String Quartet No.1, Op.7: III. Allegro vivace

The Koerner Quartet

String Quartet No.1, Op.7: III. Allegro vivace
Performed By The Koerner Quartet
Album UPC 888174348179
CD Baby Track ID 1362557367
Label The Koerner Quartet
Released 2013-10-18
BPM 144
Rated 0
ISRC ushm91370173
Year 2013
Spotify Plays 26
Writers
Writer Bela Bartok
Pub Co Public Domain
Composer Bela Bartok
ClearanceTraditional SyncEasy Clear
Rights Controlled Master and Public Domain
Rights Easy Clear: Public Domain
Original/Cover/Public Domain public domain
Country CANADA - B.C.

Description

Classical music for string quartet played by Vancouver's most esteemed musicians.

Notes

Composed within six years of each by two composers separated in age by the same number, Ravel Quartet in F (1903) and Bártok First Quartet (1909) appear at first glance to be divergent musical streams, however, when coupled together reveal both composers’ brilliant exploitation of the rich palette of tone colours available within the string quartet genre. The early twentieth century brought about a chamber music renaissance ushered in by Ravel and Bártok. Ravel’s foray into the genre was an experiment never to be repeated (in fact his next chamber work – Piano Trio - was ten year hence), however Bartok’s initial experiment with the form was more pioneering than summarizing, and would ultimate lead to a cycle of six quartets that occupy a seminal place in the chamber music canon.

Both composers were intimately familiar with each other’s work, and while it would be a stretch to describe them as direct influences, they certainly shared common elements: a modal harmonic language rooted in the pentatonic scale and asymmetrical rhythms derived from Hungarian and Basque idioms. In fact Bártok’s appreciation of Ravel and Debussy stemmed not from his first visit to Paris in 1905, but rather from his concentrated interaction with Zoltán Kodály in 1907, who helped aerate the stifling proximity of German culture from the young composer. Quartet in F was one of Ravel’s first works without a programmatic or literary title.Dedicated to his friend and teacher Gabriel Fauré, the work was introduced in Paris by the Heymann Quartet on March 5, 1904.

Quartet in F was Ravel’s final submission to the Prix de Rome and the Conservatoire de Paris only to be rejected by both institutions soon after its premier performance. The quartet received mixed reviews from the Parisian press and local academia who opined about the rhythmical intricacies sounding too mathematical. Gabriel Fauré described the last movement as “stunted, badly balanced, in fact a failure.” Ravel himself commented on the work, “My Quartet responds to a desire for musical construction, which undoubtedly is inadequately realized but which emerges much more clearly than in my preceding compositions.” As a result of major criticism and rejection, a frustrated Ravel left the Conservatoire in 1905 following what was later called the Ravel Affair.

Ravel’s loss during the 1904 Prix de Rome and rejection from the Conservatoire de Paris catapulted his career forward: a sympathetic public rallied behind his compositions and musical style. In 1905, Claude Debussy wrote to Ravel: “In the name of the gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet.” Ravel achieved an effective structural unity by cultivating each of the movements from a common thematic seed that is elaborated between movements by changes of perspective and lighting. Quartet in F is composed in four movements: a rapid first theme in the two-theme sonata form; a scherzo with a trio of wavering tonality; a melodious slow movement that is harmonically and structurally bolder than the others; and a finale in a quintuple meter deriving from Russian rhythms. The astonishing unity achieved in this masterpiece leaves the impression of a perfect outpouring of creativity that flows into its mold in one continuous stream.

Bártok First Quartet unashamedly reveals a reservoir of diverse influences: Wagner, Lizst, and Richard Strauss. However, these great paragons of Bártok’s artistic development were not able to offer him anything to model his initial foray into the string quartet idiom. For this, he was obliged to leap back almost a full century to Beethoven. In particular the free-form connectivity between movements of Beethoven’s C sharp minor Quartet Op. 131 that provided a compositional template. Bártok First Quartet represents a turning point in the composer’s compositional style as the experiences of his first folksong collecting journeys produced their artistic fruit.

The opening theme of the first movement expresses the composer’s unrequited love for his then muse Stefi Geyer, who also served as the principal inspiration for his violin concerto. In fact a manuscript preserved in the Budapest Bartok Archives proves that both works germinated simultaneously with three themes of the Violin Concerto sketched on one side and four theme sketches for the First Quartet on the opposite side with an inscription: ‘I have begun a quartet; the first theme is the second movement of the violin concerto: this is my funeral dirge.’ The following two movements are progressively faster, and the mood of the work lightens considerably displaying Bartók’s masterful understanding of string quartet colour and texture. The third movement is generally considered to be the most typical of Bartók’s mature style with his interest in the Hungarian folk idiom best exemplified by the cello cadenza preceding the third movement incorporating a well-known song at the time, ‘Just One Lovely Girl’.

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