“The string quartet demands discipline and exacting standards from the composer who devotes himself to it; it exposes weaknesses of thought as well as of realisation; it magnifies invention at the same time as it purifies it”, writes Pierre Boulez in the preface to a short essay devoted to twentieth-century quartets. After the heights reached by the last Haydnian and Beethovenian opuses, the string quartet genre – and its extension to the quintet and sextet – seems to encapsulate the quintessence of chamber music, embodying the idea of absolute music, bent on abstraction and punctilious writing. The quartet has withstood historical erosion and the multiplicity of languages and aesthetics, while retaining its specificity. Long associated with the notion of Musica reservata – music “reserved for” an erudite, connoisseur public – the quartet has often been used to assess an author’s degree of historical awareness, and willingness “to write for the quartet” or “to write himself down in its history” (P. Boulez).
Gradually breaking away from the models bequeathed by Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven’s later works called into question the format, duration and internal architecture of the movements, encouraging future generations to break free from pre-established frameworks. Each work now proposes its own path and creates its own reference world, as String Quartet No. 13 makes clear. This score written between July and November 1825 is one of Beethoven’s most complex works. It lasts over three quarters of an hour and comprises six movements of distinct tonality and character, offering a highly original carousel of emotions. The fragmented-sounding first movement blends different episodes in contrasting tempos, rejecting classical symmetries and strict adherence to any classified form. This whimsical section is followed by a scherzo based entirely on a four-note motif, giving rise to various instrumental iridescences, and then a slow movement, poco scherzoso, which combines lyricism and irony. A rustic dance that gradually evolves into a four-person conversation precedes a Cavatine – an oppressive page that evokes in turn religious music, opera or a few entries from a personal diary . The inward-looking expression, and infinite melodic line written in a constant crisscross of voices and dense chromaticism, convey a deep sense of melancholy. It fits in with the composer’s statement that the movement had been composed “in tears” and that “never had his own music made such an impression on him”. The score ends with a monumental fugue, which was later cut off by the musician’s publisher, frightened by the work’s too muchness – oversize, over-complex and too hard to perform if not to listen to. The piece is built entirely around four variations on the same idea, each of which is presented on the first page. Procedures for working on the motif – rhythmically expanded or condensed, altered by a few permutations of notes or intervals – are added to the traditional work of variation, giving both a sense of improvised time and supremely mastered architecture.
Completed in September 1826, String Quartet No. 16 (Op. 135) seems to mark an evolution towards a new style. The briefness, clarity of texture and constant use of cantabile style stand in stark contrast with the work in the preceding opuses. Avoiding pathos, the presence of a Lento assai showing a predilection for the ornamental, the integration of a Scherzo sounding like a parody of a country dance, and then a humorous Finale could give the impression of a return to Haydn. However, its delicate internal balance of movements, phrasal structure, abundance of motifs and refinement of the four-voice playing, hint at a new direction, perhaps towards the idea of serenity recovered.
The scores of the Second Viennese School reveal an obvious kinship with the last Beethovenian opuses as highbrow, stern pieces of work. Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, completed in 1926, follows the six-movement path of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 13. It is conceived as a whole from which it is impossible to extract any part, due to the motivic links unifying the movements, the complex self-quoting between sections, the common metronomic indications and time structure – increasingly lively odd-numbered movements and increasingly slow even-numbered movements. The adjectives attached to the tempo indications reveal an emotional journey from joy to desolation through a series of intermediate climates: giovale, amoroso, misterioso, estatico, appassionnato, tenebroso, delirando, desolato. The discovery of a copy of the score glossed by Berg himself has brought to light autobiographical issues, such as the musician’s relationship with Hanna Fuchs, the wife of a Prague banker with whom he had a passionate affair. The autograph also reveals that the last movement was based on Baudelaire’s poem “De Profundis Clamavi”, taken from Les Fleurs du mal. The text’s atmosphere of suffering and existential despair (“I implore your pity, You, the only one I love, / From the bottom of the dark abyss where my heart has fallen”) initiates a path of suffering closed by the solo viola, with a morendo (“dying”) direction.
Anton Webern’s Bagatelles (1911) are of a completely different nature. Their aphoristic dimension, the atomisation of the thematic material and individualisation of each voice through intervals, rhythms and modes of play, radically challenge inherited models. Their counterpoint of sound and silence, their minute nuances and chromatic concentration underline the uniqueness of each moment and create a deep, interiorised listening experience.
Although it is now one of Schoenberg’s most popular scores, Transfigured Night (1899) was premiered in an atmosphere of hostility – “a riot in which real punches were exchanged” and in which some critics “used their fists rather than their pens”, as the composer wrote. But it is debatable whether it was the work itself that shocked or its subject matter. The score is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, depicting the night-time walk of a couple whose wife confesses that she is expecting another man’s child. The poem itself is part of a collection, Weib und Welt (Woman and the World, 1896), which caused a scandal for its eroticism, breaking social conventions such as the admission of adultery, and earning its author blames of immorality and blasphemy. Schoenberg’s score adopts an evolving form, in keeping with its content. It is subdivided into five parts, corresponding to the five stanzas of the poetry: the couple’s situation in the moonlight, the woman’s confession, the expectation of the man’s reaction, his consoling response, the resumption of the walk through the now-clear night. The notion of transfiguration explains why certain themes are stressed, others transformed or abandoned, and others yet introduced along the way. The sextet also reconciles opposites within a divided German school, referring at once to Brahms’ string sextets, Wagner’s leitmotiv technique, and the programme music of Liszt and Strauss. Schoenberg clearly profited from Beethovenian lessons in constant adaptation and emancipation from inherited models.
Jean-François Boukobza
