String quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists, a violist, and a cellist. Even though a string quartet consists of two violins, a viola and cello, the double bass is almost never used in the ensemble mainly because it would sound too loud and heavy.
The string quartet was developed into its present form by the Austrian composer
The standard structure for a string quartet as established in the Classical era is four
Some string quartet ensembles play together for many years and become established and promoted as an entity in a similar way to an instrumental soloist or an orchestra.
History and development
Early history
The early history of the string quartet is in many ways the history of the development of the genre by the Austrian composer
The origins of the string quartet can be further traced back to the Baroque trio sonata, in which two solo instruments performed with a continuo section consisting of a bass instrument (such as the cello) and keyboard. A very early example is a four-part sonata for string ensemble by the Italian composer Gregorio Allegri that might be considered an important prototype.[3] By the early 18th century, composers were often adding a third soloist; and moreover it became common to omit the keyboard part, letting the cello support the bass line alone. Thus when Alessandro Scarlatti wrote a set of six works entitled Sonata à Quattro per due Violini, Violetta [viola], e Violoncello senza Cembalo (Sonata for four instruments: two violins, viola, and cello without harpsichord), this was a natural evolution from the existing tradition.[4]
Haydn's impact
The musicologist Hartmut Schick has suggested that Franz Xaver Richter invented the "classical" string quartet around 1757,[5] but the consensus amongst most authorities is that Haydn is responsible for the genre in its currently accepted form. The string quartet enjoyed no recognized status as an ensemble in the way that two violins with basso continuo – the so-called 'trio sonata' – had for more than a hundred years. Even the composition of Haydn's earliest string quartets owed more to chance than artistic imperative.[6]
During the 1750s, when the young composer was still working mainly as a teacher and violinist in Vienna, he would occasionally be invited to spend time at the nearby castle at Weinzierl of the music-loving Austrian nobleman Karl Joseph Weber, Edler von Fürnberg. There he would play chamber music in an ad hoc ensemble consisting of Fürnberg's steward, a priest, and a local cellist, and when the Baron asked for some new music for the group to play, Haydn's first string quartets were born. It is not clear whether any of these works ended up in the two sets published in the mid-1760s and known as Haydn's Opp. 1 and 2 ('Op. 0' is a quartet included in some early editions of Op. 1, and only rediscovered in the 1930s), but it seems reasonable to assume that they were at least similar in character.
Haydn's early biographer Georg August Griesinger tells the story thus:
The following purely chance circumstance had led him to try his luck at the composition of quartets. A Baron Fürnberg had a place in
contrapuntist Albrechtsberger) in order to have a little music. Fürnberg requested Haydn to compose something that could be performed by these four amateurs. Haydn, then eighteen years old [sic],[7] took up this proposal, and so originated his first quartet which, immediately it appeared, received such general approval that Haydn took courage to work further in this form.[8]
Haydn went on to write nine other quartets around this time. These works were published as his Op. 1 and Op. 2; one quartet went unpublished, and some of the early "quartets" are actually symphonies missing their wind parts. They have five movements and take the form: fast movement,
After these early efforts, Haydn did not return to the string quartet for several years, but when he did so, it was to make a significant step in the genre's development. The intervening years saw Haydn begin his employment as
After Op. 20, it becomes harder to point to similar major jumps in the string quartet's development in Haydn's hands, though not due to any lack of invention or application on the composer's part. As Donald Tovey put it: "with Op. 20 the historical development of Haydn's quartets reaches its goal; and further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next."[10]
The musicologist Roger Hickman has however demurred from this consensus view. He notes a change in string quartet writing towards the end of the 1760s, featuring characteristics which are today thought of as essential to the genre – scoring for two violins, viola and cello, solo passages, and absence of actual or potential basso continuo accompaniment. Noting that at this time other composers than Haydn were writing works conforming to these 'modern' criteria, and that Haydn's earlier quartets did not meet them, he suggests that "one casualty [of such a perspective] is the notion that Haydn "invented" the string quartet... Although he may still be considered the 'father' of the 'Classical' string quartet, he is not the creator of the sting quartet genre itself... This old and otiose myth not only misrepresents the achievements of other excellent composers, but also distorts the character and qualities of Haydn's opp. 1, 2 and 9".[11]
The musicologist Cliff Eisen contextualizes the Op. 20 quartets as follows: "Haydn's quartets of the late 1760s and early 1770s [opp. 9, 17, and 20] are high points in the early history of the quartet. Characterized by a wide range of textures, frequent asymmetries and theatrical gestures...these quartets established the genre's four-movement form, its larger dimensions, and ...its greater aesthetic pretensions and expressive range."[12]
That Haydn's string quartets were already "classics" that defined the genre by 1801 can be judged by
After Haydn
Quartet composition flourished in the
In the 20th century
During his tenure as
String quartets of the classical period
Quartets written during the classical period usually had four movements, with a structure similar to that of a symphony:
- A fast movement in trio or (in later works) scherzo and trio, in the tonic key, in the tonic key
- A fast movement, sometimes in rondo or movement in sonata rondo form
The positions of the slow movement and third movement are flexible. For example, in Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn, three have a minuet followed by a slow movement and three have the slow movement before the minuet.
Substantial modifications to the typical structure were already present by the time of Beethoven's late quartets, and despite some notable examples to the contrary, composers writing in the twentieth century increasingly abandoned this structure. Bartók's fourth and fifth string quartets, written in the 1930s, are five-movement works, symmetrical around a central movement. Shostakovich's final quartet, written in the 1970s, comprises six slow movements.
Variations of string quartet
Many other chamber groups can be seen as modifications of the string quartet:
- The Mozart employed two violas in his string quintets, while Schubert's string quintet utilized two cellos. Boccherini wrote a few quintets with a double bass as the fifth instrument. Most of Boccherini's string quintets are for two violins, viola, and two cellos. Another composer who wrote a string quintet with two cellos is Ethel Smyth.
- The string trio has one violin, a viola, and a cello.
- The piano trio has a piano, a violin, and a cello.
- The piano quintet is a string quartet with an added piano.
- The piano quartet is a string quartet with one of the violins replaced by a piano.
- The clarinet quintet is a string quartet with an added clarinet, such as those by Mozart and Brahms.
- The string sextet contains two each of violins, violas, and cellos. Brahms, for example, wrote two string sextets.
Further expansions have also produced works such as the
Notable string quartets
Notable works for string quartet include:
- Joseph Haydn's 68 string quartets, in particular Op. 20, Op. 33, Op. 76, Op. 64, No. 5 ("The Lark") and the string quartet version of "The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour On the Cross" (Op. 51)[15]
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 23 string quartets, in particular the set of six dedicated to Haydn, including K. 465 ("Dissonance")[15]
- , Op. 133, the original final movement of Op. 130.
- String Quartet No. 12 in C minor ("Quartettsatz"), String Quartet No. 13 in A minor ("Rosamunde"), String Quartet No. 14 in D minor ("Death and the Maiden"), and String Quartet No. 15 in G major[17]
- Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 2 (early example of cyclic form)[18]
- string quartets, Op. 41[19]
- Johannes Brahms's three string quartets, Op. 51 No. 1 (in C minor), Op. 51 No. 2 (in A minor) and Op. 67 (in B-flat major)[20]
- Giuseppe Verdi's String Quartet (1873)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's three string quartets[21]
- Anton Arensky's Second String Quartet, unusually scored for violin, viola and two cellos (1894)
- Antonín Dvořák's String Quartets Nos. 9–14, particularly String Quartet No. 12 in F major, "American";[15] also No. 3 is an exceptionally long quartet (lasting 65 minutes)[22]
- programme music[21]
- Max Reger's six string quartets, especially long Quartet No. 3 in D minor, Op. 74, Quartet No. 4 in E-flat major, Op. 109, and the last, Quartet No. 5 in F-sharp minor, Op. 121[21]
- César Franck's String Quartet in D major (1889-1890) [21]
- Claude Debussy's String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 (1893)[21]
- Maurice Ravel's String Quartet, in F major (1903)[23]
- Voces intimae (1909)[24]
- Leoš Janáček's two string quartets, String Quartet No. 1, "Kreutzer Sonata" (1923), inspired by Leo Tolstoy's novel The Kreutzer Sonata, itself named after Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata; and his second string quartet, Intimate Letters (1928)[25]
- Béla Bartók's six string quartets (1909, 1915–17, 1926, 1927, 1934, 1939)[25]
- Alexander Zemlinsky's Second String Quartet, Op. 15 (1913–15)[26]
- Arnold Schoenberg's four string quartets – No. 1 Op. 7 (1904–05) No. 2 Op. 10 (1907–08, noteworthy for its first ever inclusion of the human voice in a string quartet), No. 3 Op. 30 (1927) and No. 4 Op. 37 (1936)[24]
- String Quartet, Op. 3 and Lyric Suite, later adapted for string orchestra[25]
- Anton Webern's Five Movements, Op.5 (1909),[21] Six Bagatelles, Op.9 (1913),[21] and Quartet, Op. 28 (1937–38)[24]
- Darius Milhaud's set of 18 string quartets written between 1912 and 1950, particularly nos. 14 and 15 op. 291, which can be played simultaneously as a string octet[27]
- Ruth Crawford-Seeger's string quartet 1931
- Alois Hába's 16 string quartets (1919-1967),[27] some of them in quarter-tone tuning, the last in fifth-tone tuning
- Dmitri Shostakovich's 15 string quartets, in particular the String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 (1960), and No. 15 Op. 144 (1974) in six Adagio movements[27]
- Heitor Villa-Lobos's 17 string quartets, in particular the Fifth ("Popular"), Sixth ("Brazilian"), and Seventeenth String Quartets[27]
- John Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts[27] (1950)
- Elliott Carter's five string quartets[27] (1951, 1959, 1971, 1986, 1995)
- Iannis Xenakis's ST/4 (1962),[27] Tetras (1983), Tetora (1990) and Ergma (1994)
- Karlheinz Stockhausen's Helikopter-Streichquartett (1992–93), to be played by the four musicians in four helicopters[28][29]
- Salvatore Sciarrino's eight string quartets (1967-2008).
- Helmut Lachenmann's three string quartets (Gran Torso, 1972; Reigen seliger Geister, 1989; Grido, 2001)
- Morton Feldman's Second String Quartet (1983), which typically takes about five hours in performance.
- Georges Lentz's 43-hour digital String Quartet(s) (2000-2022), a vast four-channel multi-disciplinary work permanently played in the Cobar Sound Chapel.
String quartets (ensembles)
Whereas individual string players often group together to make ad hoc string quartets, others continue to play together for many years in ensembles which may be named after the first violinist (e.g. the Takács Quartet), a composer (e.g. the Borodin Quartet) or a location (e.g. the Budapest Quartet). Established quartets may undergo changes in membership whilst retaining their original name.
References
- ^ Wyn Jones 2003, 179.
- D'Indy's Cours de Composition Musicale (1912) cites the "timides essais" of Sammartini, Van Malder & Gossec. (p. 214)
- ^ Arthur Eaglefield Hull, "The earliest string quartet" The Musical Quarterly 15 (1929:72–76).
- ^ Wyn Jones 2003, 178.
- JSTOR 27764460.
- ^ a b Finscher 2000, 398.
- ^ This would put the date earlier, around 1750; Finscher (2000) as well as Webster & Feder (2001) judge that Griesinger erred here.
- ^ Griesinger 1963, 13.
- ^ Lindsay Kemp: Joseph Haydn: The String Quartets, Decca 200.
- ^ Tovey, [page needed].
- JSTOR 741992.
- ISBN 9781139056038.
- ISBN 0-06-075974-7.[page needed]
- ^ EntertainersWorldwide. "String Quartet FAQs". Archived from the original on 2018-05-18. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- ^ a b c "Famous String quartets", SapphireQuartet.co.uk. Archived 2012-04-18 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 0-06-075974-7
- ^ Eisen 2001, §3.
- ^ For a complete analysis of this quartet, see Griffiths 1983, [page needed]
- ^ Wyn Jones 2003, pp. 239ff.
- ^ Baldassarre 2001.
- ^ a b c d e f g Griffiths 2001, §5.
- ^ "DVORAK, A.: String Quartets, Vol. 8 (Vlach Quartet) – No. 3 – 8.553378". Archived from the original on 2018-07-20. Retrieved 2018-07-20.
- ^ Scholes 1938, p. [page needed].
- ^ a b c Griffiths 2001, §6.
- ^ a b c Griffiths 2001, §7.
- ^ Beaumont 2001.
- ^ a b c d e f g Griffiths 2001, §8.
- ISBN 1-885490-07-0. Online variant version [1999], as "Introduction: Helicopter String Quartet (1992/93)" (some omissions, some supplements, different illustrations; archive from 17 November 2014, accessed 11 August 2016).
- ^ Griffiths 2001, §9.
Sources
- Baldassarre, Antonio : "String Quartet: §4", in: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
- Beaumont, Antony. 2001. "Zemlinsky [Zemlinszky], Alexander (von). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
- Eisen, Cliff: "String Quartet: §§1–3", in: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
- Finscher, Ludwig: Joseph Haydn und seine Zeit (Laaber, Germany: Laaber, 2000).
- Griesinger, Georg August: Biographical Notes Concerning Joseph Haydn (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, [1810] 1963). English translation by Vernon Gotwals, in Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits (Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press).[verification needed]
- ISBN 0-500-27383-9.
- Griffiths, Paul: "String Quartet: §§5–9", in: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
- Scholes, Percy A. (1938). The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford University Press.
- Tovey, Donald: Essays in Musical Analysis. [full citation needed]
- ISBN 0-19-516904-2).
- ISBN 0-521-00042-4.
Further reading
- Barrett-Ayres, Reginald: Joseph Haydn and the String Quartet (New York: Schirmer Books, 1974); ISBN 0-02-870400-2.
- Blum, David: The Art of Quartet Playing: The Guarneri Quartet in Conversation with David Blum (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986); ISBN 0-394-53985-0.
- Eisler, Edith: 21st-Century String Quartets (String Letter Publishing, 2000); ISBN 1-890490-15-6.
- ISBN 0-460-86107-7.
- Rounds, David: The Four & the One: In Praise of String Quartets (Fort Bragg, California: Lost Coast Press, 1999); ISBN 1-882897-26-9.
- ISBN 0-571-09118-0(hardback).
- ISBN 0-374-52700-8.
- Vernon, David (5 September 2023). Beethoven: The String Quartets. Edinburgh: Candle Row Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1739659929.
- Vuibert, Francis: Répertoire universel du quatuor à cordes (2009) ProQuartet-CEMC; ISBN 978-2-9531544-0-5.
- Winter, Robert (ed.): The Beethoven Quartet Companion (University of California Press, 1996).
External links
- Greg Sandow – Introducing String Quartets at the Wayback Machine (archived July 18, 2011)
- A brief history of the development of the String Quartet up to Beethoven
- Beethoven's string quartets
- Art of the States: string quartet works for string quartet by American composers
- String Quartet Sound-bites from lesser known composers E.G. Onslow, Viotti, Rheinberger, Gretchaninov, A.Taneyev, Kiel, Busoni & many more.
- European archive String quartet recordings on copyright free LPs at the European Archive (for non-American users only).
- Shostakovich: the string quartets
- String quartet compositions and performers since about 1914 and the connections between them