String quartet

“ So then one feels that it happened that Schumann should seek expression thrice through the medium of the string quartet; not that a certain quality of inspiration within him demanded just that expression and none other. His quartets represent neither a refinement nor an abstract of his genius. They are of a piece with his pianoforte pieces and his songs; as are likewise his symphonies. We admire and love all for the same qualities.
Brahms, who for so many reasons we may think of as taking up German music where Schumann left it, published only three string quartets. ”

“ The string quartet offers the most favourable conditions for the development of instrumental music, both as to expression and technical construction, giving free play to the composer in every direction, provided only that he keep within the limits imposed by the nature of his art. ”

“ All the great masters have written string quartets. The Quartet for two violins, viola and 'cello, corresponding to the four essential parts in harmony, each maintaining its individuality, yet each essential to the whole, is the quintessence of musical expression. Any imperfection betrays itself inevitably; all is exposed; there is nothing hidden under an orchestral coloring or vague passages of mere effect. The four voices are four persons. Not to speak of Haydn, father and founder of the race, the greatest models are those of Mozart and Beethoven. ”

“ The string-quartets are not always in quartet style and [Pg 412] their structure is sometimes open to criticism, but they are individual and contain much that is beautiful. The piano-quartet is a genial work of great spontaneity that took Europe by storm. It was immediately hailed as the greatest work since Beethoven, although its position might now be assailed by the piano quintets by Brahms and César Franck. The piano quartet, as well as the quintet, is a pioneer in this form of chamber-music, but has not the same flow of melody as the former. ”

“ This attitude toward the string quartet, which is in music what engraving or etching is in representative art, is very anomalous in a young composer, and shows so disproportionate an interest in the merely expressive side of music that it is hard to understand how Tschaïkowsky ever became so great a plastic master as his last two symphonies, for all their freight of passion, show him to be. ”

“ If the quartet is yet capable of new treatment, the second Beethoven who is to show us fresh marvels has not yet come.
II. Quartets for strings and wind instruments are uncommon, but Mozart has one for oboe, violin, viola, and cello. Next to the string quartet ranks the pianoforte quartet, which, however, is built on quite a different principle: here the composition becomes either equivalent to an accompanied trio, or to a symphony in which the piano takes the place of the 'string quartet,' and the other instruments—usually violin, viola, and cello—the place of wind instruments. ”

“ The String Quartet holds a position of peculiar significance in the art of music, and a composer, by selecting this form for the exercise of his powers, exposes them to the most unfailing test to which his calibre as a musician can possibly be submitted. He [Pg 123] must possess not only fertility in the production of purely musical concentrated ideas, and ideas capable of development; the power to develop them, which means many things, and the capacity for shaping them into clear structure; but he must be able to express them with the most bare and simple musical means, with four strings. ”

“ Thus a quartet for four stringed instruments, usually two violins, viola, and cello, is called a String-quartet, to distinguish it from a piano-forte quartet that is, for piano and three other instruments ”

“ It was the immediate or proximate cause of the 'Grand Duo'—that splendid work in which, with Beethoven in his eye, Schubert was never more himself—and the Divertissement à la hongroise; as well as the beautiful and intensely personal String Quartet in A minor, which has been not wrongly said to be the most characteristic work of any composer; ultimately also of the D minor and G major Quartets, the String Quintet in C, and the three last Sonatas, in all of which the Hungarian element is strongly perceptible—all the more strongly because we hardly detect it at all in the songs and vocal works. ”

“ Even the string quartet, last rallying-ground [19] of music against the ubiquitous onslaught of sensationalism, begins in many modern scores, with their constant double stops and tremolos, and their "effects" of mutes, pizzicato, "ponticello," "col legno," and the rest, to sound like a rather poor, thin orchestra, striving for a variety and fulness of color beyond its capacity.
The fallacy of the extensive method is that it is trying to satisfy a craving essentially insatiable. Such an appetite for mere quantity of sound grows by what it feeds on; luxury breeds ennui ”

“ Oddly enough, a pianoforte solo is more effective in a large hall than a string quartet, although the latter employs four times as many instruments; and the same is true of those pieces of chamber music in which the pianoforte is used, such as sonatas for pianoforte and violin or violoncello, pianoforte trios, quartets, quintets, and so on. A fine soloist on the pianoforte will be more at home in a large auditorium like Carnegie Hall or even the Metropolitan Opera House than would a string quartet or any other combination of chamber-music players. ”

“ This is of value to every student, since it gives him an opportunity of 'hearing himself as others hear him.' Then, to stimulate appreciation and musical development there are ensemble and string quartet classes. I believe that every violinist should be able to play viola, and in quartet work I make the players shift constantly from one to the other instrument in order to hear what they play from a different angle. ”

“ He brought to them in full power his genius for melody. Moreover, he showed in them a genius for organization which he did not usually match in his other large works. In the best of his quartets he escaped the danger to which a lesser melodist would have succumbed—that of incontinently putting a chief melody into the first violin part and letting the remaining instruments serve as accompaniment In no musical type are all the voices so absolutely equal as in the string quartet; the composer who unduly stresses any [Pg 329] one of the four is false to the peculiar genius of the form. ”

“ Friede sang yesterday, and the String Quartet, are remarkable for delicacy of invention and beauty of form. The overture to Romeo and Juliet, and the Pianoforte Concerto, played by Herr Siloti, are full of characteristic animation and originality of rhythm, harmony, and instrumentation. But here also the defects to which we have alluded are clearly perceptible. The overture becomes wearisome by the spinning out of the same idea ”

“ In quintets, quartets, sonatas, and such forms of chamber-music he is also sparing of Introductions, but there is an example of some extent in the quintet for pianoforte and wind in E♭ (Köchel, 452) , in which the harmonic successions are simple, and there is a more celebrated one to the string quartet in C, in which the harmonic bases vary more freely than in other examples of that period which can be adduced. ”

“ Of vocal music, there have been published three sets of songs (Op. 1, 2, 19) and a cantata for one voice with orchestral accompaniment; of chamber music, there are two quintets for piano and strings (Op. 4 and 5) and a quartet for strings in the unusual key of D-flat major. Of these last, the first quintet, in F minor, is generally considered the most striking, but although it and its companion and the string quartet have made their way, it is by his pianoforte works that he is best known. They are: a Notturno (Op. 3) ”

“ The festival overture on the 'Rheinweinlied' (op. 123) is cleverly worked, and a very effective pièce d'occasion.
It was in the spring of 1838 that Schumann made his first attempt, so far as we know, at a String Quartet. It was scarcely successful, for he was too much immersed in pianoforte music; at any rate the world has hitherto seen nothing of it. In June and July 1842 he was much more successful. The three string quartets (op. 41) , written at this time, are the only ones that have become known. They cannot be said to be in the purest quartet style ”

“ A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description. ”

“ Stringed instruments possess more ways of producing sound than any other orchestral group. They can pass, better than other instruments from one shade of expression to another, the varieties being of an infinite number. Species of bowing such as legato, detached, staccato, spiccato, portamento, martellato, light staccato, saltando, attack at the nut and at the point, and (down bow and up bow) , in every degree of tone, fortissimo, pianissimo, crescendo, diminuendo, sforzando, morendo—all this belongs to the natural realm of the string quartet. ”

“ In the trio of his first quartet the melody is successively introduced by the 'cello and the first violin, altogether in harmonics.
THE MODERN QUARTET AND AMATEUR PLAYERS
"You ask me whether the average quartet of amateurs, of lovers of string music, can get much out of the more modern quartets. I would say yes, but with some serious reservations. There has been much beautiful music written, but most of it is complicated. In the case of the older quartets, Haydn, Mozart, etc., even if they are not played well, the performers can still obtain an idea of the music, of its thought content. ”

“ The string quartets, the pianoforte trios, quartets, and quintets, the sonatas for violin and piano, and other combinations [Pg viii] have been treated separately. The selection of some works for a more or less detailed discussion, and the omission of even the mention of others, will undoubtedly seem unjustifiable to some; but the editor trusts at least that those he has chosen for discussion may illumine somewhat the general progress of chamber music from the time of Haydn to the present day. ”

“ Notice in his first quartet—in D minor, opus 34, dedicated to Johannes Brahms—the presentation of the second theme in the first movement: the rolling figure for cello, the persistent figure for the viola which by holding to its shape acquires an independent significance, and over these the duet between first and second violin. The [Pg 559] varied accompaniment in the second movement is well worth study.
The whole first movement of the second quartet—E-flat major, opus 51—is perfectly adapted to the four string instruments. Every part has an independence and a delicate free motion. ”

“ An occasional symphony concert is not enough. How shall this difficulty be overcome? There is a natural way out, and it consists in what is called “chamber music.” A piece of chamber music [Pg 235] is a sort of domestic symphony. A string quartette, a pianoforte or violin sonata, a trio, quartette, quintette, etc.,—these are all little symphonies; the form is almost identical, the same devices of rhythm, melody, harmony, counterpoint, and so forth, are employed. In chamber music paucity of idea cannot be covered up by luxury of tone color; everything is exposed ”

“ The Andante opens with a lovely melody for the 2nd Violin on the G string; restraint and broadness in playing should be the player's aim here. Parry refers to the fine balance of form in this Quartet in his article in Groves' Dictionary. The Scherzo is here marked Maggiore—Minore—Maggiore. The Presto is full of Beethoven spirit and handling, in one passage in particular, having spaciousness, which is such a striking feature in the final quartets. ”

“ The String Quartett may be regarded as the prototype, on the instrumental side, of chamber music, and along with it must be placed the other like forms of Quintett, Sextett, etc.; also the Octett, and Double Quartett, which differs in its antiphonal style from the Octett.
All these imply the opportunity for perfect intonation. The use of the pianoforte, however, introduces another “atmosphere.” Perfect intonation is no longer possible, and the purity which the “strings” afford is of necessity somewhat marred. ”

“ Instrumental sestets are of two kinds; those for strings only, which belong to the same class as string quartets and quintets, being monochromes in six real parts, and those for various combinations of strings, wind and pianoforte, which belong to the class of pianoforte quartets etc., and may be regarded as miniature symphonies. The first of these two classes is, naturally, but rarely met with, six-part harmony not being easy to write; but the few examples we have are striking ones. ”

“ THE STRING ENSEMBLE SINCE BEETHOVEN The general trend of development: Spohr, Cherubini, Schubert—Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, etc.—New developments: César Franck, d’Indy, Chausson—The characteristics of the Russian schools: Tschaikowsky, Borodine, Glazounoff and others—Other national types: Grieg, Smetana, Dvořák—The three great quartets since Schubert and what they represent; modern quartets and the new quartet style: Debussy, Ravel, Schönberg—Conclusion. ”