Bach Trio Sonata in C minor from the Musical Offering In 1747, Bach traveled to the palace of Frederick the great where his son Carl Philipp Emanuel was employed as a court musician. Frederick, a flutist and musical connoisseur, invited Bach to play the recently invented “forte piano” in his court and to display his legendary skill at improvisation. Upon Bach’s arrival, Frederick played a long and complex musical theme and asked Bach to improvise a three-voice fugue on the theme. The king and all present were astonished. Frederick then challenged Bach to improvise a six-voice fugue on the same theme. Bach preferred to work on a score as a gift to the king and then proceeded to improvise a 6-part fugue on another theme. Bach returned to Leipzig and wrote out the Theme Regium (Theme of the King). After four months, Bach published what we now know as The Music Offering and dedicated it to the king. Bach used Frederick’s chromatic theme as the subject of fugues in three and six voices and for ten different types of canons. He also included a trio sonata which represented the more modern style acknowledging the tastes of the court. It is interesting to note that he chose the key of C minor, one of the most challenging keys for baroque flute. Some have speculated that since Frederick asked Bach to improvise a six-voice fugue on a complex and difficult theme, perhaps Bach, in turn, challenged Frederick with a challenging flute part. The Musical Offering along with his Art of the Fugue are masterpieces of contrapuntal art. Dvorak Dumky Trio in E minor, Op. 90 Dvorak’s Piano Trio is one of his most popular chamber works. Dvorak completed the work in 1891, and was premiered in Prague with Dvorak at the piano. It was so well received that Dvorak performed it on his concert tour before leaving for America to lead the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York. Dumky is the plural form of dumka, a Ukrainian term. A duma is an epic ballad or lament of captive people. Composers from Slavic countries began to use the duma in the nineteenth century as a classical form to write introspective works which alternate with light-hearted sections. The Dumky trio is the most innovative and unconventional of Dvoraks’s trios. It deviates from the traditional structure of chamber works both in the number of movements as well as in formal organization. The six movements, or dumky episodes, free from the restraints of sonata form, allowed Dvorak to explore complex emotions.
Beethoven Trio Sonata in D major, Op. 70 no. 1 The Opus 70 is a set of two piano trios published in the summer of 1809. They were composed during Beethoven’s stay at Countess Marie von Erdody’s estate and dedicated to her for her hospitality. The first trio in D major, is one of the best known of his trios and includes themes found in the second movement of his Symphony No. 2. The strangely scored and eerie- sounding slow movement reminded Carl Czerny, a student of Beethoven, of the ghost scene in the opening of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the name has since stuck. It is the slowest of Beethoven’s slow movements. The fragmented thematic material, somber orchestra textures, eerie tremolos in the depths of the piano and unstable harmonies create an ominous atmosphere. It may have been inspired by Beethoven’s unfinished attempts to
compose music for Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The outer movements are polar opposites with the finale bringing us back to normalcy with gracious themes, clear textures, and playful humor.