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Scan 144
Harvard Dictionary Of Music, 1944
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1CHALEUREUX
3tory of the Dance (1941)]. Once imported into Europe it lost its unbridled character entirely, as did also the *sarabande and, 300 years later, the *tango. The passacaglia (possibly from Sp. *pasacalle, street song) also was originally a dance.
5Chaleureux [F.]. With warmth.
7Chalumeau [F., from L. calamellus, pipe]. (1) Seventeenth-century name for (a) an early oboe (shawm), (b) an early clarinet. The chalumeau in Gluck's Orpheus is probably a real clarinet (with keys).—(2) The lowest register of the modern clarinet.
9Chamber music. I. General. Instrumental ensemble music performed by one player to the part, as opposed to orchestral music in which there are several players to the part. According to the number of players (or parts), chamber music is classified as follows: *trio (three players), *quartet (four), *quintet (five), *sextet (six), *septet (seven), *octet (eight). String trios (quartets, etc.) are for stringed instruments only [see *String quartet]; if one of the strings is replaced by another instrument, names such as pianoforte trio (pianoforte and two strings) or horn quintet (horn and four strings) are used. The violin (violoncello) sonata, for violin (violoncello) and pianoforte, is sometimes not considered as chamber music, on account of the markedly solistic character of the parts. In true chamber music, emphasis lies on the ensemble, not on the single player.
11The present-day repertoire of chamber music begins with the late string-quartets (written after 1780) of Haydn and Mozart. In these works the basic principles of form and style were established to which practically all composers of chamber music have adhered: the form is that of the *sonata in four movements; the style is characterized by individual treatment of the parts and exclusion of virtuoso-like elements. Naturally, there exist examples in which these principles are not observed, a notable exception being Beethoven's string quartet in C-sharp minor, op. 131 with its extremely free form. Yet the fact remains that in chamber music composers have shown a greater respect for tradition than in other fields, the obvious reason being that the relatively limited and fixed resources of, e.g., a string quartet prohibited the introduction of novel features comparable to those of contemporary orchestral or piano music.
13The chamber music works (chiefly string quartets) of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (opus numbers below 100), and Schubert represent the classical period of chamber music. In his late quartets (op. 127, 130–133, 135, written between 1824 and 1827) Beethoven has created an entirely singular type of chamber music, a type which is too personal to be called classic, and yet too transcendental to be considered as Romantic. The Romantic period of chamber music embraces Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák, and Franck (to name only the most important composers), with Brahms ranking first among them. While Debussy, Ravel, and others (e.g., Schönberg, String Sextet Verklärte Nacht, op. 4) tried to exploit the impressionistic and coloristic resources of chamber music, there has been more recently a return to a purer and more appropriate style, as the result of the contemporary revival of the contrapuntal approach to musical composition, and of the adoption of a more objective and sober type of expression than prevailed in the late Romantic and in the Impressionistic schools [see *Neo-classicism]. For more details, see the entries for the different species of chamber music, particularly *string quartet.
15II. History. Chamber music, in the widest sense of the word, already existed in the late Middle Ages. Instrumental ensemble pieces such as occur in the Glogauer Liederbuch (c. 1470; see *Liederbuch) or the *carmina of Obrecht, Isaac, Hofhaimer bear all the characteristic marks of true chamber music. So do the 16th-century ensemble ricercares [see *Ricercar I (a)] by Adrian Willaert, Buus, Padovano, as well as the instrumental canzonas [see *Canzona (5), I] from the end of this century. (Regarding the claim that a canzona by Allegri was
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