1850-1899 String Quartet

Question 1

Name 6 string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 1

1-3. Johannes Brahms

• String Quartet No.1 in c, Op.51, No.1 (1873)
• String Quartet No.2 in a, Op.51, No.2 (1873)
• String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat, Op.67 (1876)
  4. Alexander Borodin: String Quartet No.2 (1881)
  5. Antonín Dvořák: String Quartet No.12 in F “American” (1893)
  6. Claude Debussy: String Quartet in g, Op.10 (1893)

Question 2

What is notable about Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No.1?

Answer 2

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No. 1 in D, Op. 11 (1888)
- 2. For the slow movement, Tchaikovsky made use of a folk-song, Sidel Vanya, that he had noted down during a visit in 1869 to his sister and brother-in-law at Kamenka in the Ukraine. The popular B flat slow movement, which brought tears to the eyes of Tolstoy when he first heard it, is entrusted to muted instruments, while the D flat major theme that forms the central section is accompanied by the plucked notes of the cello in a repeated pattern. The popularity of this Andante cantabile later worried Tchaikovsky, since it seemed that this was all people wanted to hear of his music in one or other of the many transcriptions that arose.

Question 3

Piece: string quartet by Brahms, 1.

Answer 3

Johannes Brahms: String Quartet No.1 in c, Op.51, No.1 (1873)

• Both Op.51 quartets are dedicated to Brahms’ friend Theodor Billroth, a Prussian-born Austrian surgeon and amateur pianist and violinist.
• In choosing the key of C minor for the first of his quartets, Brahms may have been seeking to acknowledge as well as break free from Beethoven’s paralyzing influence, since Beethoven composed some of his greatest and most characteristic works in that key. (Brahms likewise chose the key of C minor for his First Symphony.)
• The “terse,” “tragic” String Quartet No. 1 in C minor is remarkable for its organic unity and for the harmonically sophisticated, “orchestrally inclined” outer movements that bracket its more intimate inner movements.
• 1. Allegro (3/2, C minor, sonata form): Structurally and thematically, the first movement shows the influence of Schubert’s Quartettsatz, D. 703, also in C minor (tremolo texture, in this case constant 8th notes). The first violin presents the first theme over repeated notes in accompaniment from the viola and cello, imparting an immediate element of tension. The first subject continues in a remoter key, before the return of the theme played in octaves by the viola and cello, now accompanied by the violins; and leading eventually to the lyrical second subject. Brahms achieves the constant 8th note motion by overlapping the opening dotted rhythm (one instrument offset by a quarter note). The exposition ends with a cello version of the opening figure and it is the first subject that finds an important place in the central development section, with its modulation to C sharp minor, before the original key and first subject return in recapitulation. The cello again offers its version of the opening figure, before the coda. The first movement focuses so much on the first theme that it almost seems like a slight homage to Haydn’s monothematic efficient use of melodic material. The coda in the first movement features cross rhythms (2 against 3) and a written-out ritardando. It ends with a thick orchestral texture; there are double stops for each instrument.
• 2. Romanze (3/4, A-flat major, song ABA form): The A flat major second movement offers an opening first violin theme over a figure suggesting a horn-call, followed by a section of secondary material. Just before the return of the opening material, a similar marking to Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue (two 8th notes of the same pitch with a tie) occurs in the cello part. The process is repeated, with the first theme now varied, followed by a version of the secondary material, now in the home key.
• 3. Allegretto molto moderato e commodo (4/8, F minor, Scherzo & Trio ternary form) - Un poco piu animato (3/4, F major): Begins with a viola melody (as does the scherzo of his 3rd quartet) that starts from the upbeat. The F minor third movement is a very Brahmsian form of scherzo, characterized by the descending contours of its melodic line and contrasted with a trio section in F major, where the principal first violin theme is accompanied by bariolage, the alternation of fingered and open A, from the second violin. Both middle movements had included thematic reference to the principal theme of the first movement.
• 4. Allegro (cut time, C minor, sonata form): The same is true of the final Allegro, broadly in tripartite sonata-form, although it lacks the clearer sectional division of the first movement, seeming to absorb the expected central development into the recapitulation. Like the rest of the quartet it is symphonic and orchestral in conception and characteristically dense in its textures. Brahms makes considerable use of the cello open C string to build an even thicker climax at the end of the piece.

Question 4

Piece: string quartet by Brahms, 2.

Answer 4

Johannes Brahms: String Quartet No.2 in a, Op.51, No.2 (1873)

• Both Op.51 quartets are dedicated to Brahms’ friend Theodor Billroth, a Prussian-born Austrian surgeon and amateur pianist and violinist.
• It is also highly unified thematically, is comparatively lyrical, although culminating in a dramatic and propulsive finale whose tension “derives…from a metrical conflict between theme and accompaniment.”
• Brahms was very conscious not only of classical tradition but in particular of Beethoven’s Opus 18 and Razumovsky Quartets.
• 1. The first movement of the String Quartet in A minor, the second of the pair, is in impeccable sonata-allegro form. The connection with Joseph Joachim, who had long urged Brahms to provide him with quartets, is established in the use of the cryptic motif F-A-E (Frei aber einsam), Joachim’s motto, used twenty years before in that first composite violin sonata, with Schumann and Dietrich. Brahms adapted Joachim’s motto into his own F-A-F (Frei aber froh) motif and this appears later in the movement. The second subject has about it some of the lyrical quality of Schubert and there is a relatively short development and more or less literal recapitulation, the movement ending in the composer’s favorite device of cross-rhythms.
• 2. The A major Andante moderato offers a dark-colored principal theme, first heard over a viola and cello counterpoint. There is an excursion into the relative minor key, with violin and cello in canon, and a return to the principal theme, now in the key of F, before the cello can bring matters to rights and re-establish the tonality of A.
• 3. In the third movement Brahms offers an original substitute for a scherzo, with an interlocking major key trio that changes pace and mode, moving from A minor to A major, now marked Allegretto vivace. The mood returns to one of gentle melancholy in A minor with the re-appearance of the Tempo di Minuetto.
• 4. Like Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 and Violin Concerto, the A minor quartet has a final movement modeled on a Hungarian folk dance, in this case a czárdás. This suggests more overtly the Hungarian element hinted at in the preceding Quasi Minuetto, a compliment to the Hungarian émigré Joachim. The form is in general that of the classical sonata-allegro, its related thematic material transformed in a texture that allows indulgence in cross-rhythms with all the dramatic intensity that Brahms had at his command, and finds a place, as elsewhere in each of the movements, for the device of canon, a contrapuntal element for which Joachim too had a fondness.

Question 5

How many string quartets did Borodin write? What is notable about the second one?

Answer 5

Borodin wrote 2 string quartets.

• String Quartet No.1 in A (1879)
• String Quartet No.2 in D (1881)

String Quartet No.2 (1881)

• The first movement is written in a sonata form. The principal theme of the exposition begins with the cello singing a lyrical melody in high register. All thematic material is lyrical; contrasts are achieved through the use of contrapuntal writing or color contrasts (such as changes of keys).
• The scherzo second movement is also in sonata form rather than the ABA form more usual for scherzo-style movements. Of note is also the appearance of a scherzo as the second movement in a sonata cycle, rather than the more customary third movement.
• The main theme of the third movement Nocturne is perhaps the most famous in the quartet. Of particular note is Borodin’s masterful statement of the main theme after the middle section in canon (first cello and the first violin, then two violins).
• The finale is the movement where Borodin’s contrapuntal mastery is on full display. Written in a conventional sonata form, it opens with an introduction, which introduces the principal theme, broken into two elements–a dialogue between two violins, answered by a viola and cello. These “question-answer” motives combine into the principal theme of the movement , where the “answer” makes an accompaniment, and the “question” makes for the upper voice.

Question 6

Piece: string quartet by Dvořák.

Answer 6

Antonín Dvořák: String Quartet No.12 in F “American” (1893)

• The first public performance was by the Kneisel quartet (cellist was Alwin Schroeder).
• Dvořák spent his vacation in the town of Spillville, Iowa, which was home to a Czech immigrant community. He composed the quartet shortly after the New World Symphony, sketching the manuscript in three days and completing it in three weeks.
• (Dvorak) “I think that the influence of this country (it means the folk songs that are Negro, Indian, Irish, etc.) is to be seen, and that [my] works written in America differ very much from my earlier works, as much in colour as in character.”
• extensive use of the pentatonic scale, common in the music of spirituals and other ethnic musics worldwide. Most analysts, however, fail to see specific American influences in the quartet, aside perhaps from its use of pentatonic scales.
• there is no doubt that Dvořák was deeply impressed by the music he heard in America, and specifically spirituals. Dvořák said “In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.”
• To the Quartet he gave no subtitle himself, but there is the comment “The second composition written in America.”
• The one confirmed musical reference in the quartet is to the song of the scarlet tanager. Dvořák was annoyed by this bird’s insistent chattering, and transcribed its song in his notebook. The song appears as a high, interrupting strain in the first violin part in the third movement.
• A characteristic, unifying element throughout the quartet is the use of the pentatonic scale. This scale gives the whole quartet its open, simple character, a character that is frequently identified with American folk music.
• First movement: The opening theme of the quartet is purely pentatonic, played by the viola, with a rippling F major chord in the accompanying instruments. The second theme, in A major, is also primarily pentatonic, but ornamented with melismatic elements reminiscent of Gypsy or Czech music. The movement moves to a development section that is much denser harmonically and much more dramatic in tempo and color. The development ends with a fugato section.
• The theme of the second movement is the one that interpreters have most tried to associate with a Negro spiritual or with an American Indian tune. It is written using the same pentatonic scale as the first movement, but in the minor (D minor) rather than the major.
• The third movement is a variant of the traditional scherzo. It has the form ABABA: the A section is a sprightly, somewhat quirky tune, full of off-beats and cross-rhythms. The song of the scarlet tanager appears high in the first violin. The B section is actually a variation of the main scherzo theme, played in minor, at half tempo, and more lyrical.
• The final movement is in a traditional rondo form, ABACABA.
• Following Dvořák, a number of American composers turned their hands to the string quartet genre.

Question 7

Piece: string quartet by Debussy.

Answer 7

Claude Debussy: String Quartet in g, Op.10 (1893)

• Debussy’s only string quartet.
• Premiered by the Ysaÿe Quartet.
• known as an innovator of modern music because he reacted against firmly established traditions, led by great German and Austrian composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, to create new stylistic movement, known as “Impressionism,” which became recognized as a distinctly French genre of modern music. This relatively early work exemplifies his break from these traditions.
• It looks forward in many ways to the musical language that Debussy was to develop as entirely his own, characteristic in its use of modal and whole–tone scales, in its subtle harmonies and texture and in its clarity of form.
• It constitutes a final divorce from the rules of classical harmony and points the way ahead. The quartet is considered a watershed in the history of chamber music.
• Its sensuality and impressionistic tonal shifts make it a piece absolutely of its time and place while, with its cyclic structure, it constitutes a final divorce from the rules of classical harmony and points the way ahead.
• “Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are henceforth free to be used in a musical continuity,” Debussy wrote. Pierre Boulez said that Debussy freed chamber music from “rigid structure, frozen rhetoric and rigid aesthetics.”
• Other influences include Borodin and Javanese gamelan music.
• The work seems to be influenced by the style of César Franck. The result is a cyclic structure with the four movements connected by thematic material. This material is introduced in the opening measures of the first movement, and can be tracked in various characters throughout the piece, quite similar to the way Hector Berlioz transforms the idée fixe theme throughout his Symphonie fantastique.
  2. Assez vif et bien rythmé: In the scherzo movement, the cyclical theme serves different roles in each section, serving as a repetitive ostinato in an independent four-voice texture during the first two scherzos, as a lyrical melody over a quasi-tremolo texture in the trios, and again as an ostinato in a homophonic ostinato texture in the final scherzo (mm.148-167). Each new section is preceded by a change in texture, often homophonic, which signals the upcoming new material.

Question 8

Who was the dedicatee of Brahms’ Op.51 string quartets?

Answer 8

• Both Op.51 quartets are dedicated to Brahms’ friend Theodor Billroth, a Prussian-born Austrian surgeon and amateur pianist and violinist. As a musician, he was a close friend and confidant of Brahms, a leading patron of the Viennese musical scene, and one of the first to attempt a scientific analysis of musicality.
• Billroth and Brahms, together with the acerbic and influential Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, formed the core of the musical conservatives who opposed the innovations of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. In the conflict, known as the War of the Romantics, Billroth supported Brahms, but was always fair and measured in his comments. “Wagner was indeed a very considerable talent in many directions,” he wrote in 1888.
• It was one of the earliest attempts to apply scientific methods to musicality. In the essay, Billroth identifies different types of amusicality (tone deafness, rhythm-deafness and harmony-deafness) that suggest some of the different cognitive skills involved in the perception of music.

Question 9

Describe Brahms’ struggle with writing string quartets.

Answer 9

• Brahms was slow in writing his first two string quartets.
• He reportedly destroyed some twenty string quartets before allowing the two Op. 51 quartets to be published. At least one of the quartets (No. 1 in C minor) had been complete as early as 1865 but Brahms continued to revise it for nearly a decade.
• Brahms insisted on hearing a secret performance of the Op. 51 quartets before they were published, after which he substantially revised them.
• In choosing the key of C minor for the first of his quartets, Brahms may have been seeking to acknowledge as well as break free from Beethoven’s paralyzing influence, since Beethoven composed some of his greatest and most characteristic works in that key. (Brahms likewise chose the key of C minor for his First Symphony.)
• While the quartets have enjoyed less popularity than some of Brahms’s other chamber music, they helped revitalize “the great but moribund tradition” of the string quartet that had stagnated after Beethoven and Schubert, and helped inspire the quartets of Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, and other twentieth century composers. In his famous essay “Brahms the Progressive”, Schoenberg praised the quartets for their advanced harmony and for the unprecedented completeness with which Brahms derives each movement from a tiny motif.

Question 10

Piece: string quartet by Brahms, 3.

Answer 10

String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat, Op.67 (1876)
- It was dedicated it to Professor Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann, a German botanist, physiologist, microbiologist, university professor, and an amateur cellist who had hosted Brahms on a visit to Utrecht.
The work is light-hearted and cheerful, “a useless trifle,” as he put it, “to avoid facing the serious countenance of a symphony”.
- 1. The first movement of the quartet starts with a cheerful theme that soon allows the intrusion of cross-rhythms. The second subject, appearing after a transition that touches on the minor, is a happy dance tune, and these elements form the substance of the central development and subsequent recapitulation.
- 2. The F major slow movement introduces a moving and extended melody for the first violin, followed by a middle section that brings moments of drama and changes of metre, with the return of the first theme prefigured in an apparent variation of what is to come.
- 3. The muted D minor third movement, marked Agitato, in which the viola alone remains unmuted, offers thematic material of some intensity for that instrument, which plays a leading part also in the A minor Trio, to join in the gentle D major conclusion with the other instruments.
- 4. The last movement brings a simple melody, followed by eight variations. The first of these is dominated by the viola, which starts the second variation. The third brings triplet figuration, the fourth a sombre opening for first violin and cello two octaves apart, the fifth a change of key to D flat major and the sixth a molto dolce G flat major. The seventh variation, in doubled speed, brings back the key and principal theme of the first movement, followed by a final variation that recalls the transitional material of the first movement, in B flat minor. The movement, the longest of the four, ends with a coda that combines elements of the seventh variation, and therefore the first movement, with the theme of the finale, a statement of perfect unity.

Question 11

How many string quartets did Dvořák write? How are they balanced across his career? Also name the last 5.

Answer 11

Dvořák wrote 14 numbered string quartets which span evenly his entire career. The last 5 are the most notable.

• String Quartet No. 1 in A major (1862)
• String Quartet No. 2 in B♭ major (1869)
• String Quartet No. 3 in D major (1870)
• String Quartet No. 4 in E minor (1870)
• String Quartet No. 5 in F minor (1873)
• String Quartet No. 6 in A minor (1873)
• String Quartet No. 7 in A minor (1874)
• String Quartet No. 8 in E major (1876)
• String Quartet No. 9 in D minor (1877)
• String Quartet No. 10 in E♭ major “Slavonic” (1879)
• String Quartet No. 11 in C major (1881)
• String Quartet No. 12 in F major “American” (1893)
• String Quartet No. 13 in G major (1895)
• String Quartet No. 14 in A♭ major (1895)

Question 12

How many string quartets did Tchaikovsky write? Make two points about one of them.

Answer 12

Tchaikovsky wrote 3 string quartets.

• No.1 in D, Op.11 (1871)
  
  • the quartet has 4 movements: Moderato - Andante - Scherzo - Allegro Finale
  • best-known for the famous Andante cantabile second movement in B-flat (the sub-mediant key of D)
• No.2 in F, Op.22 (1873)
• No.3 in e-flat, Op.30 (1876)

Question 13

How many string quartets did Smetana write? What is notable about the first one?

Answer 13

Smetana wrote 2 string quartets

• String Quartet No. 1 in e (“From My Life”, 1876)
• String Quartet No.2 in d (1882-3)

String Quartet No. 1 in e (“From My Life”, 1876)

1. The first movement is an expression of the composer’s romantic ideals in life and in his music. Its romanticism is reflected by Smetana’s focus on self and nationalism.
2. In the second movement the polka style recalls happy and convivial memories of his youth.
3. The third movement is of great emotional depth, a paean to love, which transcends the adversities of fate and finds harmony in life.
4. In the last movement the composer describes the journey that led to an understanding of the true essence of national art, only to be interrupted by the catastrophe of his incipient deafness. The end is almost resigned, with only a small ray of hope for a better future.

Question 14

Name 1 Italian composer of string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 14

• Verdi: 1 string quartet (1873)

Question 15

Name 2 French composers of string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 15

• Franck: 1 string quartet (1889)

- Claude Debussy: String Quartet in g, Op.10 (1893)

Question 16

Name 1 Austrian composer of string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 16

• Bruckner: 1 string quartet (1862)

Question 17

Name 1 Norwegian composer of string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 17

• Grieg: 2 string quartets (1879 and 1891; the second is unfinished)

Question 18

Name 2 German composers of string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 18

• Johannes Brahms: 3 string quartets.
  
  • String Quartet No.1 in c, Op.51, No.1 (1873)
  • String Quartet No.2 in a, Op.51, No.2 (1873)
  • String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat, Op.67 (1876)
• Richard Strauss: String Quartet in A (1880)

Question 19

Name 3 Czech composers of string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 19

• Smetana: 2 string quartets
  
  • String Quartet No. 1 in e (“From My Life”, 1876)
  • String Quartet No.2 in d (1882-3)
• Dvořák: 14 numbered string quartets
  
  • String Quartet No. 10 in E♭ major “Slavonic” (1879)
  • String Quartet No. 11 in C major (1881)
  • String Quartet No. 12 in F major “American” (1893)
  • String Quartet No. 13 in G major (1895)
  • String Quartet No. 14 in A♭ major (1895)
• Josef Suk: 2 numbered string quartets, 1 unnumbered string quartet
  
  • String Quartet in d (1888)
  • String Quartet No. 1 in B♭ (1896)
  • String Quartet No. 2 (1911)

Question 20

Name 5 Russian composers of string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 20

• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893): 3 string quartets
  
  • No.1 in D, Op.11 (1871): best-known, Andante cantabile second movement
  • No.2 in F, Op.22 (1873)
  • No.3 in e-flat, Op.30 (1876)
• Borodin: 2 string quartets.
  
  • String Quartet No.1 in A (1879)
  • String Quartet No.2 in D (1881)
• Rimsky-Korsakov: 3 string quartets, 2 single movements, and 3 other pieces for string quartet (1875-1899)
• Anton Arensky: 2 string quartets (1888 & 1894)
• Alexander Glazunov: 7 string quartets, numerous other compositions for string quartet

Question 21

Name 1 Finnish composer of string quartets ca.1850-1899.

Answer 21

• Jean Sibelius: 3 string quartets (1885, 1889, 1890), a much better known Voces Intimae (1909)