You hear those monks chanting?
It’s your typical medieval music fest.
But fast-forward to the Baroque period and Arcangelo Corelli’s shaking things up.
He’s writing pieces for small groups of musicians to be played in church.
They’re called sonata da chiesa.
Churchgoers are like
“Wow, didn’t realise how fun church is.”
The musicians are like
“Wow, didn’t realise how much fun it is playing music with ma mates!”
Cool dude Corelli’s also writing musica da camera – chamber music.
That’s music taken out of the church and plonked in a room.
Not just any room but a palace chamber reserved for small performances by a handful of musicians.
Every wealthy nobleman in Europe has one of these chambers in his palace.
These rich guys replace the church as the new patrons of the great composers –
like parents who give you pocket money when you’re good,
and in this case being good means writing a piece of music pleasing to the master’s ear.
So where we find money and power,
we find patrons and chamber music.
German patron Prince Leopold employs Johann Sebastian Bach to write him some chamber music.
The prince mucks in with his servants, accompanying them
on the harpsichord during his own concerts.
Scandalous!
But the most important patron is blingy Hungarian Prince Esterhazy.
He loves big palaces and flashy clothes.
Everyone’s fighting to be his composer-in-residence
...aaaaand the winner is:
Joseph Haydn.
Haydn’s in charge of the prince’s party playlist and comes up with the string
quartet – the most famous type of chamber music.
It’s four musicians
– two violins, viola and cello –
playing their own separate parts.
It’s like a conversation between them.
Knock knock!
Who’s at the door?
It’s Mozart!
He’s bringing something new to the party. Yes!
The newly-invented clarinet and the piano which replaces the now pretty unfashionable harpsichord.
Schubert borrows this trick from Mozart, putting the piano into the
Trout Quintet – perhaps THE most famous chamber piece of all time.
At the same time in 1820s Vienna, audiences are baffled by Beethoven’s string quartets.
They sound really radical and just...weird.
They’re full of difficult rhythms, fast runs of notes, and sudden key changes.
And they totally transform the meaning of chamber music.
This is less a conversation and more an intimate sharing of emotions – like
we’re eavesdropping on the mutterings of a tormented, deaf Beethoven in his final years.
Hairy beardy Brahms thought them so bold and daring that he tore up twenty of his own quartets;
he just didn’t think them good enough.
But there were bigger problems facing Brahms.
With all the revolutions sweeping across Europe,
it just wasn’t a good time for the aristocracy to show off with musical soirees.
But luckily that didn’t stop chamber music spreading amongst the normal people.
Because from the middle of the 19th century, amateur quartets were springing up in every city.
Now you could jam with your mates at home.
When two Frenchies Debussy and Ravel pop up in the 20th century, they break all the remaining rules.
They change the structure of the quartet.
They use strange notes to make atmospheric sounds.
And they aren’t the only ones fooling around.
Czech Dvorak and Hungarian Bartok
put the folky rhythms and sounds of their native lands into their own chamber works.
And would you believe it?
We’ve made it to the present day where contemporary composers have
finally taken the “chamber” out of chamber music.
They’ve brought string quartets into coffee shops, shopping centres and car parks.
German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen even sent his musicians up into the
air to play a string quartet from four separate helicopters.
Chamber music’s no longer for the wealthy aristocrat.
It's more conversational than the virtuoso soloist.
It's more intimate than the mighty symphony orchestra.
It’s music for us all.