ON THE TRAIL OF A TRIO

The discovery of part of an autograph manuscript for Ysaÿe’s little-known Second String Trio op.34 hidden in a folder on his computer led violinist Nandor Szederkényi eventually to produce a performing edition. Here he shares details of the painstaking process

FIGURE 1 Cover of Ysaÿe’s autograph notebook containing the two trios, Juilliard School MS ML225.Ys89.A4 v.1.

FIGURE 2 Title page of Trio no.1, Juilliard School MS ML225.Ys89.A4 v.1, folio 3r.

FIGURE 4 Ysaÿe’s dedication at the end of Trio no.2, Juilliard School MS ML225.Ys89.A4 v.1, folio 29r.

ALL ORIGINAL SCORE PHOTOS THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL LIBRARY / PETER JAY SHARP SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

FIGURE 3 First page of Trio no.2, Juilliard School MS ML225.Ys89.A4 v.1, folio 18r.

Have you heard Eugène Ysaÿe’s wonderful Second String Trio? After a short pause, some of you might answer: ‘There’s a string trio called something like “Le Chimay”, but I don’t really know it that well.But wait a minute… no.2? Are there two string trios by Ysaÿe?’ The answer is yes: one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century not only wrote Six Solo Violin Sonatas, he also wrote two trios for violin, viola and cello in addition to his other chamber music works.

So, why was this trio hidden for so many years? Frankly it’s something of a mystery, but not too long ago I discovered that I had part of it stored on my computer in a folder entitled ‘Songs’. My guess is that when I received a data CD with several Ysaÿe manuscripts on it from the Juilliard School library in 2008, this folder was part of that, and somehow it had survived multiple migrations from computer to computer over the years.

In around 2012–13, after I had finished work on Ysaÿe’s ‘Le Londres’ Trio for two violins and viola for Schott, as well as several new editions of poèmes by Ysaÿe, I was browsing through these old files and discovered that in this particular folder there were many pages of sketches in vocal score and an unknown string trio without a beginning or an end. The cover page was also missing, so there were no clues as to what it might be.

Eventually, on the Juilliard library’s website, I found the full source of the folder’s contents: a heavily corrected and barely legible manuscript notebook in Ysaÿe’s hand, its cover title ‘DEUX Trios Pour Violon. Alto. Violoncelle. Pierre li Houyeux = Esquisse’ (figure 1). It contains ‘Premier Trio de Concert op.33’ (figure 2), which I immediately identified as the trio otherwise known as ‘Le Chimay’, along with the previously mentioned music in vocal score (which turns out to be sketches for his only opera, Piére li houyeû) and another piece labelled ‘2ème Trio’ (figure 3, page 40), complete with first and last pages. This is evidently a second sketch of the work, as indicated by the inscription ‘2ème esquisse’ which appears on the last page. The same page also states that the work was written between 10 and 15 September 1927 in Le Zoute, Belgium (figure 4, page 40). Since my discovery, a first sketch of the Second Trio – written in parts – has also been uncovered in the Ulysse Capitaine Library, Liège. According to Ray Iwazumi in a 2017 article (Revue belge de musicologie), that source also states ‘Le Zoute 7bre, 1927’ after the final bar-line of each part, which implies that this trio was written entirely in 1927, the same year as the First Trio.

As far as I could see at the time of my discovery, there was no mention at all of a Second String Trio in publications about Ysaÿe’s life and work, but I did eventually learn that the piece did in fact see the light of day as early as 2008, when Norwegian violinist and musicologist Tor Johan Bøen premiered his own reconstruction with violist Juliet Jopling and cellist Johannes Martens in a concert at a remote Norwegian church. In 2010 they released a recording on Simax –a dramatic and virtuosic interpretation of the work with some corrections to the score that I would question. However, no published version of the score existed, and this is where I come in.

Ysaÿe was born in 1858, and on reviewing his compositional output we can see that his earlier works, mainly his violin concertos written in Berlin in the mid-1880s, are light, virtuosic, brilliant, technically quite demanding and stylistically very close to the compositions of his beloved teacher (and later, friend) Vieuxtemps – yet already they show signs of his own distinctive character (such as his use of chromaticism to modulate frequently between seemingly unrelated keys). His best-known works, the Solo Sonatas, written in 1923–4 at the peak of his career and just a few years before his death in 1931, are a great example of this developingpersonality coming together with a ‘traditional’ Romantic style. His works after this point become gradually more serious, having a kind of sadness and melancholy, perhaps owing to the composer’s ill health and other personal problems. In both trios he is in a highly introspective and contemplative mood.

After his early virtuoso compositions, and from the early 1890s, a tendency towards a more freestyle, ‘violinistic’ writing – both technically and musically – becomes evident. His great friend Franck wrote his Violin Sonata (1886) as a wedding present for him, taking steps to open up the traditional Classical form by developing its third movement into an improvisatory recitative. This was an inspiration for Ysaÿe, and his own works became perhaps the best examples of this compositional style. As a result, he himself became a model for other composers, such as Chausson, who wrote his Poème (1896) for him inspired by Ysaÿe’s Poème élégiaque op.12. Ysaÿe’s poèmes (a fitting term for all his accompanied violin works) form the basis of his colourful, passionate and still very Romantic music in which he tries to retain some Classical rules while liberating others.

Ysaÿe’s harmonic world later developed to an almost chaotic-sounding level whereby he did not shy away from incorporating whole-tone and chromatic scales. His Exil (1917) for strings and Harmonies du soir (1924) for quartet and string orchestra show real signs of this, demonstrating his desire to seek out the most extreme chords and modulations. And yet there are some moments of reminiscence, for instance, in the Second Trio (at bar 180) he returns to his beautiful little violin piece Rêve d’enfant, a lullaby dedicated to his son Antoine.

When playing Ysaÿe’s Solo Sonatas, violinists who are not too familiar with his personal life may get a somewhat skewed impression of the depth of his music. In his later works, virtuosity became a tool for musical expression rather than just showy technique. For the purposes of giving an authentic interpretation of his works, it is beneficial to be aware that he was an extremely gentle and loving person, and his family was an absolutely central part of his life.

EXAMPLES OF YSAŸE’S HANDWRITING AND THEIR TRANSCRIPTIONS

Bar 50 At first sight it is unclear what the top stave in the MS represents, but on closer inspection it seems that Ysaÿe was experimenting with the cello part just below it.

Bar 56 Another head-scratching section without any handy correlation nearby. After trying all mathematically possible variations, this was the most authentic-sounding solution I was able to find.

Bars 84–5 Sometimes Ysaÿe used an eraser, sometimes he simply crossed through the notes with his pencil.

Bar 149 An innovative way of notating a natural harmonic trill.

Bar 53 He writes the correction as two parts together, in this case viola and cello, both in the bass clef.

Bar 81 I found the demisemiquavers ( ) above in the upper right-hand corner of the folio, away from the main score.

YSAŸE’S SECOND STRING TRIO

EXAMPLE 1 Ysaÿe String Trio no.2, bars 257–62, in Juilliard School MS ML225.Ys89.A4 v.1, folio 25v.

EXAMPLE 2 Ysaÿe String Trio no.2, Juilliard School MS ML225.Ys89.A4 v.1, supplementary correction at foot of folio 25v.

EXAMPLE 3 Ysaÿe String Trio no.2, Juilliard School MS ML225.Ys89.A4 v.1, supplementary correction at foot of folio 26r.

EXAMPLE 4 Ysaÿe String Trio no.2, bars 75–8, in Juilliard School MS ML225.Ys89.A4 v.1, folio 20r.

 ALTHOUGH THE VIOLIN PART IS WRITTEN IN A STYLE TYPICAL OF YSAYE , THE WRITING FOR VIOLA AND CELLO IS MORE UNCONVENTIONAL

  EXAMPLE 8 Ysaÿe String Trio no.2, ed. Szederkényi, viola part, bar 122

Having enjoyed a fantastic career as a celebrated soloist and a passionate quartet leader, Ysaÿe must have witnessed quite a development in chamber music literature. A number of his contemporaries started to write more for the string trio, as writing only for string quartet and related groups with piano or winds (while following the Classical rules) just wasn’t enough for them.

In 1927, just four years before his death, he wrote two string trios, each with much the same structure, mood and feeling as the other, and both bearing a strong resemblance to his poèmes. There is a structural framework in both, but without strict rules. Written in one movement, each features a multitude of different episodes, strung together in a continuous whole. The Second Trio even finishes with a fugue!

Without delving into a full-blown analysis, what follows is a short outline description of the Second Trio.  Starting with a rather surprising and abrupt motif, there is a short introductory section that leads into the highly polyphonic ‘first part’ (from bar 40), in which Ysaÿe gives the theme to his much beloved viola; this develops into a complicated but short imitation section.

The second theme (bar 79) starts quietly, and then also features an imitative section, ending with quiet spherical glissandos. Here (bar 115) the initial abrupt theme reappears, but even more disjunct in imitation. A quiet Lento serves as a transition to the next section, Adagio (bar 169), which has a very chromatic structure, without a single loud note, ending with a passage of ascending whole tones up to the ‘sky’.

The last main section (bar 210) begins with a transition featuring elements of the initial section in a new tempo with unison descending motifs leading to a kind of ‘da capo’, or recapitulation as it might be termed in the classic sonata form. It culminates (beginning at bar 272) with a huge crescendo and quick passages, confirming thereafter with violin octaves that there is no limit for passion. Calming down slowly, we arrive at the finishing fugue (bar 318) and an enthusiastic, almost trivial ending.

The Second Trio manuscript that I worked from to produce my edition is, as mentioned above, a second, corrected version (‘2ème esquisse’) of the piece (as is the Juilliard library source for the First Trio). To highlight thechallenges of untangling some of the really indecipherable spots, I would like to present a few examples.

The most difficult issue requiring a solution was in bars 258–61 (example 1). The figure ‘4’ written across all three parts in the score at first seemed to indicate four bars’ rest, and it was clear that this number was originally a ‘2’. Confusion then arose regarding the two supplementary corrections that appear respectively at the bottom of that page (example 2) and the opposite page (example 3). It transpires that the ‘4’ in the score was in fact an indication that four bars of music were to be inserted –a varied repeat of bars 75–8, using the supplementary material. However, these insertions confused the issue, as they had been written in the wrong order. They were in ‘horizontal score’ format, with the one on the left-hand page showing the viola double-stop plus violin triplet passage, and the one on the right-hand page showing the violin double-stop and the viola triplets. At bars 75–8 these two-bar passages are in reverse order, with the triplets passing from viola to violin. However, in the MS at bars 75–8 (example 4) it seems that Ysaÿe also decided to replace the first two bars of the analogous passage, hence, perhaps, his confusion the second time it appears, at bar 258. My editorial solution for bars 258–61 can be seen in example 5.

Although throughout the trio the violin part in technical terms is written in a style typical of Ysaÿe, the writing for viola and cello is more unconventional. In bars 186–9 (example 6), I suggest that the viola plays the passage as a quasi-glissando rather than struggling with fingered double-stops. Example 7 (bar 303) shows another practical fingering suggestion for the viola, and I would also suggest playing standard pizzicato rather than Ysaÿe’s beloved left-hand pizzicato in bar 122 (example 8).

When playing Ysaÿe’s chamber music it’s extremely useful to keep in mind his Solo Sonatas, which demonstrate his innovations in chord playing technique as well as his whole-tone and chromatic melody writing. We feel in these works that we are in a unique world, where all notes are part of an absolute order no matter how they sound –a magical world we have never encountered before but in which we immediately feel perfectly comfortable.

The sheet music of the Second Trio, as well as a new edition of ‘Le Chimay’, based on Ysaÿe’s corrected manuscript held in the Juilliard School library, dated 1927, is available at istrings.eu.