Piano Quartet (Andante) (1877)
for 'cello, viola, piano, violin
By Gustav Mahler
Austrian
Austrian
Mahler’s incomplete Piano Quartet is one of the composer’s earliest extant works, dating from 1877, just prior to the composition of Das Klagende Lied.
The surviving materials of the owrk consists of a completed first movement in sonata form marked andante, and a handful of sketches for a scherzo. The andante is more conservative that the later, more familiar works of Mahler but already we hear the teen-age composer developing the expansive form and subtle passing of the symphonies, as well as the air of nostalgia which suffuses all his works.
“It is thus possible to create a tradition that is held together by strict rules, and that is also successful, to some extent. But is it desirable to support such a tradition to the exclusion of everything else?...These are questions I intend to ask...And to these questions my answer will be a firm and resounding NO.
”
--Paul K. Feyerabend, Against Method