Composer: Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787)

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Abel was a German composer who was taught by Johann Sebastian Bach.  He moved to London in 1759 and was close friends with Bach's son Johann Christian Bach, with whom he put on the first subscription concerts in London.  He was a virtuoso viola de gamba player and pretty famous in London, which makes his present day obscurity kind of sad.   That's par for the course for the Lazarus Music Project, but it still twinges me every time.)​​

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Date: 1760

 

Original Instrumentation: Violin, viola, cello

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Movements:    

1. Moderato

2. Adagio ma non troppo

3. Minuet

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Why this one:

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​Um...it looked easy.  And it was.​

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Description:  

 

Movement 1 - Moderato

Key:  A

Time: 4/4  BPM=93

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This movement is in 3/4 but because triplets are so prevalent throughout it almost feels like it's in 9/8.  The first section has the melody in the violin 1 with the violin 2 in support.  The opening melodic idea is in D major but the movement quickly modulates to A major.  

 

The second part kicks off with the opening melodic idea again, this time in A.  This section has more of a call and response feel with violin 2 having more of the triplet figures both in alternation with violin 1 and in harmony with it.

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Performance:​

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The first third (ish) of this movement plays out almost like a series of mini canons between the violin and viola.  The violin kicks off a four measure ascending melodic sequences and the viola joins two measures later starting on the on the violins original note and this displacement puts the instruments into harmony in thirds.   They then continue harmonizing in thirds for the next four measures without the canon-ish displacement.   This 8 measure canon-harmonize sequence happens 3 times, with the melody a little bit different each time.

 

The third sequence modulates to E major.  (The standard Classical modulation to the dominant.)  After the mini canons, the violin takes a little solo while the viola drones in a triplet pattern and then the violin and viola harmonize together to close out the first major section of the movement.

 

The next section starts with another mini canon, this time lead by the viola in the new key of E.  The violin then takes a short solo while the cello and viola play an ascending motif in unison.  

 

The movement modulates back to the  home key with the opening mini canon coming back and then the violin plays it's first little solo (over viola triplet  drones), but now in A.  The viola eventually joins the leading violin at the end, in harmonized triplets.

 

The cello part throughout is really basic being mostly quarter notes just pedaling on the root note or sketching out unambitious major triads.  

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Movement 2 - Adagio ma non troppo

Key:  D

Time: 2/4  BPM=65

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This short movement honestly doesn't feel much like an adagio; thought the pulse is slow it's mostly subdivided and (especially) the constant eighth notes in the cello make it feel more propulsive and almost like it's in cut time.  ("Adagio ma non troppo" means "slowly, but not too much" so I guess it makes sense that it would feel brisker than a regular adagio.)

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The violin and viola are splitting the lead duties about equally here.  I don't have a lot to say about this movement, despite it sounding neat and being fun to play.  It's not harmonically complicated; at around 0:36 it sounds like they are pulling to B minor, which is the relative minor of the home key of D, but other than that it's  pretty much firmly in D.  There is a lot of interesting and varied rhythmic stuff in the violin and viola.

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Performance:

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This was the most difficult movement of the piece, though it still wasn't too bad.  The hardest part is measure 7 (at about 0:13) in the viola, because the flurry of 32nd notes is fast and the start of it has a tricky entrance point (the "e" of beat 2).  I also had to change how i played it after my first cut to eliminate a string crossing in the middle of the run that both made it hard not too fall behind  but also made not quite feel right.   

 

I was also concerned about measures 28-29 (at 0:51), which wasn't physically hard to play but had a repeated eight note drone that started on the "e" of 1 and  spanned two measures.  (It's basically displaced a 16th note from where it "feels" natural to be playing when you're playing to just a metronome; it's really hard not to pull to the "and" of the beat in that scenario.)  I didn't have any actual trouble with it in the session, though.

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Movement 3 - Minuet

Key:  A

Time: 3/4  BPM=112

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This movement has an overall structure of AABA, not surprising for a minuet.  The A theme is eight bars long, and the B section is 24, itself broken into three 8 bar subsections that I'll call c, d, and e.  

 

The A section sticks to the home key of A, but starting section B begins by modulating to E.  Subsection c is lead by the viola's triplets, and subsection d is a variation on the opening A theme, but now in E.  Subsection e is pulling minor, though I have a hard time finding where it actually ended up.

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Performance:​

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​​​Nothing to see here.  This was pretty easy. 

 

The score has the initial AA bit repeating, as well as the final BA, but I opted to ignore the repeats.

 

Album Art:

 

I took this photo of a cast of Rodin's The Burghers of Calais in London's Victoria Tower Gardens, near Westminster.