Antoine Reicha
(1770-1836)
Wind Quintets
Following the death of his father in 1771, the one-year-old Antonine
Reicha was left in the sole care of his mother. She, however, had neither the
inclination nor the ability to look after him properly, and when he was eleven
he ran away to his paternal grandfather. Once there, he accepted the offer of a
proper education and family life with his uncle Josef, a highly respected
cellist and the Konzertmeister at the celebrated court of
Oettingen-Wallerstein. He therefore set out on a second journey alone and later
recalled that his worst moment came at the border crossing at Regensburg.
Speaking little German and possessing no documentation, he waited for the
customs officer to start his lunch and then feigned eye trouble, saying that he
had his papers somewhere and that he was travelling to a shrine in the hope of
a miraculous cure. The ruse worked and the bemused official let him across.
During the next three years Antoine learned to play the flute, violin
and piano, and by the time Josef was appointed leader of the Elector's
orchestra in Bonn in 1785, his nephew was sufficiently accomplished to join him
as a violinist and flautist. He can hardly have hoped for a better opportunity,
for the Elector had a particular interest in music and employed the young
Beethoven as an organist and viola player. The two young musicians immediately
established a firm friendship and by 1792 had made such progress in their
composition lessons with Christian Neefe that both were offered the chance to
study with Haydn in Vienna. Beethoven accepted, but Reicha remained in Bonn
until 1794 when the city was occupied by Napoleon's troops. The Elector fled,
and although Josef was too ill to travel he feared that Antonín would be
attracted to the revolutionary ideas of the French army and insisted that he
should go to the relative safety of Hamburg. Reicha obeyed, but while the move
allowed him to abandon orchestral playing in favour of composition, teaching
and philosophy, the damp climate affected his health and in 1799 he moved to
Paris. Before long, however, he decided that the uncertain political situation
outweighed his popularity in the city, and in 1801 he left for the relative
stability of Vienna.
Although the earlier friendship between Beethoven and Haydn had now
soured, Reicha enjoyed the friendship of both for the next seven years,
translating when either received French visitors and regarding Haydn as
something of a role model. An ardent champion of change, he also developed his
own philosophy of music and aesthetics, arguing that 'old' forms such as fugue
would have a place in modern music only if composers also challenged accepted
norms such as the need for barlines or for works to start and end in the same
key. He then demonstrated some of his ideas in the Practische Beispiel, a
set of 36 bizarre fugues for piano which include unusual rhythms, time
signatures and harmonies and which he published in 1803. This might have led
further, but in 1805 Napoleon's troops arrived in Vienna and when he returned
to Paris three years later Reicha found that he was unable to earn a living
exclusively as a composer. He continued to publish theoretical treatises on
aesthetics, but had to find another source of income and, after changing his
name to Antoine Reicha (until now he had been know as Antonín Rejcha), began to
earn a reputation as an effective and entertaining teacher. As such, his pupils
included Berlioz, Liszt, Franck and Gounod, and in 1818 his reputation as a
member of the French musical establishment was confirmed by his appointment to
teach composition at the Paris Conservatoire.
Today, however, Reicha is best known for his many quintets for flute,
oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. This combination of instruments had
occasionally been used before, but Reicha was to make the form his own,
undertaking a careful study of each of the instruments after a preliminary
foray into the medium in 1811 and then writing the pair of 'incomparably
superior works' which he published as the first two pieces in his Op. 88. The
remaining four quintets in the set were written in 1817, and all six were
published and performed at the Théâtre Favart in Paris later that year. These
were welcomed as great novelties and the Parisian public awaited his three
further sets of six – Op. 91 in 1818, Op. 99 in 1819 and Op. 100 in 1820
– with great anticipation. Balzac refers to them in his novel, Les
employées, and the Paris correspondent of the Allgemeine Musikalische
Zeitung found it 'difficult to imagine a more discreet, livelier or more
effective performance. If it is possible to surpass Haydn in quartets and
quartet composition, this has been achieved by Reicha in these quintets.'
Parisians were not alone in their enthusiasm for wind quintets. 'They
created the same sensation throughout Europe,' recorded Reicha in his
autobiography. 'Witness the many letters and congratulations addressed to me
from all quarters.' John Sainsbury, writing in England in 1825, was
particularly impressed: 'No description, no imagination can do justice to these
compositions. The effect produced by the extraordinary combinations of
apparently opposite-toned instruments, added to Reicha's vigorous style of
writing and judicious arrangement, have rendered these quintets the admiration
of the musical world.' Such enthusiasm was inevitably tempered, however, by
some more critical voices. To Louis Spohr, Reicha was 'too profuse with his
ideas', although he enjoyed the works' rich harmonies and effective scoring.
Berlioz found the works 'a little cold'. But few went as far as the London
critic who, after hearing a quintet played at a Philharmonic Society concert in
1825, described it as 'one of the most intolerable pieces that we were ever
condemned to hear'.
The players for whom the quintets were written were undoubtedly among
the finest of their day. All, except for the bassoonist Antoine Henry had
studied composition with Reicha himself, and the clarinettist Jacques-Jules
Bouffil was the only one who did not hold a teaching post at the Paris Conservatoire.
'It is almost taken for granted that M. Vogt has not a peer on the oboe,' wrote
AMZ; 'Every outstanding player of this instrument here owes his entire
training to this artist.' Reicha's flautist, Joseph Guillou, was perhaps in the
shadow of his contemporary, Jean-Louis Tulou, but as a teacher none of them was
the equal of the quintet's horn player, Louis-François Dauprat. His Méthode
de Cor Alto et Cor Basse is one of the most comprehensive and intelligently
written tutors ever published, and while its exercises for the natural, or
valveless, horn are often fiendishly difficult, Reicha's horn lines show that
Dauprat was clearly able to practise what he preached.
Like all but two of Reicha's wind quintets, Op. 91 No. 6, in C minor,
begins with a slow introduction. In this case, this is a funeral march which is
swept away by an extensive triple-metre Allegro vivace where all the
players have a chance to shine. The second movement presents a song-like theme
for oboe and then moves on into three rather free variations, the first
featuring the horn and the last recapitulating the opening theme on the
bassoon. This is followed by a substantial Minuet in which one of the
themes is treated fugally. Although the horn opens the associated Trio, the
most challenging material is reserved for the clarinet and bassoon, and after
an urgent opening the generally relaxed Finale offers further
opportunities for virtuoso display.
The Allegro moderato which follows the chromatic and questioning
slow introduction to Op. 88 No. 6 recalls the first movement of Op. 91
No. 6 in both its length and its predominantly high-spirited mood. The
slow movement, however, is the only Siciliano among Reicha's qnintets.
This pastoral dance form had been favoured by eighteenth-century composers but
was already considered archaic, and while Reicha retains its traditional
pastoral character he also uses the first of the subsequent variations to show
the athletic nature of the clarinet. As always in Reicha's quintets, the
spirited 'Minuet' is really a Scherzo, but here it is the horn player
who has to be on his mettle. Two contrasting Trio sections follow, the
first gentle and haunting, the second brash and contrapuntal, and the work ends
with a rondo form finale whose predominantly reflective nature is clear from
its very opening.
John Humphries