The term chamber music was introduced in the seventeenth century by the theorist Marco Scacchi. For him, chamber music was one of three contexts in which music was ordinarily found; these were musica ecclesiastica (church music), musica theatralis (theater music), and musica cubicularis (chamber music). These categories had nothing to do with the number of players, the number and sequence of movements, or the formal design of individual movements. Indeed, details of the actual compositions could not be de- duced on the basis of Scacchi’s three classi‹cations. The designation cham- ber music indicated only that a particular composition was intended to be performed in a private residence rather than in a church or in a theater. Many works that were initially performed in private residences hardly seem to be chamber music to the present-day music lover: The Branden- burg Concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, and Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony were ‹rst heard in aristocratic homes.
There are several reasons why the Brandenburg Concertos might seem to us poor examples of chamber music. Since they are concertos, we expect a contrast between the ensemble of soloists and the orchestral tutti. Also, it is quite likely that the harpsichord player would have led the performance from the keyboard. These factors are at odds with our contemporary no- tion of chamber music, which typically presumes a work requiring more than a single performer, but having only one player per part. In addition, most chamber music is performed without a conductor.
With the demise of western European aristocracy during the late eigh- teenth and early nineteenth centuries, courtly ensembles were replaced by domestic gatherings, often of amateur musicians. Domestic ensembles
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tended to be smaller and to play music of only moderate dif‹culty. It was during this time that the principal genres of chamber music became stan- dardized: the sonata for keyboard and one or more melody instruments, the string quartet, and the piano trio. Music of this sort became a highly marketable commodity. Music publishing shops opened throughout Eu- rope, and magazines and other periodicals commonly published multi- movement chamber pieces in installments. Soon, however, musicians in duos, trios, and quartets who performed together on a regular basis be- came specialists in the repertoire for their particular group. Composers— who were often members of such ensembles—responded by writing music of a more demanding nature. Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for example, wrote some of their ‹nest chamber works for ensem- bles of which they were members. In so doing, they gradually pushed chamber music repertoire out of the reach of typical amateur groups.
Nineteenth-century Europe and America witnessed dramatic changes in demographics. In general, rural populations declined, and urban popu- lations grew. Two extreme cases are seen in the instances of London and New York City. The population of London jumped from one million in 1800 to 6.7 million at the end of the century. For most of the nineteenth century, it was the most populous city in the world. In New York City, the population jumped from 49, 487 in 1790 to 2,581,541 in 1890.1 In order to accommodate these larger populations, buildings intended for music per- formance changed dramatically during that century. Whereas the typical concert hall of the eighteenth century accommodated an audience of ap- proximately 550 people, the average nineteenth-century hall was designed for an audience of approximately 2,400.2 These gargantuan halls were suited to the high-pro‹le genres of the day, such as operas, concertos, ora- torios, and symphonies, but they were hardly congenial to the intimacy of chamber music. Many of the Romantic century’s leading composers cared little—if at all—for composing chamber music. Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner, and Richard Strauss are just a few of the composers who might be cited as examples. Those composers who did write chamber music were often fascinated with music history—like Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann—or, believed that they were up- holding standards that had been established by the giants of the late eigh- teenth century. Working in Vienna, where the music critic Eduard Hanslick guarded the city’s musical heritage, Johannes Brahms felt a spe- cial responsibility to uphold the chamber-music tradition that virtually originated there during the Classical era.
With the transformation of tonality that took place at the close of the
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nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, chamber music en- sembles provided the ideal venue for experimentation with new and often dif‹cult idioms. Many of these experimental styles rejected traditional har- mony, melody, and meter. At the same time, timbre, register, and rhythm assumed greater importance; consequently, composers turned to ad hoc chamber ensembles, often with unusual instrumentation. Debussy, for ex- ample, thoroughly reconstituted the traditional trio for piano, violin, and cello with one consisting of ›ute, viola, and harp. Chamber ensembles thus became a testing ground for progressive ideas and novel sonorities. Con- temporary chamber ensembles are remarkable equally for the types of mu- sic they play and for the fact that they are not chamber music ensembles at all—at least, not in the sense that Scacchi had imagined when he coined the term. Instead, they are concert artists who specialize in the performance of recent repertoire. Ensembles such as Earplay, the Kronos Quartet, and the Verdehr Trio are just a few outstanding examples of groups that specialize in contemporary chamber music.
The instrumentations of chamber ensembles became still more diverse with the advent of academic programs in ethnomusicology. Traditional in- struments of China, Japan, Korea, and many other nations began to appear with Western instruments in chamber ensembles. In some cases, too, Asian composers write for Western instruments in the manner of traditional Asian instruments. Composers such as Chou Wen-chung, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long have made great accomplishments in combining Asian artistic concepts with Western musical materials. The “non-Western” curiosities of the 1950s have now yielded to masterpieces that draw their musical ma- terials from global resources.