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Chamber music

"Kammermusik" redirects here. For the works by Hindemith, see Kammermusik (Hindemith).
"Chamber piece" redirects here. For films set in a single location, see List of films set in a single location.
For other uses, see Chamber music (disambiguation).
Frederick the Great plays flute in his summer palace Sanssouci, with Franz Benda playing violin, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach accompanying on keyboard, and unidentified string players; painting by Adolph Menzel (1850–52)

Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part (in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers). However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.

Because of its intimate nature, chamber music has been described as "the music of friends".[1] For more than 100 years, chamber music was played primarily by amateur musicians in their homes, and even today, when chamber music performance has migrated from the home to the concert hall, many musicians, amateur and professional, still play chamber music for their own pleasure. Playing chamber music requires special skills, both musical and social, that differ from the skills required for playing solo or symphonic works.[2]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described chamber music (specifically, string quartet music) as "four rational people conversing".[3] This conversational paradigm – which refers to the way one instrument introduces a melody or motif and then other instruments subsequently "respond" with a similar motif – has been a thread woven through the history of chamber music composition from the end of the 18th century to the present. The analogy to conversation recurs in descriptions and analyses of chamber music compositions.

  1. ^ Christina Bashford, "The String Quartet and Society", in Stowell (2003), p. 4. The expression "music of friends" was first used by Richard Walthew in a lecture published in South Place Institute, London, in 1909.Walthew, Richard H. (1909). The Development of Chamber Music. London: Boosey. p. 42.
  2. ^ Estelle Ruth Jorgensen, The Art of Teaching Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008): 153–54. ISBN 978-0-253-35078-7 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-253-21963-3 (pbk).
  3. ^ Christina Bashford, "The String Quartet and Society" in Stowell (2003), p. 4. The quote was from a letter to C. F. Zelter, November 9, 1829.

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