13 Nineteenth-century national traditions and the string quartet
In the developing national musical traditions of the nineteenth century, certain genres, inevitably, were privileged. Given its explicit, decorative, often political nature, opera became the major mode of projecting nation and national character, followed at some distance by the symphonic poem and programme symphony. In such an environment the string quartet, which of all the major genres of the eighteenth century that continued to flourish in the nineteenth tended to retain its abstract credentials, was hardly a priority as a means of expression for the more nationally inclined composer. The landmarks of nationalism, such as Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Moniuszko’s Halka and Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and My Country represented the public face of the composer both serving and dramatising the nation, courting and exploiting the aspirations of contemporary fashion in their nations’ passage towards the construction of an identity.
For the reflective composer working within national traditions, the string quartet offered the chance to explore a hard-won compositional technique, but also, notably in the case of Smetana, to project a more personal mode of expression once the requirements of the nation had been served. Thus, paradoxically, given its abstract origins, the quartet, reimaged by nineteenth-century aspirations, not only could embody the rigour of orthodoxy, but for the programmatically orientated Smetana proved also to be the means of explicitly dramatising his life;1 and in the hands of the Russians Tchaikovsky and Arensky the quartet could in the manner of Renaissance and Baroque tombeaux commemorate a life.2 If the programmatic quartet was very much an exception, very few composers among the Slavs in the latter part of the nineteenth century could resist playing the national card: among the Russians this amounted to the frequent use of folksong, while the Czechs, in general resistant to the quotation of folk material, made extensive use of native dance rhythms, in particular the polka and furiant. If not as ‘in the face’ of the public as the monuments of national opera, the quartet could reinforce constructions of nationalism while still affording composers, notably in the Czech tradition, a means of realigning with the Classical canon.
Where the quartet did flourish, a crucial feature was an institutional infrastructure that supported the performance and composition of chamber music; of equal significance was the rise of the professional quartet (see Chapters 3 and 4). Among the Czechs, for example, there was a burgeoning musical life in which the salons and concert-giving bodies of Prague developed favourable conditions for chamber music, assisted by the increase in the number of professional ensembles. In this environment the string quartet flourished and in the fourteen quartets of Dvo
ák provided Romanticism with its most substantial contribution in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Russia
As with most other cultural developments in Russia, the rise of the string quartet was very much a tale of two cities: St Petersburg and Moscow. One of the significant musical figures of St Petersburg in the early nineteenth century, Alexander Alyabyev (1787–1851), who from 1836 lived and worked with success in Moscow, produced the earliest Russian string quartets of note. His first quartet in E
(1815), though expert in its handling of textures (including giving much independence to viola and cello in the first movement) and pleasingly melodic (particularly in the trio of the third movement), has a rather formulaic cut; his second in G major (1825) has more individuality and essays the national accent in the slow movement based on his song, hugely popular in St Petersburg,3 The Nightingale (Solovey). Mikhail Glinka (1804–57), another composer nurtured by St Petersburg, and decisive in founding what became known as the Russian style, was not greatly exercised by the quartet medium: his first, in D major (1824), was left unfinished; his second, in F major (1830), is more fluent and shows a clear appreciation of Classical procedures, but it marked the end of his interest in the genre. In fact, his quartets impinged so little on his consciousness that towards the end of his life Glinka failed to recognise one of them when performed for him.4
The musical institutions of St Petersburg and Moscow developed vigorously throughout the nineteenth century. In St Petersburg concert life was much enhanced by the Philharmonic Society, founded in 1802, which attracted visiting artists of the calibre of Berlioz, Schumann and Liszt. Chamber music was served by a number of musical salons; from 1871 the Russian Quartet gave frequent performances in St Petersburg and the following year a chamber music society was established which flourished until the revolution. A key figure in promoting opportunities for quartet performance and composition in St Petersburg was Mitrofan Belyayev. His fortune derived from the timber trade, but his passion, as a keen amateur viola player, was chamber music. Apart from setting up the Russian Symphonic Concerts in 1885, an important nexus for string quartet composition was the chamber music session he held regularly on Friday nights. Rimsky-Korsakov painted a lively picture of these events during which new quartets would be ‘baptised’ with bottles of champagne, a prelude to further bibulous celebrations.5 The practical results of these gatherings, entirely typical of the collaborative tendency among St Petersburg composers, were collective compositions, including a string quartet whose main motif was based on Belyayev’s name (B–la–F) written by Rimsky, Lyadov, Borodin and Glazunov.6 In Moscow opera and ballet were central to musical life, but increasing concert activity through the nineteenth century saw the steady tread of distinguished European artists to the city. As in St Petersburg, a number of salons grew up, and from the middle of the century the opportunities for performing chamber music developed strongly. If not exactly an equivalent to Belyayev, Nikolay Rubinstein became a major player in the city’s musical life, instigating the Moscow wing of the Russian Musical Society and founding the Moscow Conservatoire.
Given a prevailing ideological mistrust of abstract music – Vladimir Stasov, the high priest of this tendency, had an attack of the vapours on hearing that Borodin had sketched a string quartet7 – it is perhaps surprising that the string quartet flourished so extensively in Russia in the nineteenth century. A consistent, if not particularly distinctive, thread was provided by Anton Rubinstein (1829–94), who composed ten string quartets, six of which were published, and Nikolay Afanas’yev (1821–98). Afanas’yev’s twelve string quartets include ‘The Volga’ in A major (1866), in part based on the songs of the boatmen of the great Russian river. Quartets of greater substance and character are to be found in the work of an estimable handful of the more familiar names of Russian nationalism.
Among the St Petersburg kuchka, Borodin (1833–87), apart from his single-movement contribution to Belyayev’s Friday evenings, produced the most substantial quartets. His first, in A major, composed between 1873 and 1877, was described on its title page as being ‘inspired by a theme of Beethoven’; in fact, as David Brown points out,8 only the opening of the Allegro of the first movement owes anything to Beethoven, a passage from the finale of his Op. 130. This first movement shows genuine understanding of quartet texture with imaginative use of the two lower instruments; Borodin’s technical agility is also evident in the fugal writing in the development and a general enrichment of texture with counterpoint. At the opening of the slow movement, Borodin defers to his St Petersburg colleagues by quoting a folksong in the viola part.9 Borodin’s textural and contrapuntal expertise are again apparent in the scherzo and finale; the latter also takes a lead from Glinka’s Kamarinskaya in making use of a varied ostinato for much of its material.10 Given the combination of compositional logic and colourful handling of instruments, it is little surprise that the first performers of the quartet, in St Petersburg in 1881, were delighted with the work.11 Borodin’s Second Quartet, in D major (1881), one of his best-known compositions, if not explicitly Russian in terms of the quotation of folk melody, evokes a tone that has come to be associated with Russian nationalism: reflexive melody in the first movement, repetition as a developmental device in the scherzo and, as in the last movement of the First Quartet, the cumulative power of ostinato and variation in the finale. But it is the Notturno slow movement that sticks in listeners’ minds as something of a locus classicus of Russian Romantic music: ravishing, asymmetrical, frankly vocal melody unashamedly presented.
Of the remainder of the kuchka, only Musorgsky did not touch the string quartet; indeed, he joined Stasov in having a panic attack on hearing about Borodin sketching such a work.12 In 1854 Balakirev (1827–1910) began, but did not complete, a ‘Quatuor original russe’; Cui (1835–1918) completed three quartets (C minor, 1890; D major, 1907 and E major, 1913), some of the most substantial instrumental works from a composer who tended to cultivate the miniature. Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) wrote a number of works for string quartet, including three full-length works in F major (1875) and G major (1897); the third (1878–9) was a quartet in which each of the four movements is based on specified Russian folk songs. The remainder of Rimsky’s contribution comprised four movements written as part of the collaborative quartets for Belyayev’s entertainments.
Four classically influenced (though quirkily original) short movements for quartet from 1863 and 1864 preceded Tchaikovsky’s first serious effort in the medium. In this work, a single movement in B major from 1865 just before he took up teaching in Rubinstein’s Moscow Conservatory, Tchaikovsky essayed the folk manner later favoured by his St Petersburg counterparts. Tchaikovsky shows more than competence in dealing with the quartet medium in this work, in which a distinctive, chorale-like Adagio misterioso frames an unsettled and slightly wayward sonata Allegro con moto based on a Ukrainian folksong. His first official quartet, in D major (1871), enjoyed a high-profile premiere at a benefit concert for its composer; predating the completion of Borodin’s First Quartet by six years, the work was viewed by its contemporary audience as something of a milestone for the genre in Russia. David Brown, quite rightly, points out the similarity to Schubert in its delicately syncopated opening,13 but much of the success of this first movement derives from Tchaikovsky’s bold use of harmony and creative disposition of counterpoint through the texture. The slow movement, based on another Ukrainian folksong, has charm and elegance. Both scherzo and finale benefit from rhythmic unpredictability, the latter developing exhilarating impetus.
The contemporary success of the First Quartet was well deserved and Tchaikovsky built fruitfully on the experience in his second. Written three years later in 1874, the quartet’s process of composition was, by Tchaikovsky’s own account,14 remarkably fluent. All of the movements mark an advance on the First Quartet: the slow movement is unquestionably more profound, the scherzo and finale both more ear-catching as well as demanding; even more remarkable is the first movement, whose introductory Adagio provides one of Tchaikovsky’s most searching explorations of chromaticism. His Third Quartet, written early in 1876, shows for much of its length an even greater emotional engagement than in the second. Although it was a public success at its first performances, Tchaikovsky harboured doubts about the work, fearing that he was repeating himself.15 The first, third and final movements are richer in texture and affect than their counterparts in the earlier quartets. The slow movement was intended to commemorate the death of the Czech violinist Ferdinand Laub, who had settled in Moscow in 1866 and who had led the group which premiered Tchaikovsky’s first two string quartets. While sincerely intentioned, the quasi-Baroque rhetoric of the opening, with its dotted rhythms and lack of melodic substance, leaves a slightly stilted impression.
The tradition of the commemorative quartet continued in the second (A minor, 1894) of Anton Arensky (1861–1906). St Petersburg trained, but a teacher of composition at the Moscow Conservatory from 1882, Arensky was much mentored by Tchaikovsky. On the older composer’s death he wrote a distinctive quartet, scored originally for the sombre colouring of violin, viola and two cellos, though later arranged for the conventional combination, as an ‘in memoriam’. Each movement is based on pre-existent material: Orthodox chant, a Russian folksong in the finale (familiar from Beethoven’s ‘Razumovsky’ quartet Op. 59 no. 2) and a song by Tchaikovsky, from the Sixteen Children’s Songs Op. 54, in the middle movement. Though occasionally inclined to the formulaic, particularly in the first movement, the writing is frequently striking in its volatility.
One of the most substantial bodies of Russian string quartets was left by Alexander Glazunov (1865–1936). The first of his seven quartets (D major, Op. 1, 1882) attracted the favourable attention of Belyayev, who took the young composer under his wing. For his part, Glazunov became an enthusiastic participant in Belyayev’s Friday soirées for which he wrote a number of quartets, including Five Novelettes for String Quartet (Op. 15, 1886), whose cosmopolitan credentials are proclaimed in designations such as Alla Spagnuola, Orientale and All’Ungherese. A major player in the latter stages of Russian Romantic nationalism, Glazunov consistently adopted the Russian style: his Third String Quartet (G major, Op. 26, 1888), however, was published under the rather more generalised Slavonic title ‘Quatuor Slave’. This engaging work includes an ostinato-based Interludium by way of a slow movement, a Mazurka third movement and an extensive finale entitled ‘A Slavonic Festival’. Glazunov continued to compose string quartets for much of the rest of his career – the last, ‘Hommage au passé’ (C major, Op. 107), was completed in 1930. Arguably his finest quartet is the fifth (D minor, Op. 70), composed in 1898 when Glazunov was approaching the height of his powers. Beethoven appears to be an influence in the first two movements: his late style in the fugal introduction to the opening Allegro, and the Razumovsky quartets in the Scherzo. Throughout there is abundant evidence of Glazunov’s burgeoning originality, not least in the profound Adagio.
Taneyev (1856–1915), as his soubriquet ‘the Russian Brahms’16 might suggest, was the most abstractly inclined of Russian quartet composers. Scholarly and fastidious, Taneyev studied Renaissance counterpoint, Bach and, on a visit to Salzburg, the manuscripts of Mozart. His six ‘official’ quartets (two incomplete quartets were written respectively in the mid 1870s and in 1911; three more date from the 1880s) on the whole tread the path of orthodoxy, although the first (B minor, Op. 4, 1890) is something of an exception. Cast in five movements, the work contains some arresting gestures in the first movement and at the start of the fourth. But much of the material cannot entirely escape the charge of blandness, even triviality in the finale. There is little sign of the influence of his teacher Tchaikovsky, to whom the quartet is dedicated, but Brahms at several junctures is a potent presence. The Second Quartet (C major, Op. 5, 1895), composed at the Yasnaya Polyana dacha of Tolstoy, with whom Taneyev played chess, retreats towards orthodoxy in both outward shaping and, with the exception of the darkly coloured scherzo, content. The sixth published quartet (B, Op. 19, 1906) is a slightly curious spectacle: the first movement is ultra-conventional, but there is an original, neo-classical cut to the Giga third movement, and the finale plays interestingly with varied tempi.
Scandinavia
The quartet among the Scandinavians had an estimable currency. If opera proved less of a preoccupation than in Russia and Central Europe, owing largely to a less developed infrastructure, the main medium for national expression tended to be incidental music, most famously Grieg’s for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. The prevalent tendency in abstract music through much of the nineteenth century was to favour German models: in his single quartet in A minor (1831), the German-born Danish composer Kuhlau (1786–1832) pays homage to Beethoven’s Op. 132 within the context of the more brilliant style favoured in the 1820s. Scandinavian affinities with early German Romanticism were reinforced in Norway by a steady procession of composers to Leipzig to study, including Johann Svendsen (1840–1911), Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) and Christian Sinding (1856–1941), all quartet composers. Among the Danes, Johan Hartmann (1805–1900) travelled extensively in Germany, where he met Mendelssohn, and Peter Heise (1830–79) also studied in Leipzig. For Hartmann, whose main contribution to the national cause resided in incidental music for the stage marked by his affinity for Scandinavian mythology, quartet composition was not a major priority and he completed only two works of relatively conventional cut. Heise, on the other hand, composed six quartets, the most distinctive of which, in C minor (1857), shows a clear personality extending beyond the influence of Beethoven and the early German Romantics.
The formative connection with Mendelssohn’s Leipzig had been made by the Dane Niels Gade (1817–90), whose First Symphony, conducted by Mendelssohn, was given there to acclaim in 1843. Gade taught in Leipzig and, briefly, succeeded Mendelssohn as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra before returning to Copenhagen in 1848. Gade was very much the overarching figure in Danish music and a major influence generally in Scandinavia. Central to the musical life of Copenhagen, this essentially conservative musician influenced at least three generations of composers, from Heise and Grieg to Nielsen (1865–1931), who mourned Gade’s passing with due sincerity. Although Gade was an avid quartet player, leading an ensemble in Copenhagen whose preferred repertoire was Beethoven, he left only three string quartets complete. An early movement in A minor (1836) and an incomplete work in F major (1840) prelude his first completed quartet; dating from 1851, this F minor quartet was designated a ‘practice piece’ by the composer.17 Though under-formed in some ways, the quartet shows far more than competence in the idiom; particularly engaging is the lilting passacaglia that introduces a finale with the character, almost, of a late eighteenth-century Central European Pastorella. A six-movement quartet in E minor from 1877 (usually heard in a much-edited five-movement version)18 marks a considerable advance: the angularity and impetus of the scherzo is impressive and the succeeding Allegretto has an arrestingly original profile, though the finale retreats toward the manner of Mendelssohn.
Gade’s D major String Quartet (completed 1889), his only one to be published (Breitkopf & Härtel, 1890), reveals his strengths and weaknesses as a quartet composer. The formal craft is excellent, as is the handling of texture; even at this late stage in his career, Gade’s admiration for Beethoven and Mendelssohn is clear, though there is much in the work that shows him to be far more than a pale imitator, notably the brooding approach to the recapitulation in the first movement and the arresting central episode of the brilliant, though otherwise Mendelssohnian, scherzo. The main problem is that these moments of real originality expose the fundamentally conservative background. The case that these works should be heard more often is unanswerable; at no stage does their quality fall towards the routine, but they are not distinctive enough, in the manner of Smetana and Dvoák, to provide a lead for a national school, even if their sheer competence might well have supplied a technical basis for one.
Given his unease with larger abstract forms, it is perhaps not surprising that Grieg’s extant works for string quartet19 comprise only one completed work in G minor (1877–8) and two movements from 1891, though both quartet and torso have a far more national cut than any by Gade. The G minor Quartet is interesting from many points of view. While the work’s national credentials are vested mainly in the use of folk style in parts of the finale, it is mainly remarkable for its originality. Despite Debussy’s caustic critical views of Grieg, amounting in some cases to the near-abusive,20 the French composer seems to have recognised the quartet’s progressive qualities; a number of writers have noted the impact of Grieg’s quartet on Debussy’s in the same key, composed some fifteen years later.21
Original in form and content, both tonal and textural, the quartet is one of the most cyclic works Grieg wrote. The falling motif which unites the work is taken from Spillemaend (Minstrels), Op. 25 no. 1, one of the finest of Grieg’s middle-period songs. Based on a Norwegian legend in which an artist gains enlightenment from a water-sprite at the cost of personal happiness, the song was written at a time of marital tension, a fact that has prompted autobiographical interpretation.22 Given the extensive use of the opening theme of the song in the quartet and the stormy nature of, in particular, its first and last movements, the element of autobiography may have been carried over into the chamber work. The theme is heard at its broadest when used as the second subject of the first movement’s main Allegro molto ed agitato, but is at its most dramatic in the doom-laden introduction to the work and in the impressively portentous approach to the conclusion of the finale (these final bars also make cyclic reference to the start of the first movement’s main Allegro). Grieg’s daring handling of texture and harmony is evident in the striking transitional material to the first movement’s second subject which appears, at first, as an almost separate melodic unit (comparable to the presentation of the second subject of the finale of his Piano Concerto). When reduced to a more succinct three-note motto, the theme is a significant element in the lighter inner movements and both initiates and dominates the finale.
The national element pioneered by Grieg in Norway is only overtly apparent in the finale (again in common with the Piano Concerto and other works); what is most impressive about this quartet is its impassioned rhetoric and the arresting angularity of much of the material in the outer movements. This impressive, and underrated, work23 unfortunately had no complete successors. It is easy to admire the craftsmanship of the two movements that exist from the F major Quartet of 1891, in particular the broad Allegro vivace, and to note Norwegian dance rhythms in the Allegro scherzando; but the energy and intensity that make the G minor Quartet such a compelling work, in which Grieg’s particular difficulties with broader structures prompted impressively original solutions, are lacking.
As Grieg struggled to finish his F major Quartet, the Dane Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) had already completed four works and sundry other movements for the medium. A good violinist, Nielsen seems to have gravitated naturally to the string quartet as a means of learning his craft. His first completed quartet, in D minor (1883; unpublished), impressed Gade sufficiently to allow the teenage Nielsen into the Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen. Another tiro work followed (in F major, 1887; unpublished) before the sequence of four quartets that make up his published contribution to the genre: no. 1 in F minor (Op. 5, 1890); no. 2 in G minor (Op. 13, 1887–8, revised 1897–8); no. 3 in E major (1897–8, new version 1899–1900) and the Quartet ‘Piacevolezza’ Op. 19 (1906, revised as the String Quartet in F major, Op. 44, c. 1919).24 All four published works have strong parallels with the central symphonic thread of Nielsen’s output, and it is the subject of regret among commentators that he did not pursue the genre in his deeper maturity.25
The F minor Quartet has much in common with Nielsen’s First Symphony, also from 1890; both first movements have a bracing, headlong impetus, their thematic design is reflexive and harmonies incline at times to an almost ‘bluesy’ approach. Brahms is present in the tightness of the motivic design, the swaying secondary material and, as Charles M. Joseph observes,26 the string writing. In both quartet and symphony, what impresses most is not the trail of influences on a still young composer, but the assured handling of the idiom, the unaffected sincerity of the slow movement and many aspects of thematic and harmonic design, even if, as David Fanning points out, there is a self-confessed tendency in the work to stick too closely to the tonic.27 This quartet was played to none other than Joseph Joachim; despite the evident audacity of some of its harmonies it evidently secured the approval of the venerable violinist.
The G minor Quartet, originally composed two years before the F minor, also has much in common with the First Symphony, once again mainly in the first movement; the melodic and motivic writing in the first two movements seems to nod in the direction of Dvoák rather than Brahms; while the episodic, bitter-sweet third movement comes close to Dvoák’s dumka style. Perhaps inevitably, the C minor scherzo brings to mind the determined Beethoven manner often prompted even late in the nineteenth century by the key, though the artful simplicity of the trio, with its drone bass, clearly evokes the national manner. Despite some astringent harmonies, the finale is the most conventional in cut of the four movements.
Nielsen’s first two quartets, despite sporadic originality, were still very much products of the nineteenth century. Written just before the turn of the century, the Third String Quartet is very much a work for a new age. Each movement is couched in a relatively conventional formal frame, but the musical language at every stage is identifiable with the composer’s early maturity. The first movement mingles intensity with a quizzical quality that has much in common with the Allegro collerico of the Second Symphony (‘The Four Temperaments’), written at much the same time. The opening of the slow movement, with its probing, unresolved dissonances, introduces one of Nielsen’s most profound statements to date. Throughout this comprehensively impressive quartet, the handling of texture is confident and far less derivative than in earlier works; if some of the counterpoint in the finale begins conventionally, it soon veers off into unexpected directions. The Fourth Quartet is built on the advances of the third and with greater textural refinement. Unquestionably fascinating, with almost Mahlerian ironic gestures in the first and third movements, this work has many rewards. Nevertheless, it is perhaps the Third Quartet that prompts the most regret that Nielsen did not pursue the genre further with a series of works to parallel his later symphonic development.
In common with the Danes in the nineteenth century, there was also something of a ‘Leipzig tendency’ among the Swedes: Lindblad (1801–78) studied with Zelter and knew Mendelssohn; although he is remembered mainly for his songs, he composed seven string quartets; over a generation later, Ludvig Norman (1831–85) was also educated in Leipzig and, perhaps predictably, his six string quartets display the influence of Mendelssohn and Schumann as well as of Gade. But by far the most distinctive Swedish nineteenth-century quartets were by a figure whose affinities were largely oblique to the Leipzig aesthetic. Franz Berwald (1796–1868) was born into a distinguished family of Swedish musicians of German origin; a distinguished professional violinist, he appears to have been self-taught as a composer. Against this background, his three string quartets are doubly remarkable; if they do not fit the narrow definitions of nationalism in the use of the popular or folk manner, they possess a sheer originality that gives them a unique profile in Scandinavian music of the period. Although Berwald worked extensively in Germany and Austria, his style defies canonic definition. While the musical language of his early First String Quartet (G minor; 1818) is founded on German late classicism, expectation is constantly defeated, notably in the first movement where the agenda is set by an opening that casts its net broadly both tonally and stylistically; abrupt changes of direction become virtually a formal feature in this sizeable movement. The Poco adagio is of a more conventional cut, but the scherzo, which frames a hauntingly attractive trio, and finale return to the audacity of the first movement, although the latter courts the dangers of collapse from the sheer disparity of its material.
Berwald’s remaining two quartets, both from 1849, were completed after his final return to Sweden. Though more succinct than the first, the Second Quartet, in A minor, retains the ability to surprise; its greater economy imparts coherence, and Berwald’s use of the instruments is far more resourceful than in the First Quartet. In general, the formal outline of each movement follows convention, but the quartet as a whole is played without a break. The most successful inter-movement transition is from the slow movement into the elusive scherzo; less convincing is the bridge from the first movement, in which a long wind-down concludes with a brusque chord leading straight into the slow movement.
From nearly every point of view Berwald’s Third Quartet, in E major, transcends both his earlier efforts. Formally, the work is startlingly experimental: after an introduction, the main material of the Allegro di molto frames an Adagio which in turn has at its heart a brief scherzo movement. Each section is played without a break, and in direct anticipation of later nineteenth-century cyclic works, the Adagio, with its built-in scherzo, is sandwiched between the conclusion of the first movement’s development and its recapitulation; rather more impressively, this arch-form arrangement of the five sections also looks forward to Bartók’s Fourth String Quartet. For all its formal innovation, the musical language of the E major quartet is both more controlled and settled than that in its predecessor, offering the listener a clearer route through its novel structure. This synthesis of formal experiment with a more approachable musical language results in one of Berwald’s most impressive instrumental compositions.
Given the dominant, at times decidedly oppressive role played by Tsarist Russia in Finland through most of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries, it is hardly surprising that nationalism was the major force in the ‘grand duchy’s’ music of the period. The prevalent means of musical-national expression was the choral song, with instrumental and eventually orchestral music employed largely as a means to evoke the beauties of Finland’s lakes and forests. In this context the string quartet had little part to play, although Fredrik Pacius (1809–91), a pupil of Spohr and perhaps the greatest champion of Finnish music of the mid-nineteenth century, left a single German-influenced quartet (1826). The connection of an even greater champion of Finnish music, Sibelius (1865–1957), with quartet writing has interesting parallels with Nielsen’s. Like Nielsen, he was a violinist from his youth and during the 1880s did much quartet playing which continued into his days in the Helsinki Music Institute, where in 1887 he became the second violinist of that establishment’s main string quartet.
Sibelius’ earliest attempts at quartet writing reflect the domestic setting in which he enjoyed playing quartets in his youth: an E quartet from 1885 leans heavily on his experience of Haydn.28 Sibelius returned to the medium as a means of learning his craft, notably in a Fugue for string quartet composed in 1888 during his studies with Wegelius, which, as Tawaststjerna observes, anticipates the composer’s only canonic quartet, Voces Intimae (1909).29 An Adagio for string quartet and a Theme and Variations in C
minor date from the same period; when the latter was given in a concert at the Helsinki Conservatoire, it attracted the attention of Karl Flodin, the premier Finnish critic of the time. Flodin’s approval of the work was capped by his enthusiasm for Sibelius’ A minor Quartet, which he praised for its originality and technical mastery, adding the prophetic encomium: ‘Mr Sibelius has with one stroke placed himself foremost amongst those who have been entrusted with bearing the banner of Finnish music.’30 The following year, Sibelius began a quartet in B (1890, Op. 4). Wegelius admired the work in its early stages and some indication of its advance on the A minor Quartet can be gauged from the reaction of Albert Becker, Sibelius’ teacher in Berlin, who was, apparently, so alarmed by it that ‘he nearly had a heart attack’.31 The B major Quartet’s broader lyrical paragraphs and distinctive melodic accent, notably in the main melodies of the Andante and rondo finale, give clear indications of the mature composer.
There is an irony in the fact that Flodin’s praise of Sibelius as one suitable to become the banner-bearer for Finnish music was prompted by a string quartet. Sibelius, as he embarked on the 1890s, the decade in which he established his mature style, turned his back on the string quartet entirely. In his maturity, Sibelius completed only a single quartet, though he may have worked on more.32 The D minor Quartet (1909, Op. 56) takes its title, Voces intimae, from a comment Sibelius pencilled in over a passage in the central Adagio di molto:33 this moment of ear-catching poetry occurs as the strings play three chords of E major, ppp, in breathtaking contradiction to the E major in which the music had settled in the previous bar. As a whole, the musical language of the quartet looks back to the Second and Third Symphonies, the Violin Concerto, and, particularly in the finale, the symphonic poems of the early 1900s rather than on to the Fourth Symphony. Cast in five movements, the work shows a succinct approach to thematic development; Sibelius also made a number of subtle links between the first and second movements, and the central Adagio and succeeding Allegretto. For all the quartet’s affinities with the style of his great orchestral works of the late 1890s and early 1900s, Sibelius’ writing for the four instruments is entirely idiomatic, if at times strenuous.
Central Europe
The considerable variety of musical provision in Central Europe in the nineteenth century resulted in a mixed fate for the string quartet. Musical organisations were, inevitably, affected by local political circumstances. Opera was, of course, the genre of choice, but where circumstances were favourable, the string quartet flourished. The rise of concert opportunities in Prague in the 1850s and 1860s, for example, had a marked effect on chamber-music performance which paid off handsomely in the 1870s, perhaps the crucial decade for the development of what we now see as the Czech string quartet tradition. Elsewhere, matters were more fragmented.
Despite Poland’s divided status throughout the nineteenth century – it was partitioned between Prussia, Russia and Austria in 1795 – its nominal capital, Warsaw, saw the development of a lively musical life impelled by the presence of educational institutions, including the Warsaw Lyceum. Given that it was centred on the National Theatre, opened in 1779, and later the Wielki Theatre, it is not surprising that the major musical investment was on opera, with vocal and piano music bringing up the rear. Despite increased political control from Russia after the ‘November Uprising’ of 1831 and the loss of potential leaders such as Chopin, musical life managed to prosper. Although string instrument manufacturing enjoyed demand, a sure reflection of contemporary taste was a major growth in piano-making in the first half of the century. Concert life certainly flourished, but tended to favour, as elsewhere on the concert trails of Europe, the local or international soloist.
If the string quartet did not exactly prosper in this environment, it did not wither on the vine. As in most areas, Elsner (1769–1854) took something of a lead in importing a Polish flavour, via the use of national material, into the string quartet, notably in his three quartets, Op. 1, published in Vienna in 1798, with the subtitle ‘meilleur goût polonois’. But given the more explicit national advocacy that opera afforded, it is perhaps unsurprising that his greatest successor after Chopin, Moniuszko (1819–72), only left two string quartets and those were confined to his apprentice years in Berlin (1837–9). While there is little evidence that any composer was prepared to cultivate the quartet at the expense of other genres, or to bring to the style a distinctive nature, a handful of works, mainly of a conservative cut, exists from the likes of Dobrzynski (1807–67; 3), Orlowski (1811–61; 2), Noskowski (1846–1909; 4), and the tragically short-lived Stolpe (1851–72; 2); Paderewski’s (1860–1941) only contributions to the string quartet are a set of variations and a fugue from 1882 which remain unpublished.
In another part of Austrian-dominated Europe, Hungary, matters were surprisingly similar. The verbunkos style, endemic in central Europe from the late eighteenth century, and a manner that attracted Romantic composers as various as Brahms and Liszt, thrived throughout the nineteenth century. Although Budapest boasted a successful chamber music series in the ‘National Casino’ in the 1830s and 1840s, and two excellent string quartet groups, a national style of quartet writing is not a prominent strand in Hungarian music in the nineteenth century. Neither of the two Hungarian musicians who dominated their country’s musical life, Liszt and Ferenc Erkel, wrote string quartets. As in Poland, the major effort of composers was directed towards opera and the symphonic poem.
This is not to say that quartet writing was wholly unknown in Hungary; the seven string quartets of Mihály Mosonyi (1815–70) are effective, classically conceived works which show the influence of Beethoven, and the quartets of Odon Farkas (1851–1912) and Emil Ábrányi’s (1882–1970) quartet of 1898 are touched by a clear national accent. The political constriction which affected all aspects of life in Hungary for much of the nineteenth century and the lack of opportunity for aspiring composers drove many away: Karl Goldmark (1830–1915), whose musical language was frequently coloured by native material and who played a role in Hungary in the uprisings of 1848, spent most of his career in Vienna, where the Hellmesberger Quartet’s performance (1860) of his single string quartet in B major, Op. 8, did much to help establish his reputation. Balancing the loss of the émigrés, there was an immigrant element in the fate of the string quartet in Hungary, notably from Robert Volkmann (1815–83), who settled in Budapest in 1841. A distinguished figure in the life of the Hungarian capital – he taught at the National Hungarian Academy of Music, founded in 1875 with Liszt as its principal ornament – in his six string quartets he maintained Classical credentials rather than exploring the native accent of his adoptive region. An indication of the polyglot nature of the Hungarian lands is the contribution of Ján Levoslav Bella (1843–1936). A Slovak who was educated in Vienna and whose affinities were Slavonic rather than Hungarian – an acquaintance of Smetana and Dvoák, he aimed to establish a specifically Slovak style – he nevertheless produced among his four string quartets music that reflects both a Hungarian accent and a more broadly central European culture. His ‘Christmas Sonata’ quartet in F major of 1866 appears to be lost, but was likely a recrudescence of the Pastorella style of Christmas music, built on Christmas carols and much beloved throughout central Europe. His Second Quartet in E minor of 1871, however, is frankly titled ‘Hungarian’ and duly makes allusion to the native manner.
If there was little about the Romantic Hungarian string quartet that even began to approach the contribution made by Bartók in the twentieth century, there were intimations of an improving situation towards the end of the nineteenth century. Ern
Dohnányi’s (1877–1960) three string quartets (A major, 1899; D major, 1906 and A minor, 1926) are powerful testimony to a major musical personality. Understandably, the First String Quartet, composed when Dohnányi was in his early twenties, inclines toward Brahms in the first movement. The second, a work of far greater substance, is one of the finest quartets of the early twentieth century. The handling of texture is entirely assured and there is a Straussian virtuosity in the blending of tempi in the first movement. The passionate tone of the musical language is set by the striking opening melody which, throughout the quartet, acquires an almost autobiographical role: it supplies fibre for the initial Allegro, but also underpins many an adventurous harmonic move and rises like a question mark over the movement’s conclusion, the answer to which is delivered only at the end of the work. The Scherzo middle movement, as Tovey pointed out,34 has evident affinities with the opening of Die Walküre; its pounding forward motion is, however, halted for a moment of stillness out of which emerges an exquisite chant-like melody. The extended concluding Molto adagio reveals the breadth of Dohnányi’s vision: themes from both earlier movements make up a large part of the material; after an impassioned climax it becomes clear that the opening theme of the quartet is destined to dominate. Dohnányi’s Third Quartet, composed some twenty years later, is more brittle and ironic than the second; the harmonic language is also more challenging, with occasional moments of bitonality, although it rarely approaches the astringency of Bartók’s nearly contemporary Third String Quartet. If Dohnányi’s quartets set no agendas in Hungarian national music, they represent the peak of excellence before Bartók.
If the string quartet flourished only sporadically in certain of the national traditions, it had more promising currency among the Czechs. In the last seven of Dvoák’s fourteen quartets, the genre acquired its most distinctive and sustained profile in the nineteenth century after Beethoven and Schubert, and in Smetana’s autobiographical First Quartet, a tradition was established for programme and experiment, the culmination of which, arguably, is to be found in the two quartets of Janá
ek.
Quartet writing was as avidly cultivated by the Czechs as by any musical population in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century the pattern begins to change: the three quartets of Tomá
ek, a dominant figure in the musical life of Prague in the first half of the nineteenth century, belong to the eighteenth. For all its role as one of the stop-off points on the trail of the itinerant virtuoso, where music was concerned, Prague did not begin to approach the specific gravity of Vienna until the middle of the century. While the Estates Theatre, the Cecilia Society and the Sophie Academy (the two last founded in 1840) ensured a continuity of musical life, new musical energies did not materialise until the national revival of the 1860s. The opening of the Prague Provisional Theatre (the precursor of the National Theatre) did much to impel the development of a national style, as did the Artists’ Society, founded in 1863, which opened a music publishing house in 1871. Institutions favouring chamber repertoire were slightly longer in coming: in 1876 the German-speaking community of Prague set up a Kammermusikverein which was eventually joined by the hugely productive Czech Society for Chamber Music in 1894, set up three years after the establishment of the Czech Quartet.
That the quartet developed strongly in Prague after the Mozartian twilight that descended on the city in the first two decades of the nineteenth century was in no small part due to Václav Veit (1806–64). All his four quartets (D minor, 1836; E major, 1837; E major, 1839; G minor, 1840) were published in Leipzig and were well known at home and abroad. Veit introduced into Czech chamber music the early German Romanticism of Leipzig, also apparent in the three quartets of the opera composer Frantiek 
kroup (1801–62) and the single quartets of Frantiek Skuherský (1830–92) and Karel Bendl (1838–97); the influence of Mendelssohn and Schumann also resonates strongly in the earliest chamber works of both Dvoák (1841–1904) and Zden
k Fibich (1850–1900).
Dvoák’s first quartet (A major Op. 2, B 8, 1862) is both confident and original, although the imprint of Mendelssohn, as Dvoák was happy to admit,35 is clear. Many features of Dvoák’s mature style are present, including a sense of forward motion and a penchant, in the first movement in both melody and figuration, for pentatonics. The main problem is an overly high tessitura for the first violin. Dvoák did not return to the string quartet until the end of the 1860s, by which time his style had undergone a considerable, almost ideological, change. Three quartets (D major, B 18; B major Op. 4, B 17; E minor, B 19) composed towards the end of the 1860s show a marked tendency to experiment; Wagner and Liszt are both exemplars, but the sheer audacity of the E minor Quartet goes well beyond the musical language of neo-Romanticism. Both the first movements of the D major and B quartets are gigantic. That of the B lacks points of structural coherence, a situation improved in the D major by greater adherence to Classical models. The remainder of the B Quartet is more expert, with a slow movement whose exploration of textures anticipates later works, such as the E Quintet Op. 97 (B 180) and the G major Quartet Op. 106 (B 192). One unusual feature of the D major quartet is that the main theme of the scherzo is a popular song of Polish origin, ‘Hej, Slované!’, possibly a salute to the oppressed Poles who had been in revolt as recently as 1863 and virtually the only such use of frank quotation in Dvoák’s output.36
The improvisatory handling of material and the use of continuous variation in these two quartets reaches an apotheosis in the E minor. Cast in a single movement lasting nearly forty minutes (quite possibly Romanticism’s longest abstract structure up to that point), it is replete with harmonic and tonal experiment. Dvoák did not supply a key designation and E minor is barely accurate in conventional terms, since it is abandoned soon after the opening and the entire work comes to an end in B major. Two outer sections, in which the motivic development is enormously assured, frame an Andante religioso37 whose symmetrical melody offers a certain repose after the storm and stress of the opening, although being based on a pedal F lasting the entirety of the section’s ten minutes leads to some surprising harmonic tensions.
The 1870s was the decisive decade for fixing Czech style in the string quartet. Dvoák moved away from acute experiment in his two quartets in F minor (Op. 9, B 37) and A minor (Op. 12, B 40), both composed in the autumn of 1873. The first movement of the F minor Quartet shows another tendency that would become common in Dvoák’s chamber music: the following of an understated opening idea with a brisk call before moving onto the main business of the exposition.38 However, at 630 bars, the movement suffers from the rampant gigantism of his earlier quartets. The Tempo di valse third movement and the finale are both more orthodox in form and successful in their roles, even if the latter tends towards orchestral effects. The gem of the quartet is the slow movement: the main melody, one of the most vocal Dvoák had employed in an instrumental work hitherto, artfully straddles F minor and A major; it being too good to waste, Dvoák made a well-known arrangement of the movement for violin and orchestra, entitled Romanze Op. 11 (B 39).
Dvoák’s first version of his A minor Quartet seems to return to the formal experiment of the E minor; arranged in five movements with interlinking motivic features, two slow sections, placed second and fourth, frame a scherzo. A thorough revision transformed the quartet into a more conventional four-movement work; while some transitions are awkward, the general shaping is convincing and it is a pity that Dvoák left the finale incomplete.39 Composed a year later in September 1874, Dvoák’s next quartet (again in A minor) Op. 16 (B 45), marks, as far as his chamber music is concerned, his arrival at orthodoxy. Adopting a Classical frame which looks back beyond the early German Romantics to Haydn and early Beethoven, the first movement has a success deriving from formal clarity articulated by clearly apprehended melody. If the pastiche world of the slightly stilted slow movement disappoints, the scherzo, originally a Menuetto, is effective and looks forward to Dvoák’s maturity. Unfortunately, his new found confidence deserts him in the finale, where the orchestral style and (potentially innovative) decision to begin in a foreign key are distractions.
While Smetana and Dvoák provided the signal works of the repertoire in the 1870s, a decisive move towards the Czech manner came from an unlikely quarter. The Leipzig-educated Zdenk Fibich wrote three works for string quartet (A major, 1874; G major, Op. 8, 1878; Variations in B major, 1883). The A major is also the first avowedly national Czech string quartet: the main theme of the slow movement includes the folksong ‘Ah, not here, not here’ (‘Ach není tu, není’) and the third movement is a polka,40 anticipating Smetana’s use of the dance form in his First Quartet by two years. Elsewhere Mendelssohn is an influence, though there are many strikingly individual moments, not least the approach to the recapitulation in the first movement and the lively contrapuntal opening of the finale. Folk elements also occur in Fibich’s Second Quartet, composed four years later: the trio of the scherzo is an upbeat polka and the finale, with its drone effects and abundant hints of national dance, is dominated by folk tone. Despite expertise in the quartet writing, as a whole the G major Quartet lacks the purposeful expressive depth of the first. The Theme and Variations from 1883 have a slight air of pastiche, although, as ever, they are expertly written.
For Smetana, who spent most of his creative energies on such public works as opera and programmatic symphonic poems, chamber music was used for more personal statements. When his first daughter, Bedika, died in 1855, he commemorated the event in his Piano Trio in G minor. When personal disaster, in the shape of deafness, struck in 1874, Smetana eventually turned to the string quartet to express his reaction to this life-changing tragedy. Though quite capable of writing in abstract forms, Smetana was, through and through, a composer of programme music. Thus, as he admitted in a letter to his friend Josef Srb-Debrnov, the quartet is entirely programmatic: ‘I did not want to write a quartet according to a recipe and to the standard usage of form . . . For me the form of every composition depends on its subject.’41 This statement was followed by a description of the first movement as ‘My yearning towards art in my youth, my romantic frame of mind, the inexpressible longing for something I could neither put into words nor truly define . . .’42 Smetana then went on to define the dramatic falling fifth heard first on the viola as a premonition of fate and the long held E, introduced near the end of the finale, as ‘the fateful whistling of the highest tones in my ear which in 1874 announced to me my deafness’.43
For all Smetana’s programmatic intentions, there is a formal neatness evident in each movement of the quartet that sets off admirably the near-operatic drama of its opening and tragic conclusion. The Polka second movement, evocative of his youth as a ‘passionate dancer’, is rollickingly infectious with its trumpet imitations in viola and second violin. In the slow movement, with its poignant cello solo opening and deeply felt climax articulated by a double and triple stopped chordal outburst, Smetana commemorated his love for his first wife. The finale is the most operatically conceived of the four movements. At first it seems a triumphant conclusion: the composer revelling in his discovery of national musical elements, with Kecal, the marriage broker of The Bartered Bride, brought to mind in the bustling material heard just after the opening. When all appears set fair for a joyous close, the strings plunge into a tense tremolando, over which the first violin plays that fierce high E; a quotation of the fate motif which began the work ushers in a subdued coda. The first public performers of the quartet44 claimed that the trio of the Polka, with its double-stopped chords, was unplayable; but the work became a classic of the Czech tradition. The use of national elements and an autobiographical programme are not in themselves features that guarantee immortality; it is Smetana’s original handling of the medium and the quartet’s dramatic force that secured its audience and, in a very real sense, paved the way for Janáek’s similarly programmatic quartets.
Smetana’s Second String Quartet, composed in the winter of 1882–3, a year before his death, is more challenging. Written while Smetana was in the last stages of syphilis, the quartet gave the composer considerable difficulties: organising material was problematic with even simple cadence patterns proving evasive. Although the work lacks the programmatic detail of the First Quartet, its bold juxtaposing of ideas was undoubtedly expressive of Smetana’s state of mind. Smetana was aware that the first movement might cause problems for the listener. The sporadic nature illness imposed on Smetana’s work patterns is reflected in the wealth of tempo markings to be found in the first and last movements, but Smetana’s operatic sense of timing means that volatility rarely undermines coherence. The second movement, a haunting polka with frequent cross-accents, is the most accessible. The third movement, returning to the stark conflict of ideas found in the opening movement, is perhaps the most problematic for both players and listeners: contrapuntal ideas jostle with material which is almost vocal in rhetoric, looking forward to the expressive passion of Janáek.
In the second half of the 1870s, Dvoák moved steadily towards what might be viewed as his archetypical contribution to the Czech national quartet, the E Quartet Op. 50 (B 92). In 1876, the same year in which Smetana wrote his First Quartet, Dvoák composed his eighth, the E major Op. 80 (B 57). Dvoák’s handling of texture is now entirely consistent and reaches heights of poetry in the slow movement. His handling of formal outline, well exercised in the Fifth Symphony of the previous year, is expert. Into this frame, elements associated with Dvoák’s Czech style settle comfortably: a tendency to melancholy in the first movement, a dumka-like accent in the main theme of the slow movement and furiant cross rhythms energising the third movement. Dvoák dedicated to Brahms his next quartet, in D minor, Op. 34 (B 75), composed in the following year. Written in only twelve days, the quartet is remarkable for its fluency and the unforced confidence with which Dvoák, for example, links the accompaniment of the first movement’s opening idea with the second subject, a feature doubtless appreciated by the work’s dedicatee. The national imperative is served in the ‘Alla polka’ second movement; though attractive, it lacks the character of Smetana’s string quartet polkas and, in common with the finale, there is a tendency to favour compositional process above natural and unforced lyrical development.
No such criticism shadows Dvoák’s last quartet of the 1870s, the E major Op. 51 (B 92), completed at the end of March 1879. In this work, Dvoák draws on the populist qualities of the first set of Slavonic Dances, composed the previous year; he also displays quartet writing far superior to anything he had done to date. National dance rhythms underpin several parts of the quartet: Polka in the transitions of the first movement and Furiant in the lively sections of the Andante con moto. This same movement is explicitly entitled ‘Dumka’, a form, perhaps adapted from Russian and Ukrainian literary models,45 alternating slow and fast sections, which has come to be read as synonymous with Dvoák’s national manner. Dvoák also projects a pastoral air, particularly in the first movement, where its pulsing opening pedal confirms its Slavonic credentials. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the quartet is the way motif and texture, best illustrated by the magical opening of the work, are often united. Dvoák rounded off 1879 by arranging for string quartet the two most engaging waltzes (B 105) from his Op. 54 piano waltzes (B 101).
Witness to Dvoák’s growing reputation as a composer is that both the E quartet and his next, in C major, Op. 61 (B 121), were commissioned by professional quartets, respectively the Florentine and the Hellmesberger. Dvoák’s first attempt at a quartet for Hellmesberger was abandoned with only a single, unquestionably proper, but rather disappointing, movement in F major (B 120). The C major Quartet, completed on 10 November 1881, is far more satisfactory. Its first movement is both powerful in development and subtle in accompanimental detail. As in Op. 51, melody and texture intermingle fruitfully in the slow movement. The scherzo is one of Dvoák’s most thoughtful and richly textured in his chamber music up to that time. In the finale, Dvoák adopts the national tone, though, with an eye to the scrutiny of his Viennese audience, he balances it with rigorous contrapuntal development.
Although Dvoák continued to compose chamber music throughout the 1880s, he did not return to the string quartet (apart from arrangements for quartet in 1887 of twelve of the songs from his early cycle Cypresses)46 until 1893, during the first summer of his sojourn in America. In many ways the ‘American’ Quartet Op. 96 (B 179) epitomises what has come to be seen as Dvoák’s ‘American’ style: open-hearted, symmetrically phrased melody, a penchant for pentatonic writing and dynamic ostinati. In fact, all of these qualities were evident in earlier works,47 but they are most apparent in the works Dvoák composed in his first two years in America. The sketch for the ‘American’ was made in a few hours spread across three mornings in June 1893, and is one of his most fluent. Another aspect of the work reflecting Dvoák’s preoccupations in America is the clarity, not to say simplicity, of form, a characteristic prompted by the need not only to address a less critical audience, but also to produce a model for his composition pupils in New York. As a whole the quartet is a work of vivid moods and delicate instrumental effects, not least the opening of the first movement (possibly prompted by the start of Smetana’s First Quartet). The slow movement is one of Dvoák’s most lyrically intense statements. The two remaining movements may well reflect a programmatic response to Dvoák’s surroundings in the rural Czech community of Spillville, where he wrote the quartet: birdsong in the scherzo and a reference to the village’s church organ in the finale.
Dvoák’s last string quartets, in A major, Op. 105 (B 192), and G major, Op. 106 (B 193), are farewells to abstract music – he devoted the rest of his life to symphonic poems and opera. Although it bears the lower opus number, the A major Quartet was completed after the G major. Both quartets show Dvoák returning to the structural subtlety of his pre-American works. The G major Quartet is the more substantial. Despite the almost throwaway character of its pentatonically inflected first theme, the first movement is very closely argued; indeed, the contrast between joyous exultation and high seriousness are marked features of the first movement, scherzo and finale. The Adagio ma non troppo, one of Dvoák’s greatest slow movements in any genre, is built on a strongly elegiac melody; the air of nostalgia evoked in parts of this slow movement returns in the finale, where twice its impressive sweep is interrupted by the leisurely second theme of the first movement.
The A major Quartet is slighter than the G major. Although it does not attempt the depths of the earlier work, it is one of his most perfect compositions. The cross-rhythms of the scherzo could be read as a reference to national tone, but the style adopted has an abstract quality that transcends the local. Of biographical interest is the work’s emotional volatility; moments of apparent neurosis, perhaps reflective of Dvoák’s own psyche in his later years, emerge in the tense slow introduction to the first movement, the searching, dissonant harmonies heard at the end of the slow movement and the nervy start to the finale.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century the younger generation fielded a number of quartet composers. Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951) composed five string quartets in his long career (E major, Op. 15, 1888; D major, Op. 39, 1893; C major, Op. 61, 1907/1913; F major, Op. 182, 1944; F major entitled Vestec, 1951, the place where the composer died; there also exists a ‘Prayer’ for string quartet from 1940). While they are all effectively written, more distinctive contributions came from two of Dvoák’s pupils, Vítzslav Novák (1870–1949) and Josef Suk (1874–1935). A tribute to Dvoák’s teaching is that he did not impose his own personality on the work of pupils; both Novák and Suk rapidly developed distinctive musical personalities of their own.
While Suk’s first quartet, a student work in D minor (1888), shows only sporadically the composer to come, his second, in B major (1896; revised 1915), offers ample evidence of the future artist. Dvoák is a presence in the opening Allegro moderato, but a tendency to veer towards minor keys and hints of Impressionist colouring look forward to the composer’s maturity. The remaining movements also leave little doubt as to Suk’s individuality: a robust Intermezzo, a passionate and volatile Adagio, rich in expressive dissonance, and an exuberant finale. Given that he was a talented violinist (he was second violinist of the Czech Quartet), it is hardly surprising that his handling of texture is assured. The same virtues are apparent in his one movement quartet, Op. 31 (1911), and the ‘Meditation on the old Czech choral, St Wenceslas’, the latter a fine example of Suk’s expressive, inward-looking manner.
Novák wrote three quartets. The first, in G major, Op. 22 (1899), reflects the composer’s penchant for folksong from the Valasko and Slovácko regions. His Third Quartet Op. 66 (1938), from close to the end of his career, was arranged for string orchestra. But his most interesting contribution to the genre is the Second Quartet in D major Op. 35 (1905). This remarkable two-movement work illustrates Novák’s fascination with cyclic procedures. The title of the second movement, Fantasia, gave the composer licence to amalgamate three thematically linked movements: an Allegro, a scherzo and a brief Largo. The serene opening of the first movement, entitled Fuga, furnishes the material for the entire quartet. Here Novák treats his theme in the fugal manner suggested by the subtitle for some twenty bars before abandoning strict counterpoint for more leisurely exchanges between the players; the use of the strings is particularly inventive in the latter part of the movement, where the textures are both rich and novel.