5/19/2021 The Origins of String Quartets

a matter of form
Shostakovich's string quartets 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Shostakovich and his string quartets

The string quartets: ways to listen

The quartets and symphonies compared

The tonal structure of the cycle of quartets

Earlier works for string quartets

Music and Soviet Communism

Communism and Artistic Freedom

Socialist Realism and music

Despite the 1516 woodcut shown above which depicts Plato, Aristotle,
Hippocrates and Galen1 playing as a string quartet, it is Joseph Haydn (1732-
1809) who is generally credited with having established the string quartet. The Lady Macbeth Affair
Previous composers had written works for two violins, a viola and a cello, but
it was Haydn who was to impose upon the quartet the classical form which
gave it so much potential. Appendices

Before Haydn, Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) and Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-

1725) had composed works for two violins, a viola and a cello, but they were
The genealogy of the string quartet
different in style, with the cello supplying the traditional accompaniment role
of the "basso continuo" and they failed to inspire further works. Giovanni
Battista Sammartini (c.1700-1775) also had previously composed several such
works but while they were freer from the constraints of the "basso continuo" Bibliography
they lacked Haydn's classical structure. But even in his early works before his
ideas about form had become established Haydn denied that these composers
influenced him, rather he credited Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88) as a
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source of inspiration. Although C.P.E. Bach never composed a string quartet,
but Haydn's compositions do indeed show the same innovative irregularities
that can be heard in Bach's piano works.
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As Haydn progressed, although he retained his capability to surprise with an
unexpected use of silence and tonality, his compositions began to show an
internal order and symmetry which is now referred to as the classical style.
Within this regularity Haydn's dramatic fluctuations, which he had inherited
from the mannerist style, appeared not as whimsical inventions but as logical
developments justified by the complete structure of the work. The perfection
of the form and its inevitable consequences were the essence of the classical
musical style2. Contemplated as frozen architecture a classical composition
was like a Greek temple.

Starting in about 1757, the exact date remains disputed, and continuing until
1806, three years before his death, Haydn is credited with having composed
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68 string quartets . As with his symphonies Haydn used the quartets to
develop the classical style, and like the symphonies many of the quartets have
been given individual names. In accordance with the then custom for chamber
music 54 of the quartets were published in sets of six, and most of these sets
have also acquired names, for example, the 'Sun', the 'Prussian' and the
'Apponyi'.

Joseph Haydn was not alone in composing numerous string quartets at this
time. His contemporary, Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), a native of Lucca4 in
Tuscany, was living and composing quartets in Madrid. In his works he too
frees the cello from its traditional accompaniment role of the "basso continuo"
and allows it to play in the higher ranges. Boccherini's was to compose over 90
quartets; like Hadyn's they reflect the composers' nature; they are
harmonious and good humoured. But Boccherini's works contained little
organic development of the musical material. This was the essence of Haydn's
style and so, despite Boccherini's works being elegant and popular, it was
Haydn's quartets that would provide the model for other composers. Like
Mozart, Boccherini would experiment with the form of the string quartet by
adding another voice, another instrument, converting it into a quintet. Mozart
added a second viola to emphasis the higher range. The remarkable quintet in
G minor, KV 516, one of the six quintets he composed, demonstrates the
emotional depth achievable with this extended string combination. On the
other hand, Boccherini, a virtuoso of the cello, chose that instrument thereby
enhancing the lower range 5.

Despite Haydn's efforts to develop a rigorous style for the string quartet the
compositions were received with disapproval by some of his contemporaries,
who perceived in them a lack of serious content. This reflected a sentiment
against instrumental music in general. It was a complaint that began in the
middle of the seventeenth century when music without words began to grow in
popularity. Until then vocal music had prevailed6. The assumption that music
must be accompanied by words dated back to the beginning of western
civilization. Plato had defined music as consisting of harmonia, rhythmos and
logos and the latter, human reason, was expressed by language7. It was not
necessary that the language be of words; a tone poem, a musical painting, a
representation or program, could serve almost as well; but without extra-
musical language instrumental music was thought to be just pleasant sounds;
to lack depth. For Kant in 1790 it was 'more pleasure without culture'; an
agreeable, transitional pleasure; appealing to the senses but not the reason;
like wallpaper8. If music were to be a 'fine art' then, like a painting or a
sculpture, it had to represent something.

But attitudes were changing rapidly at the end of the eighteenth century. In
1810, one year after Haydn's death, E. T. A. Hoffmann published what many
musicologists consider the most important review in the history of music. Its
subject was Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, its tone philosophical, and its wide
acclaim documented the acceptance of 'absolute music'. Such 'formalist' music
– music where its theme was it own form rather than something external (like
a tree is external to a painting of a tree) - such absolute music, began now to
be considered superior to music that represented or accompanied words,
rather than inferior as it had been regarded by previous generations9.
Embracing the philosophy of German Idealism the nineteenth century talked of
absolute music's ability to transcend language and achieve revelation. And if it
was the symphony, 'the opera of the instruments' in Hoffmann's phrase, that
was initially the prime medium for absolute music, public concerts were soon
felt to be less appropriate for contemplation than private performances.
Gradually therefore the string quartet became the epitome of absolute music.
As Carl Dahlhaus writes:

"Around 1870, Beethoven's quartets became the paradigm of the idea of

absolute music that had been created around 1800 as a theory of the
symphony: the idea that music is a revelation of the absolute, specifically
because it 'dissolves' itself from the sensual, and finally even from the
affective sphere."10

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Schopenhauer even elevated the source of music's power to a higher plain. He

argued that its power lay not in arousing emotions within the listener but was
innate in the music itself: music was a representation of cosmic Will11. For
Schopenhauer and his followers it was art par excellence and although
absolute music was to have its opponents - amongst them Hegel and Wagner -
there were many, and there still are, who were convinced of its spiritual power.

The rapid changes that were taking place to the structure of society in the
nineteenth century also had consequences for music. Virtually all of Haydn's
string quartets had been written in the service of Prince Paul Anton von
Esterházy. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (who was to compose 29 string quartets
- six of which he dedicated to Haydn) was also supported by a patron and
many of his works (including the string quartets K.575, 589 and 590) were
written for court occasions. Now the rise of a wealthy and literate bourgeois
class produced a demand for public concerts and could finance composers and
musicians. The nineteenth century saw the establishment of the first
professional quartets.

Composers in that century and its sequel such as Schubert, Mendelssohn,

Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, Brahms, Dvorak, Borodin, Ravel, Sibelius,
Debussy, Bartók would expand the string quartet repertoire considerably. Their
works would lead the string quartet away from the strict classical form as they
gradually explored further possibilities. But their compositions still recall
Haydn's thoughts and remain manifestations of absolute music rather than
musical representations. Finally between 1938 and 1974 Shostakovich would
produce 15 quartets which, when viewed through the distorting lens of
socialist realism, would recall the formalist debate two centuries earlier.

Footnotes:

1. Today Galen is less well-known than Plato, Aristotle or Hippocrates. But until the
beginning of the sixteenth century his writings had been influential. Galen, the
personal physician to three Roman emperors: Marcus Aurelius, Commodus and
Septimius Severus, had published an account of human anatomy which became the
orthodox theory for over one thousand years. His theories were based on his
dissections of Barbary apes which he assumed had anatomies similarity to humans.
Galen's observations that the nerves issuing from the brain and spinal chord were
necessary for muscle contraction made him argue against Aristotle's contention that
the soul was situated in the brain rather than in the heart.

However Galen's influence diminished abruptly after Andreas Vesalius published De

humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body) in 1543. Unlike
Galen, for whom the laws of ancient Rome forbade the dissection of humans,
Vesalius could dissect the bodies of executed criminals and in doing so had noticed
critical differences in the anatomies of humans and apes.

The final blow to Galen's theories occurred in 1628 when William Harvey established
that the heart acts as a pump to cause the blood circulation.

2. Charles Rosen's book "The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven" provides a
comprehensive study, with numerous examples, of the how this style was developed
by the first Vienna school.

3. These include the first 10, although they are strictly more divertimenti , the
unfinished quartet opus 103, but not the popular quartet transcription of the
orchestral work 'The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross" opus 51.

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4. A charming walled town lying between Florence and Pisa whose numerous summer
tourists are more aware of the other composer who is its native son: Giacomo
[Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria] Puccini.

5. If Mrs. Wilberforce in the 1955 Ealing Studios black comedy 'The Ladykillers' had
been married to a musicologist rather than a seaman she might have noticed that
although 'Professor' Marcus's quintet was giving a perfect rendering of Boccherini's
Minuet (from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11 No. 5) it was doing so with only one
cellist!

6. As of course it still obviously does when popular music is taken into account.

7. It is believed that almost all the music in Ancient Greece was vocal accompanied by
stringed instruments playing the same notes of the melody. The music was therefore
monodic rather than polyphonic. One of seven modes or scales would have been
used, each of which had an affinity to the mood being expressed by the words.

8. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Felix Meiner Verlag, 5th Edition, Leipzig
1922), p.49. Kant's Critique on Aesthetics, like his other two critiques on pure reason
and on ethics, makes notoriously difficult reading and is probably best approached
through the secondary literature. All three works contain penetrating insights and
although we might disagree with some of his conclusions Kant's efforts to achieve a
rational basis for experience made him, in the eyes of many, the Enlightenment's
greatest philosopher.

9. For a discussion of the change in attitudes between the publications of Kant in 1790
and Hoffmann in 1810, see: Mark Evan Bonds, Music as Thought (Princeton
University Press, 2006), Chapter 1.

10. Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music (The University of Chicago Press, 1991),
p. 17.

11. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, - Vols. 1 & 2; 1819,
1844 (Dover, 1969). Music is discussed in book III of volume one and chapters XXIX
- XXXIX of volume two.

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