at their musical gatherings. Schubert is seated at the piano at the bottom left of this picture, The Fall of Man: Schubertian parlour game in Atzenbrugg by Leopold Kupelwieser, 1821. Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien:
Following one such gathering, Schubert and four of his friends were arrested on suspicion of revolutionary activities by the Austrian secret police. Schubert was severely reprimanded for “inveighing against officials with insulting and opprobrious language.” One of the friends, Johann Senn, was imprisoned for a year without charges and banned from visiting Vienna ever again.
Schubert said of his visit to Steyr: “It is strange to think that the means of so much death and destruction has come from Steyr, one of the most beautiful towns in Austria, if not Europe,” wrote Schubert. “I only pray that my stay there will see the production of something more peaceful and humane than guns and swords.” On the evidence of the ‘Trout’ quintet, he was triumphantly successful in producing a happy antidote to the darker side of human nature.
There is no record of when the first performance of the quintet took place. It is very likely that Schubert himself played the piano part. The piece was not published until 1829, the year after his death. Below is a depiction of a ‘heavenly’ performance of the ‘Trout’ quintet attended by Beethoven and Wagner, seated above the players. Schubert at the piano, Mozart on violin, JS Bach on viola, Joseph Haydn on double bass and Gluck on cello. Quite a band.
