chamber music

chamber music (It. musica da camera, Ger. Kammermusik). A term orig. intended (as Burney puts it c.1805) to cover such mus. as was not intended ‘for the church, the theatre, or a public concert room’. As now used it has lost any implication as to place of perf. and excludes, on the one side, solo vocal mus. and mus. for a single instr. (or for a solo instr. acc. by another), and, on the other, orch. and choral mus., etc., incl. merely instr. mus. for 2, 3, 4, or more instr., played with a single instr. to a ‘part’, all the parts being on equal terms. Thus it comprises duet sonatas for vn. and pf., or vc. and pf., sonatas for a wind instr. and pf., trios for str. or for 2 str. instr. and pf., qts. for str. or for 3 str. instr. and pf., instr. qts., sextets, septets, and octets, etc. Of all these types the most important is the str. qt.: the instrs. employed in it are 2 vn., va., and vc., the db. having very rarely a place in chamber mus. (two outstanding exceptions being Schubert's ‘Trout’ pf. quintet and Dvořák's str. quintet, Op.77).

The modern conception of chamber mus. may be said to date from Haydn. For a century and more before his time nearly all mus. was supplied with a figured bass guided by which a harpsichordist extemporized a background: in earlier times we find something more like our idea of chamber mus. in 16th-cent. mus. for viols.

Most composers have contributed to the now abundant repertory of chamber mus., and so far have we departed from the early 19th-cent. idea of the meaning of the term that ‘chamber concerts’ are common. Such concerts date effectively from the 1830s when the Müller Brothers Str. Qt. began touring Europe with a fine classical repertory. Since that period there have been many world-famous str. qts., pf. trios, and other groups. Despite much concert-room perf., however, chamber mus. still retains some right to its name, since it is often treated as ‘the music of friends’ and is much practised privately.

The term Chamber Music (Kammermusik) was used by Hindemith for 7 comps. between 1921 and 1927; these incl. a pf. conc., vc. conc., va. conc., viola d'amore conc., and org. conc., the orch. in most cases comprising at least 12 players, sometimes more. His wind quintet, 1922, he called Kleine (Little) Kammermusik.