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Chamber Music of
Arnold Schoenberg
1.Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) - a string sextet Verklarte Nacht
(Transfigured Night) (1899) and two quartets before 1910 show him
to be a fluent impassioned late Romanticist. The Sextet is in one
movement, but each of the quartets has the standard four. They all show
the influence of Wagner. (continued on next link)
2.
Schoenberg's path into atonal and finally 12-tone music is evidenced in
his chamber works principally by the Third String Quartet, Opus 30
(1927), the Fourth, Opus 37 (1936) a String Trio, Opus 45 (1946),
and a Fantasy for Violin and Piano, Opus 47 (1949).
Chamber Music of
Alban Berg
1. Alban
Berg's (1885-1935) work is an attempt (and a successful one I think) to
marry the richness of late 19th century Romantic expression with the
12-tone technique. His chamber output is limited to an early quartet
Opus 3 of 1909 and the Lyric Suite.
2. The Lyric Suite of 1927 for string quartet in six movements is based
in large part on conventional forms freely treated. There is a
sonata-form movement without a development section, a rondo, and a
scherzo with trio. The Tone Row technique is adhered to rather
consistently, yet he succeeds in expressing greater variety of
moods than his mentor Schoenberg.
3. Berg, because of his careful (but not slavish) treatment of the
12-tone system gives his music a more approachable, perhaps
'warmer' quality than either Schoenberg or Webern.
Chamber Music of
Anton Webern
1.
Anton von Webern (1883-1945), unlike his contemporary Berg sought to
develop the 12-tone system toward ever-greater concentration, refinement
and brevity.
2. Two sets of pieces for string quartet Opus 5 (1909) and Opus 9 (1913)
reflect these characteristics. The first set of five pieces requires
less than nine minutes to perform its 135 measures, while the second set
of six pieces totals 56 measures with a performance time of about five
minutes.
3. In addition to the extreme brevity and concentration are the thin and
spare textures, and a sharing of a single melodic idea over several
instruments where each tone is differently inflected. His works are
meticulously marked as to dynamic expressions and articulations and are
almost always extremely subtle.
4. One of his main formal attributes is that of perpetual variation
which gives an over-all effect of ceaseless flow, plasticity and
kaleidoscopic color.
Chamber Music of Bela Bartok
1.
The six quartets of Bela Bartok (1881-1945) are among the most
successful of all 20th century chamber works and are, beginning with the
second quartet, great achievements in the field of quartet writing.
2. In a tonal language that is unique in its flexibility, Bartok created
a series of works that are unsurpassed in the variety of their sonorous
effects, in the power of their rhythmic appeal, but more especially in
the rich expressiveness they achieve in their dissonant idiom.
Ulrich refers to them also as 'atonal' - they are definitely NOT atonal
in the way that I understand the term. His harmonic principles are a
carefully worked out system of substitution chords and inflections of
harmonies derived from the folk music and scales of Hungary and the
entire Balkan lands. Many movements, and passages may be felt to
be ON a pitch and there are many strong cadential closes.
3. Characteristic are successions of 4ths and 5ths in the melodic line,
considerable use of parallel seconds in harmony, and complete modulatory
freedom. Except for the third, heavy use of contrapuntal
writing is in evidence, and an inescapable 'organic' quality, meaning
that from small motivic ideas great compositions may grow. In my ear,
his use of motive and development is a strong shared kinship with
Beethoven's late quartets.
4. The quartets span his entire career and show his growth as an artist.
In the Fourth (1928)we see increased use of tight chordal formations,
long glissandos, percussive bowing effects, concentrated tone clusters,
and innovative pizzicato techniques.
5. The Fifth and Sixth Quartets (1934,1935 respectively) turned away
from the heavy dissonance of the Fourth. The Fifth is related to the key
of Bb, but a key in which both the major and minor and simultaneously
employed, and where modal implications are present .
Chamber Music of
Dmitri Shostakovitch
1. The fifteen string quartets of Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) show
great clarity of form, a mildly dissonant style, with strong elements of
lyricism and a marked tendency to employ humorous or ironic sentiments.
2. The quartets are in keys and remain largely within the tonal system.
Formally they are clear but vary greatly in the number of movements. His
compositional devices range from cyclical principles to the use of older
forms such as passacaglia .
3. The most admired of his many fine quartets is No.8 in C minor,
Opus 110 of 1960. Structurally the work has precedents in Beethoven's
Opus 131 quartet, and Bartok's use of arch form, especially Bartok's
fourth quartet.
The Chamber Music of
Elliott Carter
1. Born in 1908, Elliott Carter has written a number of pieces for solo
instruments, duos, trios, a Sonata for Cello and Piano (1948) and at
least four colossal and tremendously difficult string quartets.
2. The first string quartet which dates from 1958, a period when he
moved to a hermetic sort of life in the desert southwest of the USA to
write 'music that interested him' despite whether there was any audience
for it.
3. The result of this sabbatical was the First String Quartet. A piece
of such rhythmic difficulty and uncompromising dissonance that he was
shocked when it won the Pulitzer Prize for composition.
4. Basically Carter is a contrapuntalist and a serialist. His music is
dense, highly polyphonic, and experimental - using such devices as
metric modulations to change tempo exactly without the arbitrariness of
merely giving some sort of vague written instruction such as meno
tempo, or having to resort to consulting a metronome -
accelerandos and rallentandos are often handled with a
mathematical/proportional exactitude.
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