The lovely effects in the slow movement of Tschaikowsky’s quartet in D major, and these effects of Borodine’s, remain within the limits of the quartet style. But they point most significantly towards an orchestral treatment of the group which becomes the unconscious aim of the majority of composers. It is difficult and perhaps absurd to define a quartet style. Still a certain transparency and a fineness of movement and drawing are peculiar to this combination alone; and it may be said that when the volume of sound is thickened, and the delicacy of movement coarsened; or when special tonal effects are introduced which add color at the expense of line, then those peculiar possibilities of the quartet are ignored. Hence music so written may be called orchestral, though only by comparison, of course, with the traditional quartet style, the outlines of which we have chosen to fix upon the model of Mozart and Beethoven.
The later Russian composers have almost without exception aimed at effects of sonority and color. For example there are five Novellettes by Glazounoff, opus 15; one Alla Spagnola, full of pizzicato, an Orientale, a Valse, and an All’Ungherese, all of which are made up of effects of color and rhythm. There is a Quatuor Slave, opus 26, the Mazurka of which is again wholly ‘effective.’ The final movement—Une fête Slave—might far better be written for orchestra. The earlier quartets, opus 1 and opus 10, are inconspicuous.
Mention should be made of the quartet written in honor of the publisher Belaieff, to which Rimsky-Korsakoff, Liadoff, Borodine and Glazounoff each contributed a movement. The same men, except Borodine, joined in another quartet called Jour de fête.
There are six quartets by Serge Taneieff, all carefully written but in the main orchestral. The third (D minor) is perhaps best known, but the fourth and fifth seem to me more significant. There are quartets by Alexander Gretchaninoff, by A. Kopyloff, by Nikolas Sokoloff. Most of the Russian composers have written one or two. Reinhold Glière, among the more recent, has been successful. A quartet in G minor, opus 20, was published in 1906. It shows some influence of the modern French movement in the matter of harmony; but unlike the recent French quartets, this is in most pronounced orchestral style. A glance over the final movement, an Orientale, will serve to show how completely the traditional quartet style may be supplemented by effects of color and wild sonority. In Taneieff there is trace of the older tradition; but elsewhere in the modern Russian quartets the ancient style has disappeared.
V
The same tendency has become evident in the quartets of nearly all nations. The Grieg quartet offers a striking example. Here is a work which for lovers of Grieg must always have a special charm. Nowhere does he speak more forcefully or more passionately. There is a wild, almost a savage vitality in the whole work. But there is hardly a trace of genuine quartet style in any movement. In the statement of the first theme the viola, it is true, imitates the violin; but the second violin and the cello carry on a wholly orchestral accompaniment. The climax in this statement, and the measures before the second theme almost cry aloud for the pounding force of the piano, or the blare of trumpets and the shriek of piccolos. In fact almost through the entire movement the style is solid, without transparency and without flexibility of movement. The coda is the most startlingly orchestral of all. Measure after measure of a tremolo for the three upper instruments offers a harmonic background for the cello. The tremolo by the way is to be played sul ponticello, yet another orchestral manner. One cannot but recall the strange ending of the E major movement in Beethoven’s quartet in C-sharp minor, where, too, the instruments play sul ponticello, but each one pursuing a clear course, adding a distinct thread to the diaphanous network of sound. Surely in the hands of Grieg quartet music has become a thing of wholly different face and meaning.
There have been magnificent quartets written in Bohemia. One by Smetana is a great masterpiece. But here again we have the orchestral style. The quartet—Aus meinem Leben—proved on this account so distasteful to the Society of Chamber Music in Prague that the players refused to undertake it. Smetana suspected, however, that sheer technical difficulty rather than impropriety of style was at the bottom of their refusal.[78] Whatever the reason may have been, the work is supremely great. It seems to me there is no question of impropriety or change of style here. Smetana set himself to tell something of his life in music, and he chose the quartet because the four instruments speak as it were intimately, as he would himself speak in a circle of his friends about things which caused him more suffering than he could bear. We have then not a quartet, which is of all music the most abstract, or, if you will, absolute; but an outpouring of emotions. This is not l’art pour l’art, but almost a sublime agony of musical utterance.
As a quartet it stands unique—no piece of program music has accomplished more successfully the object of its composer than this. The first movement represents ‘love of music in my youth, a predominating romanticism, the inexpressible yearning for something which I could neither name nor clearly define, and also a sort of portent of my future misfortune.’ The second movement brought back memories of happy days when he wrote dance music for all the countryside, and was himself an impassioned dancer. And there is a slower section which tells of associations with the aristocracy. It is of this section that the players of Prague chiefly complained. A Polka rhythm runs through the whole movement. And after this thoughtlessly gay passage, the third movement speaks of his love for the woman who afterwards became his wife. The last movement speaks of the recognition of the awakening national consciousness in ‘our beautiful art,’ and his joy in furthering this until the day of his terrible affliction (deafness). At this place the music, which has been unrestrainedly light-hearted and joyful, suddenly stops. The cello attacks a low C, the second violin and viola plunge into a shuddering dark series of harmonies, and over this the first violin for more than six measures holds a high, piercing E, symbolical of the chords, the ceaseless humming of which in his ears foretold his deafness. After this harrowing passage the music sinks sadly to the end with a reminiscence of hopes of earlier years (a theme from the first movement). No thematic or formal analysis can be necessary. The work is intense with powerful emotion from the first note to the last, and speaks with a directness that does not spare the listener thus introduced into the very heart of an unhappy and desperate man. The general orchestral style is noticeable at the beginning, and in the fateful passage at the end. In the second section of the second movement there is a phrase (viola) to be played quasi Tromba. This is later taken up by the second violin, and still later by the first violin and viola in octaves. The form is regular and clear-cut, the technical skill of the highest order. There is a later quartet, in D minor, which is irregular, fragmentary, explosive. The writing is here, too, orchestral. There is an excess of frantic unison passages, of mad tremolo, as there is also at the beginning of the last movement.
In the quartets of Dvořák the orchestral manner is not so evident, but none of his quartets is emotionally so powerful as Smetana’s great work. Dvořák brings the quartet back into its proper sphere. His instinct for effects shows itself at the very beginning. Notice in his first quartet—in D minor, opus 34, dedicated to Johannes Brahms—the presentation of the second theme in the first movement: the rolling figure for cello, the persistent figure for the viola which by holding to its shape acquires an independent significance, and over these the duet between first and second violin. The varied accompaniment in the second movement is well worth study.
The whole first movement of the second quartet—E-flat major, opus 51—is perfectly adapted to the four string instruments. Every part has an independence and a delicate free motion. The second movement, a Dumka, is one of his masterpieces in chamber music, and the following Romanze is almost its equal. The final movement cannot but suggest Schumann. The third and fourth quartets, opus 61 and opus 80, lack the inspiration of the two earlier ones.