In the current political climate of extremism, it may be reassuring to see how four powerful musicians decided to cooperate. This was quoted in an earlier blog from A PASSIONATE JOURNEY, a memoir by Robert Mann, founding first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet.
PLAYING IN A STRING QUARTET
You cannot be an outstanding chamber music player unless you hear all of the sounds and integrate them into your brain as one. You cannot be a person who just plays and hears your own sound more than the others. This requires years of experience. A quartet brings together four people who listen to each other’s sounds and agree that they are amenable. As you start rehearsing, different personalities begin to open up and appear in the process of the rehearsal. One person may like almost all of the music played faster. Another person might genuinely like it slower. Now the differences may not be enormous, but they can be enough that you won’t agree about the interpretation if you are stubborn. However, you always have to make compromises. You can’t play only the way that you want.
The simplest way to explain differences in interpretations is to use as an example a Haydn quartet that begins piquantly and jovially. A quartet member says it should be played faster because in Haydn’s day, the music was played faster than it is today. Another member prefers it slower. We now have a difference of opinion and we are playing the Haydn in concerts. What do we do? We compromise. The first night, we play it fast, as one member of the quartet suggested. The second night, we play it slower, the way the other person wanted it.
There are not only big decisions such as a tempo character, or how fast or slow you play, but also maybe the phrasing. One member wants to emphasize a harmony and another likes the rhythm to be a little different. Compromise means that there are different ways to look at decisions in musical interpretation. This is the most difficult thing for someone entering the quartet profession to learn how to deal with.
Another challenge is to concentrate on the music throughout the whole piece. At first I could think about a moment and then my mind would wander. I would think about the audience while I was playing, about the heat of the room, about the acoustics, and so on. It took me years before I could really concentrate on every note through a movement without interruption. That’s inner concentration.
Also, one of the things that I’ve always contended is that notes do not exist in isolation and that all quartet members need to play each note in relation to the way the preceding note has been played. This means you will play the second note different every time because the first note is never played the same. This connection between notes needs to be true through a whole movement.
Each time a new quartet member joins the group, dynamics change. I remember I had a meeting with Hillyer in 1955 and I said, “Now look, we have a chance to play with a wonderful, collegial new cellist, Claus Adam.” We thought that once Arthur Winograd left the quartet that Hillyer would be happy. Claus had previously been the cellist of the New Music Quartet in New Haven, with Walter Trampler, the violist. At the time we asked Claus to join us, he said that he didn’t think he was ready to join another quartet. But then he finally decided that he wanted to. Hillyer, who was very fastidious in his playing, hadn’t been happy with Arthur Winograd, but unfortunately, he also took a dislike to Claus.
One of Hillyer’s problems with Claus, who was a magnificent cellist in his own way, was that he was not a natural cellist because he started studying so late. Claus wasn’t always secure in the higher thumb position on the cello. Hillyer could be very insensitive, not because he was a bad person but because he was so uncomfortable with himself.
I was living on LaSalle Street and it was in September at the start of a new season. I got a call from Hillyer saying that he and Isidore (Izzy) Cohen, who had replaced Koff in 1958 as the Juilliard’s second violinist, wanted to talk to me. They told me, “We can’t stand playing with Claus Adam. We want another new cellist.” I told them, as long as I was in the Juilliard String Quartet nobody was going to be kicked out. Of course, later on we would ask Izzy Cohen to leave the quartet, but at this point I resisted Hillyer’s desire.
Later, when the Juilliard String Quartet was composed of myself, Claus Adam, Samuel Rhodes and Earl Carlyss, Claus said to us, “Look, it’s been an absolutely wonderful experience to be part of the Juilliard Quartet. We have had a lot of successes and it’s been a very important part of my life. Now I’m getting pretty old and I’m composing more and I want to do more teaching. I don’t want to travel so much anymore.” So we started looking for another cellist and Claus continued to teach cello at Juilliard.
When we wanted a new member for the quartet we didn’t advertise. Each of us would provide a potential list of candidates and we would talk to a few friends to see whom they might recommend. That’s how we heard about Joel Krosnick. He had been the cellist of the Iowa Quartet.
The only reason we ever had a problem with Eugene Lehner was that he thought when a new person joined the quartet they should not get the same salary as the older members because they hadn’t earned it yet. Our point of view was, if the new person was good enough to be in our quartet and play at the level that we did, he deserved the same salary as the rest of us.
At the time that Claus was leaving the quartet and Joel Krosnick was joining as our new cellist, Bob Freeman, who headed Eastman, tried to entice the quartet to move from Juilliard to Eastman. Earl, Sammy and myself met with Bob without Joel. He offered us a million dollars and jobs for all our wives. But we knew we would have to change our name, and I wasn’t about to do that. We didn’t take the offer and Joel joined the Juilliard String Quartet.
With this new Juilliard String Quartet (1974) of myself, Earl Carlyss, Samuel Rhodes, and Joel Krosnick—three of the members were young enough to be my sons. I had not even thought about the fact that Claus and I had balanced out the younger members of the quartet. And now, I was the old fellow with strong ideas and three young guys. It wasn’t that I didn’t accept or open myself up to other people’s opinions. But when I felt strongly, I felt very strongly.
I also was a little like Claus. I was never as secure as most of the other members of the quartet. In the early days, I had a lot of trouble playing truly in tune. And throughout my professional life some people thought that I was a superb player, and others felt that I played a little out of tune, or that I had a stiff bow arm, and so on. But basically, people responded very well to my playing.
However, with this new young Juilliard String Quartet, we were learning the repertoire over again. Most people would say to me, “How can you stand it? Here you are with another change in the quartet and you have to learn all of the Beethoven quartets over again. Aren’t you tired?” My answer was, “My God, are you kidding? This is a chance for us to begin to explore the piece with a fresh ear, a fresh mind, and a fresh point of view.” The reality, however, was hard at first.
We had to learn a lot of new music and we were on our first tour with Joel Krosnick in the United States. We were in our hotel room in Denver, Colorado, under pressure to learn Beethoven’s Opus 135, practicing the slow movement. Sammy said, “You know, we have played this before in a particular way. Could we consider a different relation between the variations than the way we are playing it now?”
What Sammy was suggesting wasn’t an assault on how I wanted the piece played, but it meant giving up my ideas about the slow movement. This was a moment in the music that I really loved. There weren’t many moments in music where I wasn’t flexible. But I was being very resistant in my fashion, which was one of my flaws.
All of a sudden, Earl, who was very religious and the son of a Lutheran minister, exploded. He said, “Bobby, if you don’t open yourself up to the things we are trying to find out, I can’t stay in this quartet.” He actually got up to leave. I said, “Come on, Earl, stay here.” So we had a big talk, and I realized that although these three young men were less experienced than I was in terms of playing in a quartet, they were as intelligent, or more intelligent, than I was. I had two paths that I could follow. One was to continue to be the kind of person I was with my strengths and weaknesses. This would result in either their or my leaving. Or, while I was not as young as they were, I could be as open and allow us to fully explore what they wanted in the music. Also, I could accept the fact that while I was the first violinist, I was only one participant out of four, with only one voice.
I won’t say that I changed overnight, but I do believe that this struggle pushed my better instincts to take hold. I would say it took a few years before I could begin to look at a piece that I’d played, maybe fifty times, as if it were the first time. My quartet members bore with me, and I eventually became just as flexible and open as the rest of them. That wasn’t easy to do. Playing in a quartet is teamwork. Whether it’s a baseball team or a team of people doing research, everyone has to understand that certain people have strengths and weaknesses, and they are different from yours. The reason that a team is successful is because you know how best to reveal the strengths and hide the weaknesses.