Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Music for String Quartet Karol Szymanowski was born in 1882 to an aristocratic Polish family in...
Karol Szymanowski
(1882-1937)
Igor Stravinsky
(1882-1971)
Music for String
Quartet
Karol Szymanowski was born in 1882 to an aristocratic Polish family in
the Ukraine. Owing to a leg injury at the age of four his early education was
at home, where he began to study the piano under his father's direction. Later
he was sent to his uncle Gustav Neuhaus's music school to study both piano and
theory, and under Neuhaus's tutelage was introduced to the works of Bach,
Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and, naturally, Chopin. His first published work was
a set of nine Chopinesque Preludes, written between 1896 and 1900,
although not published until 1906. In 1901 he moved to Warsaw for further
study, taking lessons from both Zygmunt Noskowski (counterpoint and
composition) and Marek Zawirski (harmony). Together with Fitelberg and with two
other students of Noskowski (Ludomir Rozycki and Apolinary Szeluto),
Szymanowski established the group known as 'Young Poland in Music', in order to
publish and promote new Polish music.
Early influences included the music of his compatriot, Chopin, and other
composers such as Wagner, Strauss, Reger and Scriabin. Szymanowski reached his
creative maturity in a series of works written in 1915 that included Metopes
for piano, Myths for violin and piano, and Songs of the Fairy
Princess for coloratura soprano and piano, works which reflect his new
interest in Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. Hearing the latter's Les Noces during
a trip to Paris in 1921 inspired him to write a series of works drawing on the
folk-music of the Tatra mountains in southern Poland, thus instigating a third
creative phase. Szymanowski died at a Lausanne sanatorium in 1937 at the age of
54, having succumbed to a tubercular infection.
The two string quartets make up the sum total of Szymanowski's
contribution to the chamber music repertoire. The String Quartet No. 1
(1917) received its first performance in Warsaw in March 1924. A
transitional work, it moves away from impressionistic effects and seems to
anticipate the forthcoming discovery of folksong. The opening Lento assai is
cast in sonata form, whilst the bipartite slow movement, as its subtitle in
moda d'una canzona suggests, possesses a rare melodic beauty. The last
movement is a scherzo (a projected fourth movement was never written), a
fugal sonata allegro in which each instrumental part is written in a different
key, rising in minor thirds: C-E flat - F sharp-A.
Strong Tatra folk music elements are to be found in the String
Quartet No. 2 (1927), although the first movement seems to seek a
rapprochement with the harmonic world of his impressionist period. The ostinato
accompaniments and rhythmic energy of the second movement clearly show an
acquaintance with the music of Bartok, whilst the slow fugal finale employs a folk-melody
as its main subject and incorporates other Tatra melodies heard also in the
one-act ballet, Harnasie (1923-31).
The Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was the son of the
principal bass at the Imperial Opera, St Petersburg, and studied under
Rimsky-Korsakov. Hugely influential in the development of twentieth century
music (particularly in its innovative approach to both form and rhythm)
Stravinsky's most celebrated work The Rite of Spring features highly
complex syncopations and rapid changes of metre, whilst the concept of
development is abandoned in favour of juxtaposing contrasting blocks of
material. Throughout his career, Stravinsky was able to borrow from different
musical styles (including medieval, Baroque, Classical, as well as folk-music)
and completely transform them into his own highly distinctive musical language.
He first made his name with The Firebird (1909-10), written for
Dyagilev's Ballets Russes in Paris. A huge success, it was followed by Petrushka
(1910-11) and the aforementioned The Rite of Spring (1913). In the
wake of the Russian Revolution, during which his property was confiscated,
Stravinsky wrote The Soldier's Tale (1918) for a small touring theatre
company, combining his dual interest in Russian folk-music and jazz. Another
ballet score written for Dyagilev, Pulcinella (1919-20), saw the
beginning of his neo-classical period in which major works such as the Violin
Concerto (1931), the Symphony in C (1938-40) and the opera The
Rake's Progress (1948-51) were composed. Having settled in the USA in 1939,
he became interested in serialism (especially the music of Webern) through the
advocacy of the American conductor Robert Craft, an interest that was reflected
in later works such as Canticum Sacrum (1955), Threni (1957-8)
and the ballet Agon (1953-7). Stravinsky died in New York in 1971 and
was buried in Venice, near to his erstwhile colleague, Dyagilev.
Both the Concertino (1920) and the Three Pieces (1914)
were written for the use of the Flonzaley Quartet, a group of Vaudois
musicians, with both pieces forming the basis of a ballet entitled The
Antagonists produced by the American Dance Festival at New London,
Connecticut, in 1955. The Concertino, first performed by the Quartet in
New York on 3rd November 1920, is cast in a single movement. The form is a free
sonata allegro with a concertante part for the first violin. The first
performance of the Three Pieces, in which Stravinsky continued to
explore the discoveries he had made in The Rite of Spring (1913), was
given by the Quartet in Chicago on 8th November 1915. They represent three
contrasting moods and, when they were included in his Four Studies for
Orchestra, were given the titles 'Dance', 'Eccentric' and 'Canticle'. The
melodic line of 'Dance' is confined to a mere four notes within the compass of
a fourth, whilst the jerky movements of 'Eccentric' were inspired by the clown
Little Tich, whom Stravinsky saw in London in the summer of 1914. Of the
concluding 'Canticle', which is entirely homophonic, the composer wrote in Expositions
and Developments that 'the last twenty bars...are some of my best music of
that time.' Stravinsky had adopted serialism by the time of the tiny Double
Canon 'Raoul Dufy in Memoriam' (1959), the first canon of which is between
first and second violin, the second between viola and cello. Like the Concertino,
it also received its première in New York, on 20th December 1959.
Peter Quinn