Victor Ewald - Brass Quintets

Brass Quintets

For many years Ewald’s four quintets were considered to be the first original pieces composed specifically for an ensemble which is recognisable today as essentially the modern brass quintet - consisting of two treble, valved instruments, one alto, one tenor and one bass. A recent discovery of 12 four-movement brass quintets, thought to have been written in the 1840s (pre-dating Ewald by some 60 years) by the French composer Jean Francois Bellon (1795–1869; violinist and one-time leader of the Paris Opera Orchestra), show that Ewald was not actually the unwitting pioneer he was long thought to be. However, the popularity of his quintets has in no way diminished because of this.

Both Bellon and Ewald wrote music that displayed the increased virtuosity and homogeneity possible as a result of developments in brass instrument design and manufacture in the second half of the 19th century. Inevitably, at such a time of change and invention, there would be some variation in the exact design of instruments in favour from country to country and so the actual constituent parts of Ewald’s quintet would have differed in some ways from those instruments played in Bellon’s quintet and certainly in current times, by such as Canadian Brass.

Photographic evidence from about 1912 shows that Ewald himself played in a brass quintet. It is seen to consist of two piston-valved cornets, rather than the modern choice of trumpets; a rotary-valved alto horn, rather than the French horn; a rotary-valved tenor horn, rather than the trombone; and a rotary-valved tuba (played by Ewald himself). Of these instruments, it is the alto and tenor horns that are most strikingly different from their modern quintet counterparts. There is no documented evidence of exactly for whom Ewald composed his quintets, or the exact instruments on which he envisaged them being performed. Therefore, one can only speculate that, for instance, cornets might have been preferred to trumpets, because of the latter’s association with the more strident demands made of it in symphonic settings, rather than the intimacy of a chamber setting for which the former was perhaps more suited. Similarly, the likely preference of a tenor horn (similar to today’s euphonium and an instrument occasionally transposed as a soloist to the symphony orchestra, as in the first movement of Mahler’s 7th symphony), may have been the result of a wish on Ewald’s part to maintain the virtuosic potential, as well as tonal characteristics throughout his ensemble by sticking entirely to valved, conical-bored instruments. Certainly this suggestion is one that might find favour with modern day trombonists required to rise to the challenge of what can only be described as, at times, unidiomatic writing.

For many years it was wrongly thought that Ewald was the composer of only one quintet, his Op. 5 in B flat minor, because this was the only one published (by Edition Belaïeff in 1912) during his lifetime. The discovery of the other three works was due to the tireless research of André M. Smith, (an eminent musicologist and former bass trombonist at the Metropolitan Opera, New York) who was gifted the manuscripts by Ewald’s son-in-law, Yevgeny Gippius in 1964. A further nine years of investigation was necessary to authenticate the manuscripts, before the pieces were given their first modern performance during the 1974-75 season in a series of concerts by the American Brass Quintet at Carnegie Hall.

A very approximate chronology of the composition of the four quintets runs as follows:

Quintet no. 4 in A flat major (Op. 8) - c. 1888
Quintet no. 1 in B flat minor (Op. 5) - c. 1890
Quintet no. 2 in E flat major (Op. 6) - c. 1905
Quintet no. 3 in D flat major (Op. 7) - c. 1912

The apparent confusion between the numbering and approximate date of composition of the quintets arises from another long-held misconception, also corrected by the studies of Mr. Smith. For some time it was considered that Quintet no. 4 (Op. 8) was merely a transcription by the composer of a string quartet written in the late 1880s and not an original composition for brass. However, Op. 8 was indeed initially written for brass but was considered to be unplayable at the time due to the demands of both technique and stamina made on the performers. Ewald duly reworked the piece for string quartet and it was in this form that it was published as his Op. 1.