Presents
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Piano Trio in E Major
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (birth name Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann 1776-1822) was born in the Prussian capital city of Konigsberg. He was trained and worked as a lawyer and civil servant throughout most of his life. As a youth, he studied the piano with a local Konigsberg organist Christian Podbielski who instilled in him a love of Mozart. Later in Berlin, Hoffmann took composition lessons from the Prussian Court Composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt. And although he became a prominent and respected music critic during his lifetime, today he is only remembered as the author of fantasy and Gothic horror stories. Many of these stories formed the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which Hoffmann appears as the hero. His novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King served as the basis for Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker. The ballet Coppélia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler. Hoffmann's stories highly influenced 19th-century literature, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.
Up until 1809, Hoffmann had little success either as an author or as a composer. But 1809 was a breakthrough year for him with the publication of his short story Ritter Gluck. It was the first short story that Hoffmann was able to get published. It appeared in the February 1809 edition of the prestigious Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. The story is about a man who meets, or believes he has met, the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck more than twenty years after Gluck’s death. This success led Hoffmann to begin to use the pseudonym E.T.A. Hoffmann, telling people that the "A" stood for Amadeus in homage to the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. However, he continued to use Wilhelm or E.T.W. when he signed official documents while working as a civil servant and continued to do so throughout his life. And the initials E.T.W and not E.T.A. interestingly appear on his gravestone.
Hoffmann finished his Piano Trio in E Major in August of 1809, a few months after the success of Ritter Gluck. He was quite proud of the trio which he titled “Grand” and had it sent to the Swiss music publisher Nägeli in Zurich. Just why he chose to send it to a Swiss publisher rather than one in Germany is unclear. Perhaps because a number of German publishers had already refused to print several of his other works. However, Nägeli never published the trio and returned the manuscript to him. Hoffmann was deeply influenced by the Vienna Classical Music Tradition, particularly the early works of Ludwig van Beethoven. His Piano Trio reflects this influence, with its structure and harmony reminiscent of Beethoven’s Op.1 piano trios. This is immediately apparent in the trio’s substantial opening movement, Allegro moderato, with its very Beethovenian main theme. The music is characterized as much by its rhythm and the interplay between the instruments as by its thematic material. The middle movement is a Scherzo which goes forward in rising waves of sound which culminate in pounding chords. A somewhat gentler trio section follows but the tempo remains the same. There is no slow movement, however the finale begins with a very substantial Adagio introduction in which the strings are given the main job of singing the melody. This leads toan Allegro vivace, which is as the title suggests lively and full of forward motion.
Hearing this work, one might almost say that Hoffmann’s Piano Trio could be called Beethoven’s Op.1 No.4. That is to say, Hoffmann was not only familiar with but also clearly influenced by Beethoven’s three Op.1 piano trios which were composed in 1795. But it is worth noting that the part writing for the strings in Hoffmann’s trio is superior to that of Beethoven’s Op.1 trios in that the violin and cello are put on an equal footing with the piano.
Parts: $29.95
