String Quartet No. 2 (Ives)

Last updated

The String Quartet No. 2 by Charles Ives is a work for string quartet written between 1907 and 1913. [1] It was premiered at McMillin Theatre, Columbia University in New York City on May 11, 1946 by a Juilliard School student ensemble. [2] Its first professional performance was by the Walden String Quartet, on September 15, 1946 at Yaddo, [2] on a concert which prompted composer Lou Harrison to write: "This work is... the finest piece of American chamber music yet... Music of this kind happens only every fifty years or a century, so rich in faith and so full of the sense of completion." [3] In his Memos, Ives referred to the quartet as "one of the best things I have." [4]

Contents

The quartet was first published in 1954 by Peer International, and was reprinted in 1970 with corrections by John Kirkpatrick. [5] In 2016, Peermusic Classical published a critical edition of the quartet, commissioned by the Charles Ives Society and edited by Malcolm Goldstein. [6]

Form and content

The quartet is a programmatic work depicting four men who "converse, discuss, argue (in re 'Politick'), fight, shake hands, shut up – then walk up the mountain side to view the firmament!" [7] Author Matthew McDonald wrote that the quartet "is the only multi-movement work Ives completed after The Celestial Country... whose movements all belong to an 'original grand conception,' as opposed to being partially or completely culled from earlier pieces," [8] and that "Ives conceived of the quartet movements as integrated components of a single musical narrative." [9] According to music historian and theorist Robert P. Morgan, the quartet "reveals a radical departure from traditional quartet writing. In keeping with the dramatic conception suggested by the titles of the movements, Ives treats the four instruments with an unprecedented degree of individuality: each has its own special character, and the overall quality of the work results from a sort of forced amalgamation of the four different textural components." [10]

The work is in three movements:

  1. Discussions (Andante moderato—Andante con spirito—Adagio molto)
  2. Arguments (Allegro con spirito)
  3. The Call of the Mountains (Adagio—Andante—Adagio)

Discussions, the first movement, begins quietly but soon becomes agitated, playing off one instrument against another. Jan Swafford wrote: "In this movement the programmatic idea of a heated conversation is rendered by complex, chromatic, dissonant counterpoint. The lines, modeled on speech, tend to sound like conversation. Periodically the instruments join in rhythmic unison, representing points of agreement in the discussion. Otherwise the four voices are distinct in a more traditionally contrapuntal way, the mostly atonal harmonies producing a sonority close to what Schoenberg was developing during the same period, a continent away." [11] After a climactic outburst, "serious discussion is again resumed, and eventually the movement ends much as it began." [10] (In the manuscript, Ives notes "Enough discussion for us!" at the movement's conclusion. [10] )

Arguments, the second movement, is "one of Ives's most original conceptions." [10] It starts out with the instruments gruffly and loudly asserting themselves one by one, and soon each instrument establishes its own distinctive musical and expressive "vocabulary." This culminates in a passage during which the violins play in 4
4 time while the viola and cello play in 3
8, followed by a role reversal, with the violins playing in 3
8 and the others in 4
4. [12] All the instruments then resume playing in 2
4 time, but this is interrupted by a clichéd, sentimental, overtly tonal cadenza marked "Andante Emasculata" played by the second violin, [13] during which it attempts to "establish 'traditional' musical order amongst the aggressively heterogeneous parts." [10] (Here the second violin represents "Rollo", a fictitious character who "represented all that was safe, conservative, and thus reprehensible in music." [10] The manuscript states "Nice and pretty, Rollo" at this point. [14] ) The other three instruments respond with a dissonant fff passage marked "Allegro con fisto," recalling the opening of the movement. This is followed by another "Andante Emasculata" cadenza by the second violin, to which the others respond in a similarly brusque manner. [15] After a quiet passage marked "Largo sweetota" and another outburst, there is a loud, dense section, after which the second violin drops out, only to return, insistently playing exaggeratedly regular rhythms against the other instruments' constantly-changing subdivisions. [16] The instruments briefly come together, playing in rhythmic unison, but things soon fall apart in a passage marked "Allegro con fuoco (all mad)" that again recalls the opening. [17] The instruments again attempt to unite, but lapse into dissonant outbursts as before. Finally, following a C-major passage played in rhythmic unison, there is a brief, quiet, open-string pause for breath marked "Andante con scratchy (as tuning up)", followed by a final fff eruption marked "Allegro con fistiswatto (as a K.O.)". [18]

According to McDonald, the final movement, The Call of the Mountains, is "music that epitomizes Ives's transcendental ideal of unity in diversity, four musical layers that are rhythmically and melodically independent but together forge a continuous tonality that evokes timelessness and eternity." [19] He suggests that "the apotheosis of 'The Call of the Mountains' is Ives’s own music of the future." [20] In keeping with the program ("walking up the mountain side to view the firmament"), the instruments slowly unite in their efforts to achieve their goal, culminating in a "transcendental" ostinato passage during which the cello plays a slow, majestic descending whole tone scale beginning and ending on D, strongly reminiscent of the ending of the last movement of Ives' Symphony No. 4, completed several years after the composition of the quartet. Jan Swafford described the ending as follows: "Over a downstriding whole-tone scale in the cello, the violins and viola chime like great bells in the heavens, in patterns like bell ringing. The struggle and the arguments have prepared the way for a revelation." [21] McDonald wrote: "The communal act with which the program ends is signified by the balance between instrumental independence and cohesion. The four debaters maintain their individuality yet form some sort of consensus as a means of peaceful coexistence; the opposition between individual and community is resolved. The four men’s communion with nature on the mountaintop is evoked by the first violin, which reaches higher on its E-string than most composers or players of the time would have dared to attempt, as it paraphrases the hymn 'Nearer My God to Thee'..., the title suggesting the ultimate object of the ascent up the mountain. God's eternity is rendered by the circularity of each of the lower three instrumental layers, whose ostinati repeat at different periodicities." [20]

Influence

Dörte Schmidt has noted that the "formal dramaturgy" of Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 2 was inspired by Ives' quartet, and wrote that Carter established the use of highly individual instrumental characteristics as "the point of departure for the form of his Second Quartet, in which two types of interaction can be traced through the nine formal units lasting only about twenty minutes in total: egalitarian cooperation and dominance or confrontation." [22] (Carter helped organize the 1946 all-Ives concert that featured the premiere of the quartet, as well as the premieres of The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark. [23] )

Robert Moevs suggested that Carter's String Quartet No. 3 is also indebted to "...the unreconstructedly dissonant superpositions of Charles Ives. To him may be due the very premise of this quartet elsewhere, that of separate groups on either side, playing at the same time their own music at their own tempo." [24] Moevs wrote that "the concept of dramatis personae, individuals of differing character whose nature and conflicts generate respectively the material and the structure, lies at the origin of" [25] Ives' second quartet, and goes on to list specific passages in the Ives quartet in terms of their commonalities with Carter's work, such as "the division into Duos with conflicting meters," "a protest of first violin, viola and cello against the sentimentalism of the second violin (opposition of character), and "conflicting beat subdivision... against a steady pulse." [25] Moevs noted that "what in Ives was defiant, sometimes outrageously incongruous, is in Carter tamed and exploited by professional system." [25]

Although he did not draw explicit parallels with Ives' quartet, Robert Hurwitz noted that Carter's second and third quartets "can... be heard in terms of the anthropomorphism of the instruments," stating how, in the second quartet, "the viola plays... an expressive, almost lamentable cadenza to be confronted with explosions of what may be anger or ridicule by the other three" (similar to the Arguments movement of Ives' quartet) and suggesting that Carter's "Third Quartet can be heard as a play, or a debate, or a conversation." [26]

Brian Ferneyhough wrote the following regarding the final movement of his own String Quartet No. 4: "The 'story-line' of the four instruments is perhaps comparable to Charles Ives' String Quartet No. 2, where everyone is evolving, complaining or being boring in his own inimitable fashion." [27] A passage in Ferneyhough's Sixth String Quartet is marked "testardamente (with great difficulty, like climbing a mountain)". [28] In the documentation accompanying a video recording of a rehearsal of the Sixth Quartet, Ferneyhough stated: "the string quartet right from the beginning was always a... subtle medium for the expression of social relationships... The old image of... four civilized people talking to each other in terms that would not have been unfamiliar to philosophers of the Enlightenment. And whilst that of course is somewhat absurd from the present-day standpoint, and indeed was turned on its head by Charles Ives who had four very irascible characters climbing a mountain and shrieking at each other... It does seem to me there is something about the quartet which is inherently imbricated with what we understand human relationships to be on a highly evolved level." [29]

Quotations

As characteristic of Ives' style, he quotes American tunes including "Dixie's Land", "Marching Through Georgia", "Turkey in the Straw", "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", "Massa in De Cold Ground", "Bethany", "Nettleton", and "Westminster Chimes", alongside quotations from works of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and even Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" theme.

Related Research Articles

String quartet Musical ensemble of four string players

A string quartet is a musical ensemble consisting of four string players – two violin players, a viola player and a cellist – or a musical composition written to be performed by such a group. The string quartet is one of the most prominent chamber ensembles in classical music; most major composers from the mid 18th century onwards having written string quartets.

Chamber music Form of classical music composed for a small group of instruments

Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.

The Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, by Johannes Brahms was completed during the summer of 1864 and published in 1865. It was dedicated to Her Royal Highness Princess Anna of Hesse. Like most piano quintets composed after Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet (1842), it is written for piano and string quartet.

The Symphony No. 94 in G major is the second of the twelve London symphonies written by Joseph Haydn. It is popularly known as the Surprise Symphony.

Violin Concerto (Sibelius)

The Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47, was written by Jean Sibelius in 1904, revised in 1905. It is his only concerto. It is symphonic in scope, with the solo violin and all sections of the orchestra being equal voices. An extended cadenza for the soloist takes on the role of the development section in the first movement.

The String Quartet No. 15 in G major, D. 887, was written by Franz Schubert in June 1826. It was posthumously published in 1851, as Opus 161.

String Quartet No. 9 (Beethoven)

The String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59, No. 3, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven and published in 1808. This work is the third of three of his "Razumovsky" cycle of string quartets, and is a product of his "middle" period. It consists of four movements:

The Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, is a symphony written by Johannes Brahms. Brahms spent at least fourteen years completing this work, whose sketches date from 1854. Brahms himself declared that the symphony, from sketches to finishing touches, took 21 years, from 1855 to 1876. The premiere of this symphony, conducted by the composer's friend Felix Otto Dessoff, occurred on 4 November 1876, in Karlsruhe, then in the Grand Duchy of Baden. A typical performance lasts between 45 and 50 minutes.

String Quartet No. 1 is a musical composition by Charles Ives. Music historian and theorist Robert P. Morgan wrote that the quartet "was Ives's first mature composition of extended length, and its extraordinary fluency gives ample evidence of his solid control of traditional musical techniques. Moreover, the work is considerably more than a facile exercise based on classical models; there are already indications of the Ives to come, in the extensive quotations and, above all, in the composer's ability to bend the form to suit the idiosyncrasies of his own musical inclinations."

The Unanswered Question is a musical work by American composer Charles Ives. Originally paired with Central Park in the Dark as Two Contemplations in 1908, The Unanswered Question was revised by Ives in 1930–1935. As with many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, and was not performed until 1946.

The Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, for violin, cello and piano, Op. 67, by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1944, during World War II.

Symphony No. 4 (Ives)

Charles Ives's Symphony No. 4, S. 4 was written between 1910 and the mid-1920s. The symphony is notable for its multilayered complexity—typically requiring two conductors in performance—and for its large and varied orchestration. Combining elements and techniques of Ives's previous compositional work, this has been called "one of his most definitive works"; Ives' biographer, Jan Swafford, has called it "Ives's climactic masterpiece".

The six String Quartets, Op. 76 by Joseph Haydn were composed in 1797 or 1798 and dedicated to the Hungarian count Joseph Georg von Erdődy (1754–1824). They form the last complete set of string quartets that Haydn composed. At the time of the commission, Haydn was employed at the court of Prince Nicolaus Esterházy II and was composing the oratorio The Creation as well as Princess Maria Hermenegild Esterházy's annual mass.

String Quartets, Op. 20 (Haydn)

The six string quartets opus 20 by Joseph Haydn are among the works that earned Haydn the sobriquet "the father of the string quartet". The quartets are considered a milestone in the history of composition; in them, Haydn develops compositional techniques that were to define the medium for the next 200 years.

Piano Quartet No. 1 (Brahms)

The Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, was composed by Johannes Brahms between 1856 and 1861. It was premiered in 1861 in Hamburg, with Clara Schumann at the piano. It was also played in Vienna on 16 November 1862, with Brahms himself at the piano supported by members of the Hellmesberger Quartet. Like most piano quartets, it is scored for piano, violin, viola and cello.

The Second String Quartet by American composer Elliott Carter was completed in 1959. This composition for string quartet was commissioned by the Stanley String Quartet of the University of Michigan, who decided not to play it upon seeing the score, and received its first performance in 1960 by the Juilliard String Quartet.

The Fourth String Quartet by American composer Elliott Carter was composed in 1985–86 in New York City and Rome, and completed in June 1986. It was premiered on September 17, 1986 at Festival Miami, University of Miami, Florida by the Composers String Quartet.

American composer Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 5 is a composition for string quartet. The work was composed between January and July 1995, as a commission for the Arditti Quartet by the city of Antwerp, by the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, by the Festival d'Automne à Paris, and by Lincoln Center, New York. It was premiered by the Arditti Quartet in Antwerp at deSingel International Art Centre on September 19, 1995.

String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111, is a work by Johannes Brahms composed in 1890 and published in 1891. It is known as the Prater Quintet. Brahms intended it to be his last piece of music, though he later produced a number of piano pieces and the two sonatas for clarinet or viola and piano. The first performance of the Quintet in Vienna on November 11, 1890 was a sensation.

String Quartet No. 4 (Nielsen)

Carl Nielsen's String Quartet No. 4 in F major or Quartet for Two Violins, Viola and Cello in F major, Opus 44, was composed between February and July 1906. The last of Nielsen's four string quartets in the official series, its first public performance took place on 30 November 1907 in Copenhagen.

References

  1. ↑ "CHARLES IVES – String Quartet No. 2 – String Quartets – A Most Intimate Medium" . Retrieved 2019-04-18.
  2. 1 2 Sinclair, James B. (1999). A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. Yale University Press. p. 171.
  3. ↑ Burkholder, J. Peter, ed. (1996). Charles Ives and his World. Princeton University Press. p. 345.
  4. ↑ Ives, Charles (1972). Kirkpatrick, John (ed.). Charles E. Ives: Memos. W. W. Norton. p. 73.
  5. ↑ Sinclair, James B. (1999). A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. Yale University Press. p. 170.
  6. ↑ "Charles Ives: String Quartet No. 2: Ives Society Critical Edition by Malcolm Goldstein". Peermusic Classical. Retrieved November 9, 2020.
  7. ↑ "String Quartet No. 2, for string… | Details". AllMusic. Retrieved 2019-04-18.
  8. ↑ McDonald, Matthew (2014). Breaking Time's Arrow: Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives. Indiana University Press. p. 57.
  9. ↑ McDonald, Matthew (2014). Breaking Time's Arrow: Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives. Indiana University Press. p. 58.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Morgan, Robert P. (1975). Charles Ives: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (liner notes). The Concord String Quartet. Nonesuch Records. H-71306.
  11. ↑ Swafford, Jan (1996). Charles Ives: A Life with Music. W. W. Norton. p. 239.
  12. ↑ Ives, Charles (1954). Quartet No. 2. Peer International Corporation. p. 12.
  13. ↑ Ives, Charles (1954). Quartet No. 2. Peer International Corporation. pp. 12–13.
  14. ↑ McDonald, Matthew (2014). Breaking Time's Arrow: Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives. Indiana University Press. p. 62.
  15. ↑ Ives, Charles (1954). Quartet No. 2. Peer International Corporation. p. 13.
  16. ↑ Ives, Charles (1954). Quartet No. 2. Peer International Corporation. p. 15.
  17. ↑ Ives, Charles (1954). Quartet No. 2. Peer International Corporation. p. 16.
  18. ↑ Ives, Charles (1954). Quartet No. 2. Peer International Corporation. p. 18.
  19. ↑ McDonald, Matthew (2014). Breaking Time's Arrow: Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives. Indiana University Press. p. 64.
  20. 1 2 McDonald, Matthew (2014). Breaking Time's Arrow: Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives. Indiana University Press. p. 65.
  21. ↑ Swafford, Jan (1996). Charles Ives: A Life with Music. W. W. Norton. p. 240.
  22. ↑ Schmidt, Dörte (2012). "'I try to write music that will appeal to an intelligent listener's ear.' On Elliott Carter's string quartets". In Boland, Marguerite; Link, John (eds.). Elliott Carter Studies. Cambridge University Press. pp. 174–175.
  23. ↑ Paul, David C. (2013). Charles Ives in the Mirror. University of Illinois Press. p. 74.
  24. ↑ Moevs, Robert (January 1975). "Review: Elliott Carter: String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 by The Juilliard Quartet". The Musical Quarterly. 61 (1): 164–165.
  25. 1 2 3 Moevs, Robert (January 1975). "Review: Elliott Carter: String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 by The Juilliard Quartet". The Musical Quarterly. 61 (1): 165.
  26. ↑ Hurwitz, Robert (1974). Elliott Carter: String Quartet Nos. 2 and 3 (liner notes). Juilliard String Quartet. Columbia Records. MQ32738.
  27. ↑ Ferneyhough, Brian (1995). "String Quartet No. 4". In Boros, James; Toop, Richard (eds.). Collected Writings. Harwood Academic Publishers. p. 160.
  28. ↑ Fitch, Lois (2013). Brian Ferneyhough. Intellect Books. p. 188.
  29. ↑ Archbold, Paul (May 16, 2011). "Performing Complexity". Scribd. p. 23. Retrieved November 9, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.