15 / 40
15
TALICH QUARTET
Divertimenti for strings K136, K137, K138
What is a divertimento?
This type of musical work composed of a number of freely arranged pieces first
appeared in Italy. It was originally intended to accompany festive events of various
kinds held indoors or in the open air. It very often fulfilled the role of background
music tailored to specific commissions. Each movement takes care to remain
within the conventions of elegance, which consist in reserving the
prima
voce
for the violins. The genre was treated with contempt in the second half of the
nineteenth century. The hard-won financial independence of the composers of the
Romantic period went hand in hand with a complex about ‘easy money’, to such
an extent thatWagner said of suchmusic that he could ‘hear the chink of crockery’!
Mozart produced an impressive series of pieces called ‘divertimenti’, more than
thirty in all. Most of them date from his Salzburg period. In his own catalogue, the
term is often used interchangeably with others such as ‘cassation’ and ‘serenade’,
and the composer himself does not seem to have thought it important to give
it a more precise definition. Nonetheless, in his mind, it was essentially used to
describe pieces of chamber music, even though thesemight also be styled ‘sinfonia’
or sometimes even ‘quartet-divertimento’.