In our time we come to the famous quartet in F major, opus 96, written in Spillville, Iowa, in June, 1893. One may call it the little sister of the New World Symphony, which had been composed shortly before in New York City. Like the bigger work it is founded upon motives and themes which have characteristics common to the music of the American negro. Some say these same characteristics are common to music in Bohemia and Hungary, even to Scottish music. Hence the discussion which has raged from time to time over the New World Symphony, though the title of the symphony was of Dvořák’s own choosing;[79] and the quartet, and the quintet which followed it (opus 97) have likewise been made a bone of contention. However, it must be granted by all alike that the quartet is one of the most successful pieces of chamber music that has been written. Nowhere does Dvořák’s style show to better advantage, and few, if any quartets, are better adapted to the nature of the instruments for which they were written.
Two later quartets, opus 105, in A-flat major, and opus 106, in G major, do not compare favorably, at least from the point of view of musical vitality, with the earlier works.
VI
Merely to mention the composers who have written string quartets and to enumerate their works would fill a long chapter, and to little avail. Haydn gave the quartet a considerable place among the forms of musical composition. Mozart’s six quartets dedicated to Haydn are almost unique as an expression of his genius not influenced by external circumstances. The last Beethoven quartets are the final and abstract account of that great man’s conclusions with life and his art. Since the day of these three masters few composers have brought to the form such a special intention. Few string quartets since that day contain a full and special expression of the genius of the men who composed them. We look to other forms for the essentials of their contribution to the art of music. Indeed, among the men who have been discussed in this chapter there are few whose quartets are of real significance or of a merit that is equal to that of their other works.
As to form there has been little radical change down to the time of the recent composers who have abandoned deliberately all that it was possible to abandon of classical tradition. Of them and their work we shall speak presently. Schumann, Brahms, Tschaikowsky and Borodine, Smetana and Dvořák, and even César Franck and Vincent d’Indy have adhered closely to the classical model, varying it and adding to it, but never discarding it.
In the matter of style and technique most of the advance has been made in the direction of special effects, already described, and of increased sonority. With the result that the ancient and traditional quartet style has given way in most cases to an orchestral style, in which effects are essentially massive and broad, which is a tapestry, not a web of sound. Take, for example, three quartets by modern composers of yesterday: that of Tschaikowsky in D, Smetana’s Aus meinem Leben, and César Franck’s. If these are not the greatest since Schubert they have at least few companions; and they represent more than those of Brahms, we think, the development in technique as well as the change in style that the century brought. There are few pages in any one of them which do not show fine and sensitive workmanship; but the tone of all three is unmistakably orchestral, in the sense that it is massive, sensuous, and richly sonorous.
It is then with some surprise that we find what at the present day we call the modern movement expressed in three quartets which are as conspicuous for delicate quartet style as for the modernness of their forms and harmonies.
Debussy’s quartet was written comparatively early (1893), not more than three or four years after Franck had completed his. It is not a work of his first period, however, of the time when he was still a disciple of Wagner. Rather it belongs to the second period of which L’isle joyeuse, and Estampes, for piano, L’après-midi d’un faune, for orchestra, and the opera ‘Pelleas and Melisande,’ are, with it, representative works. It is written according to his own ideas of harmony, explained elsewhere in this series, and hence may be taken as the first quartet in which the classical tradition has been radically altered if not wholly disregarded. For the forms of sonata, symphony, and quartet were founded upon a system of harmony. Musical material, however freely disposed, rested upon a basis of key and contrasting keys common to all music of that era, the passing of which seems now before us. The Debussy quartet is constructed thematically in a way which in principle is old and familiar, but upon a basis which transforms the work beyond recognition of those to whom his harmonic series is not yet familiar.
There is little to be said of the plan of the work. The four movements are constructed upon a single phrase. Men wrote suites that way in the early seventeenth century. This phrase, in which there are two motives, is given out at once by the first violin, solidly supported by the other instruments. The movement is animé et très décidé. There is an impassioned abandon to sound. Secondary motives are given out: by the violin under which the three other instruments rise and fall in chords that whirr like the wind; by the cello, the same wind of harmony blowing high above. Then again the opening motives, growing from soft to loud; and a new motive (first violin and viola in tenths), over a monotonous twisting (second violin and cello in sixths). Then comes a retard. One would expect a second theme here. The harmony rests for a moment on F-sharp minor, and there is a snatch of melody (first violin). But for those broad harmonic sections of the sonata there is here no regard. The key flashes by. The melody was but a clever change rung upon the opening phrase. It comes again following an impetuous and agitated crescendo. Note how after this the music rushes ever up and up, and with what a whirling fall it sinks down almost to silence; how over a hushed triplet figure on an imperfect fifth (A-flat—D, cello) it gains force again, and the opening phrases recur, and something again of the secondary motives. There is perfect order of all the material, an order hardly differing from that of the classical sonata; but the harmonies melt and flow, they have no stable line, they never broaden, never rest. And so all seems new, and was, and still is new.
The second movement (assez vif et bien rythmé) is in the nature of a scherzo. Four pizzicato chords begin, and then the viola gives out the chief idea, an easily-recognized variant of the fundamental idea announced at the beginning of the first movement. But this is used first as a tenore ostinato (if one may speak of it so). It is repeated by the viola fourteen times without variation; then five times by first violin, and twice, dying away, by cello. Meanwhile the other instruments are at something the same monotonous game. Nothing is clear. There are cross-rhythms, broken phrases, a maze of odd movements, independent of each other.