Music in E minor

Music in the key of E minor is often said to have a plaintive, sad, and mystical character.  Charpentier describes this tone as "languid and sad." Mattheson states that it "produces a very thoughtful and sad state." More than that, it suitable for funeral music - although the story that Haydn asked for the slow movement of this symphony No. 44 in E minor to be played at his funeral, is apocryphal. But indeed, the slow movement from the E minor piano trio by Shostakovitch was played at his public funeral service held in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory!

E minor is a minor scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F♯, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has one sharp. Its relative major is G major and its parallel major is E major.

The key of E minor is one of the easiest minor keys to play on the violin as the E string is the highest open string. Since it is also the lowest open string on the guitar, it is one of the preferred keys in guitar music, as well - therefore, it is a frequently used key in popular music.

In classical music, E minor is not exactly a popular key, especially in the 18th century (when minor keys were anyway rare), but the small number of works written in this key includes a surprising number of famous works. The number increases in the 19th / early 20th centuries. with concertos by Mendelssohn, Chopin and Elgar, and symphonies by Brahms, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky.

Characteristic works in E minor

Joseph Haydn, Symphony No. 44 in E minor "Trauer" (1772)

This symphony has the nickname "Trauer" ("Mourning") because Haydn is said to have asked for its serene slow movement in E major to be played at his funeral - that doesn't seem to be a true story, but the movement was actually played at a memorial concert in Berlin in 1809. The work is typical of Haydn's Sturm und Drang ("storm and stress") period, with a powerfully brooding minor-mode insistence. Highly typical and yet fiercely original are the jagged unison opening, the subdued tension of the violin theme, and the outburst of imitative writing between first and second violins. The symphony has significant traits in common with Mozart's E minor violin sonata (see below). The construction of the work is tight and forceful. Though there is contrasting material in the opening movement, it does not sound like a second subject, so that the movement seems to be monothematic. The second movement is an ascetic minuet written as a canon at the octave; this is offset by a trio in E major in which tranquil violin thirds are eerily joined by a horn at the top of its register. The slow movement, with muted violins, flowing accompaniment and restless triplets, is an example of stasis conveyed by ceaseless activity. The intensity of the symphony boils over in the Finale, and here, too, a unison theme provides the material for the whole of the movement. It is quite contrapuntal, and ends in E minor rather than finishing in a major key as was usual in most other minor key works of the time. (Partly based on the liner notes by Nicholas Kenyon in the Archiv CD of this symphony).

This famous symphony explains why Haydn's minor works of the 'Sturm und Drang' period are of such high importance. The whole work is concise and concentrated - not one note is too many - and it maintains its mood of serious suffering with remarkable continuity. The symphony is also unusual in that the minuet precedes the slow movement. This basic pattern is found only in five other Haydn symphonies, all but one of which were composed early.

John Eliot Gardiner  
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Violin Sonata No. 21 in E minor K. 304/300c (1778)

Composed in 1778 while Mozart was in Paris, during the same period that Mozart's mother, Anna Maria Mozart, died, and his love relationship with Aloysia Weber ended badly, something which is reflected in the sonata's mood. Both the austere character of its opening movement and the haunting nostalgia of its minuet-style finale make it quite different from other works by Mozart. The opening is a powerful unison of piano and violin playing in bare octaves. The harmonization of the theme occurs at the start of the recapitulation and is intensely chromatic. The sotto voce minuet theme of the second movement, with its descending bass line, carries an infinite feeling of melancholy. Even so, the theme is surpassed in expressive intensity by the movement’s major-mode middle section. Also the halting phrases of the coda seem stricken with grief.

Rebecca Raimondi violin, Alessandro Viale piano
Ardorè Duo

Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2 (1808)

This work is the second of three of Beethoven's "Rasumovsky" cycle of string quartets, a product of his "middle" period. Written in 1806, six years after the composer’s initial Op. 18 set, the Op. 59 String Quartets contain groundbreaking music. Formal boundaries are stretched and the four voices of the string quartet engage in a drama which reaches symphonic heights. Earlier chamber works were written for the entertainment of aristocratic amateur musicians. With this music, the string quartet moved decisively into the concert hall. Commissioned by Count Andreas Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, the Op. 59 trilogy was written for one of the first professional string quartets, led by the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh. The string quartet is set in a restless, tumultuous E minor. According to Carl Czerny, the second movement of the quartet occurred to Beethoven as he contemplated the starry sky and thought of the music of the spheres; it has a hymnlike quality. The scherzo movement of the quartet, the third movement (allegretto), uses a Russian folk song in a humorous and even sarcastic way. The final rondo is characterized by a dance-like theme that is almost entirely unaffected by sonata form. It has a "floating tonality," vacillating between the introductory C major chord and the E minor tonic, settling on the home key of E minor only after 50 measures.

The Dover Quartet includes:
Joel Link, violin
Bryan Lee, violin
Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola
Camden Shaw, cello

Felix Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (1844)

The most popular of all violin concertos. Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of the violin concerto to the violinist Ferdinand David, a close friend and then concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although conceived in 1838, the work took another six years to complete and was not premiered until 1845. During this time, Mendelssohn maintained a regular correspondence with David, who gave him many suggestions.

Its unusual structural features - the absence of an initial orchestral tutti, and the linking of the movements (the first and second by a single bassoon note, the second and third by a quasi recitative) were copied by Schumann, Bruch and others. Mendelssohn also composed and wrote out the cadenza section, which until then had often been left to the player's discretion. Its appeal lies in its violinistic brilliance, its charm, the melodic sweetness of the tender andante, and the seemingly spontaneous ebullience of the finale.

Julia Fischer, violin; Vasily Petrenko, conductor; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

 

Frédéric Chopin, Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 (1830)

The piano concerto in E minor is dedicated to Friedrich Kalkbrenner, a celebrated pianist and composer in Chopin's day. The concerto had its premiere on October 11, 1830 in Warsaw, where Chopin himself played the soloist role as a 20-year-old composer and pianist. It was one of the last concerts Chopin gave in Poland before leaving for France.

Apart from the usual orchestral introduction, the concerto has a thinly instrumented orchestration, with the piano solo almost always in the foreground and the orchestra providing supportive accompaniment. In the concerto, one hardly sees the "titanic rivalry" or dialogue, as in the concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven, but rather the listener hears a poetically narrative and virtuoso pianist carried by a meticulously accompanying, serving orchestra. Chopin modeled his concertos after the works of Jan Ladislav Dussek and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, whose style he knew well.

Olga Scheps with the Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio, conductor Agnieszka Duczmal.

Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98 (1884)

A mournful, tragic color is heard in the opening movement of Brahms' Fourth Symphony. From the start, the first movement feels the tow of strong passacaglia forms. The music is powerfully organic and continuously unfolding. Its sadness is enticing, its ending triumphant. The Andante moderato carries that feeling forward with some of the most heart-warming music Brahms ever wrote, while the dance movement turns to jubilation. One might indeed be forgiven to think this third movement to be a finale. And its finality reveals a special purpose: it allows much of the work of the symphony to be resolved before the last extraordinary movement begins. As a result, Brahms can relax, and glory in his Passacaglia with its conscious devotion to the Bach Chaconne (30 eight bar variations), its archaic power, its defiant optimism. And even this intellectual music is dramatic - if we must live with tragedy, it seems to say, we can at least defy it, overcome it with sheer mastery and an affirmative use of the musical tradition. This is the only one of Brahms' four symphonies to end in a minor key. It has been praised as "one of the greatest orchestral works since Beethoven.”

hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Antonín Dvořák, Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" in E minor Op 95 (1893)

When Antonín Dvořák set foot on American soil in 1892 to accept the appointment as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America, he was already a world-renowned composer. With the 9th Symphony, written during his three-year stay in America, Dvořák created probably his most popular symphonic work. Although Dvořák had taken on the task as conductor and teacher of raising a young generation of musicians who would develop a national American musical style, his 9th Symphony is by no means American music, although some influences are  evident in the harmonic and rhythmic idiosyncrasies of the symphony. For example, the English horn melody of the 2nd movement is based on the semitone-less five-note scale of the pentatonic, which was common in Native American music. (More important, however, is the major role Longfellow's poetry about Hiawatha - that is, the chief who founded the Iroquois Confederacy of Indians - plays in the symphony, see below). Rhythmically, the syncopations typical of spirituals also stand out (1st and 3rd main themes of the 1st movement). In addition, however, the Bohemian musician is unmistakably evident with his tonal language rooted in native folk music, as in the cozy Ländler of the Scherzo Trio.

The themes of the corner movements are short and concise and cyclically subordinate to the above-mentioned basic conception: The 1st main theme of the 1st movement appears in all the following movements. In the finale, the main themes of the 2nd and 3rd movements are also worked in a suggestive manner.

1st movement: Adagio - Allegro molto
The first movement begins with a wistful, slow introduction. The Allegro, which gradually develops through a unison of strings and hard timpani beats, is filled with rousing momentum. The main theme rises in the horns and is immediately taken up by the entire orchestra. A second theme first appears in the woodwinds before it is heightened and rhythmically altered. Of the same character, a secondary theme appears in the flute, which seeks to unite the two themes. Both themes are developed in detail. The coda bursts in with elemental force and ends the movement in thunderous E minor.

2nd movement: Largo
The second movement was described by the composer as a dirge inspired by a scene from Longfellow's poem "Hiawatha". In painful melancholy, the English horn sings the main melody with which this movement begins and ends in sublime calm. A new thought emerges and is effectively accompanied by string tremolos. This somewhat faster theme, also chant-like, is finally cleverly joined with the dirge melody. A little later, a serene flute melody reminiscent of birdsong triggers a change in mood that is immediately interrupted by the main theme of the first movement bursting forth. The cor anglais again carries the main theme of the largo, with which the dirge fades away.

3rd movement: Scherzo, molto vivace
The Scherzo begins with a rhythmically striking theme that prepares the Indians' festive dance for Hiawatha's wedding. Again, a scene from Longfellow's epic is musically recreated. Yet the music is in reality is Bohemian and folk-like. The scherzo has a lyrical middle section and is thus more intricately constructed than Dvořák's other scherzos, resembling a formal model also used by Anton Bruckner. Between the scherzo and the trio, the main theme of the first movement echoes quietly and ominously in the low strings. The trio section consists of a graceful waltz melody that is typically Czech in its erratic rhythm. Shortly before the end, the main theme of the first movement reasserts itself with all its might.

4th movement: Allegro con fuoco
The last movement is filled with a dynamic that Dvořák had probably only achieved before in his 7th Symphony. The full orchestra delivers the march-like, energetic main theme, which announces pathetically the "New World." The second theme in the clarinets, on the other hand, expresses Dvořák's longing for his fatherland. No sooner does it fade away than the action comes to a head, and the first theme continues to assert itself. It is subsequently reworked in a variety of ways; in this process, motives from the first three movements appear again and again. An orchestral tutti then blasts out the main theme almost violently, a process that almost brings the musical action to a halt and is continued by the second theme. Once again, the main theme breaks its stride, leading the movement to an all-consuming climax, which, after a final pause, is followed by the triumphant coda. The movement ends with a few chords, the last of which is sustained by the winds, resulting in a slow fade instead of an abrupt ending.

Edward Elgar, Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 (1919)

Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, his last notable work, is a cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire. Elgar composed it in the aftermath of the First World War, when his music had already gone out of fashion with the concert-going public. In contrast with Elgar's earlier Violin Concerto, which is lyrical and passionate, the Cello Concerto is for the most part contemplative and elegiac - as suits the key of E minor.

The October 1919 premiere was a debacle because Elgar and the performers had been deprived of adequate rehearsal time. The work did not achieve wide popularity until the 1960s, when a recording by Jacqueline du Pré caught the public imagination and became a classical best-seller.

1st movement Adagio - Moderato 4/4 time → 9/8 time in E minor. Free sonata form.
The concerto opens with a tragic cadenza by the solo cello in E minor with many heavy notes, an unusual beginning for a cello concerto. This cadenza is an important element that dominates the entire movement and serves as a kind of circular theme. The main theme is derived and developed from this cadenza.

Second movement Lento - Allegro molto 4/4 time G major
The second movement opens with a fast crescendo with pizzicato chords in the cello. Then, the solo cello plays what will be the main motive of the Allegro molto section. Since the first and second movements are connected by an attacca, the conclusion of this movement also marks the end of the first movement.

Third movement Adagio in 3/8 time in B flat major
This adagio has a traditional song form, which is unusual for this piece where a pessimistic atmosphere dominates. However, it does not shake off the pathetic atmosphere of the previous movement.

Fourth movement Allegro - Moderato - Allegro, ma non troppo 2/4 time in E minor
This finale integrates the elements of the previous movements, and is a very contrasting movement in two-part form. The first half is structured like a rondo form, with a light theme dominating. In the second half, the speed is slowed down, and the theme of the third movement is repeated in the last part of the movement. The very short coda begins with a reproduction of the opening of the first movement and ends violently with the main theme of the rondo and a final chord in E minor.

Listen to Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Truls Mørk:




       

Dmitri Shostakovich, Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67 (1942-43)

Shostakovich began writing the trio during the December of 1943. Several days before completing the piece's first movement, Shostakovich's good friend Ivan Sollertinsky, a Russian polymath and avid musician, died at age 41. Sollertinsky's death affected Shostakovich deeply, and he decided to dedicate the trio to his friend's memory. In the following months Shostakovich suffered from periods of depression and struggled to compose, at one point writing "it seems to me that I will never be able to compose another note again". He only finished writing the work later that year, completing the second movement by 4 August 1944 and the fourth by 13 August. The work received its premiere in Leningrad on 14 November 1944, with the composer at the piano alongside Dmitri Tsyganov and Sergei Shirinsky, members of the Beethoven Quartet.

1. Andante — Moderato
The first movement, in E minor, begins with a haunting passage in the cello, which plays exclusively harmonics. It is joined by the violin and then the piano, all three instruments playing in canon. This slow first section of the movement undergoes development before the music moves into the faster Moderato section, which is in sonata form. The melodic and rhythmic features of this section's first and second themes are in essence based upon motifs introduced in the opening, and are played alongside an rhythmic "eighth-note pulsation", an accompaniment which returns in the piece's fourth movement. The movement comes to a head in the climactic recapitulation, before it recedes in the final bars, closing quietly. Throughout the movement, G major, the relative major key, serves, in a conventional manner, as the key of the second theme of the Moderato; however, the keys of B-flat major and B-flat minor, a tritone from the tonic, also play a particularly notable role in the movement's modulations.

2. Allegro con brio
The second movement, in F-sharp major, is a frenzied, sardonic scherzo which moves relentlessly through dissonant figurations, never resting. The movement's trio section, in G major, is a "giddy waltz". Sollertinsky's sister considered the movement to be "an amazingly exact portrait" of her brother, whom she said Shostakovich "understood like no one else".

3. Largo
The third movement, in B-flat minor, is a lugubrious passacaglia, based around a repeating eight-bar theme of sustained semibreve chords in the piano, tonally unstable in character. Against this background, the violin and cello, playing in canon, trade off dark, slow, and somber melodic lines. The movement ends with an attacca marking, continuing into the next movement without a pause. In 1975, after Shostakovich's death, this movement was played at his public funeral service held in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, as thousands passed his coffin.

4. Allegretto — Adagio
The piece's fourth and final movement begins in E major and transitions to E minor. Staccato repeated notes begin this "Dance of Death" movement, which introduces a Jewish-style melody, and revisits the thematic content of the previous three movements. It ends in a tortured E major chord, almost inaudibly. Ian MacDonald says in his book The New Shostakovich that the movement was inspired by the composer's horror at reports that SS guards in Nazi death camps had forced Jews to dance by their own graves.

Martha Argerich, Edgar Moreau, Renaud Capuçon
  




[Incorporates technical sections of the relevant public domain articles from either the Japanese, Dutch, German or English Wikipedia]