Chamber Music

Chamber Music, instrumental music for an ensemble, usually ranging from two to about ten players, with one player for each part and all parts of equal importance. Chamber music from about 1750 has been principally for string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello), although string quintets as well as duets, trios, and quintets of four stringed instruments plus a piano or wind instrument have also been popular. Such music was originally meant for private performance. Public concerts of chamber music were initiated only in the 19th century.

Secular music in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (c. 1450-c. 1600) was typically for small vocal and instrumental ensembles. Most compositions were vocal pieces in three, four, and five parts. Instrumental groups simply played this vocal chamber music using whatever instruments were desired or available at the time.

The first great flowering of what would now be identified as chamber music came in England in the late 16th and early 17th century, where a large amount of music was written for groups of between four and seven viols—the so-called viol consort. The music was of an intimate, often emotionally intense nature. One of the typical forms in which viol music was written was the In nomine, a fantasia based on an old plainsong melody that had become famous when it was set to the words “In nomine Domini” in a mass by the early 16th-century composer John Taverner. Christopher Tye wrote 20 In nomine settings that showed the steady development of a distinctive instrumental style, using to the full the viol's six strings and capability for wide leaps. William Byrd wrote seven distinguished settings, and the form continued well into the 1600s, with Henry Purcell producing two magisterial settings, in six and seven parts, around 1680.

In the Baroque era (c. 1600-c. 1750) two instrumental genres became important, first in Italy, later in northern Europe: the sonata da chiesa, or church sonata, and the sonata da camera, or chamber sonata. In instrumental music, as in vocal music, the omnipresent musical texture was that of high melody lines supported by a basso continuo—a bass melody played, for example, by cello or bassoon, with harmonies filled in by a lute, harpsichord, or organ. The principal chamber music genres were trio sonatas, which were sonatas da chiesa or da camera written for two solo violins (or flutes or oboes, often at the players' choice) plus continuo, and solo sonatas, usually for violin and continuo. Trio sonatas, however, might also be played, if desired, by larger ensembles of six or eight players. In addition, chamber cantatas for solo voice and continuo were written, as were vocal duets with continuo, which in fact provided the model for the trio sonata.

The most prominent 17th-century composer of trio and solo sonatas was the Italian Arcangelo Corelli, whose works influenced the chamber music of Henry Purcell and, later, of the French composer François Couperin, the German-English composer George Frideric Handel, and Johann Sebastian Bach. By the time of Handel and Bach, however, the distinction between church and chamber sonata had broken down, and trio sonatas contained elements of both.

In the Classical era (c. 1750-c. 1820) the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn developed chamber music as a style distinct from other ensemble music. Important as predecessors of the new style were Viennese light music genres such as the divertimento and serenade. Played out-of-doors by groups of stringed and wind instruments, these compositions dispensed with the continuo, using the middle-voiced instruments to fill out the harmony. Haydn established the string quartet as the chamber music ensemble par excellence. The four-movement form of his quartets was that which predominated in the Classical era. The Classical sonata as it emerged in his quartets was especially marked by finely wrought, complex, intimate interplay between the four instruments. Haydn gave each instrument equal footing, using none merely as harmonic filler. His string quartets influenced and were influenced by those of his countryman Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Their successor, Ludwig van Beethoven, greatly expanded the dimensions of the string quartet while preserving its intimate character.

Chamber music in the Romantic era (c. 1820-c. 1900) was developed primarily by composers whose Romanticism was mingled with a Classical inclination—those such as the Austrian Franz Schubert and the German Johannes Brahms. During this period Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms all continued the form of the trio for piano, violin, and cello that had been established by Haydn and Beethoven, but other instrumental combinations than the string quartet began to become established, such as the string quintet (the quartet with an extra viola or cello), the string sextet (extra viola and cello), and the piano quartet (piano plus three strings) and piano quintet. Perhaps the most important development was the firm establishment of the sonata for a melody instrument accompanied by piano. Again Beethoven, who had written ten such violin sonatas and five cello sonatas, was the model. Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, in their violin, cello, and (in Brahms's case) clarinet sonatas, brought a new depth and seriousness to forms which derived in part from the Baroque solo sonata, but also from the light Viennese divertimento.

Several trends emerged in 20th-century chamber music. Classical genres such as the string quartet were infused with contemporary idioms and techniques in works of the French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, the Hungarian Béla Bartók whose six string quartets form one of the most important contributions to 20th-century chamber music, the Austrians Arnold Schoenberg and Anton von Webern, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and the American Elliott Carter. Chamber music ensembles of varied composition—often including voices, harp, guitar, and wind and percussion instruments—became primary vehicles for new music by composers such as Schoenberg, Webern, the Russian-born Igor Stravinsky, the British Benjamin Britten, and the French Pierre Boulez. Once the domain of amateurs, chamber music, like orchestral music, has largely become the exclusive province of professional musicians.