Ava Narayan

Form and Harmonic Analysis

Holmes
12/12/19
Bartok String Quartet No. 4, I. Allegro

Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945) is considered to be one of the most

influential artists of the 20th century. He was one of the pioneers of the field of ethnomusicology,

collecting field recordings of folk songs and using them as inspiration for his own compositions.

In String Quartet No. 4, Bartok discards traditional uses of diatonic harmonies and the major and

minor scale. Instead, he tries to give equal importance to each note of the chromatic scale,

creating his tonal center through an axis of symmetry. Other salient features of his fourth string

quartet include frequent use of extended technique, inspiration from folk melodies, and driving

rhythmic and harmonic motives that help form the overall structure.

The first movement begins with a clear axis of symmetry that has a tonal center of C. We

know this because we hear C first in the cello, then F# in the first violin, then Eb in the second

violin, and then lastly A played by the cello. These notes fit into the axis of symmetry of C,

given that F# is a tritone away from C, A is the relative minor of C, and Eb is a tritone away

from A.

When my partners and I first looked at this movement, we thought that the form was

ABAC coda, but following our presentation and talking with Professor Holmes, this piece also

fits into Sonata Allegro form. In other words, A is the exposition, B is the development, A is the

recapitulation, and C/coda is a long, extended coda. So for this paper, I will analyze the piece in

Sonata Allegro Form.

The exposition begins at bar 1 with the strings moving in contrary motion – the violins

have a descending line while the cello has an ascending line. In bars 4-5, we get an introduction
to Bartok’s heavy use of agogic accents. In bar 5, all the strings enter in stretto, starting from the

lowest instrument moving up to the highest. This kind of entrance in stretto and from low to high

voice (or from high to low voice) is a recurring motivic device throughout the piece. At bar 7, we

hear the primary theme that will later shape the entire piece. This theme introduces two

important motives. Motive 1 consists of three ascending eighth notes, and motive 2 consists of

three descending sixteenth notes. Bartok hides the primary theme in the cacophony of noise with

these layered entrances. We hear the primary theme repeated more prominently at bar 11. Here,

all the strings play the theme in pairs, in inversion, and in stretto. For instance, the first violin and

viola play the primary theme together, and then two eighth notes later before they have even

finished, the second violin and cello play the primary theme in inversion. This continues in bar

12, except the first violin and viola now play the primary theme in inversion.

Bartok effectively uses two-and-a-half beats of silence in bar 12 to introduce new

contrasting material that soon leads us to the secondary theme of the exposition. The viola and

cello start to play ostinato-like figures starting at bar 14. We hear the secondary theme played by

the second violin in bar 15, which sounds like it could be an allusion to a folk melody. This

secondary theme is characterized by two motives. The first motive consists of three ascending

eighth notes. The other motive is a descending eighth, quarter, and then eighth note. From bars

15-24, the strings take turns bringing out the secondary theme. For example, in bar 17, the

second violin plays the secondary theme, but then in bar 18 the viola plays the secondary theme

at a higher register than all the other strings, making it the most noticeable line that we hear at

that moment.

In bars 26-28, we get the return of the primary theme in stretto and inversion. The quartet

is split into half again and is “battling each other,” just like in bars 11-12. Bartok takes the first
motive of the primary theme and plays it in stretto (an eighth rest off) between the first violin and

viola, as well as the second violin and cello in bar 28. In bar 31, we start to hear scalar motion in

all the voices. Bartok uses both the whole-tone scale and the octatonic scale here as subsets of

the chromatic scale. In bar 37, there is a pairing of the first and second violin, and the viola and

cello. The two pairs of instruments play different chords in stretto, sometimes overlapping and

forming a polychord. For example, on the fourth beat of 37, we hear G major from the viola and

cello and A major from the two violins played simultaneously.

In measure 44, we hear the closing theme of the exposition, characterized by repeated

eighth notes and further accentuated by the repeated D-E note cluster in the first violin. We see

multiple reiterations of the sixteenth-note motive of the primary theme, like in 44 and 45 in the

second violin, except it is inverted. The closing theme also introduces new material, such as the

sixteenth triplet notes in 47-48. The closing theme ends with a musical gesture that is very

reminiscent of the first few bars of the piece (look at bars 1-2 and bars 49-50). We hear glissandi

in contrary motion in the strings in bar 51-52, followed by a few more bars, until an abrupt

eighth rest of silence at bar 53. This indicates the beginning of the development, which starts at

bar 54.

We can immediately see in the score that in the development, Bartok has switched the

voice pairing again, for it is now the outer voices versus the inner voices. The outer voices (first

violin and cello) play the same motivic material in stretto, while the inner voices (second violin

and viola) play in rhythmic unison but in contrary melodic motion. In bar 58, we hear a new

motive, consisting of fast-moving thirty-second notes alternating between two pitches, which

creates a buzz-like sound in the string ensemble. The viola and cello drop out, while the violins

continue with the same motive in bar 59. At 60, the secondary theme returns in the cello, exactly
how it was played in bar 17 by the second violin. Then, the viola gets a turn at playing the

secondary theme melody in 61, only in inversion this time. While the secondary theme basically

stays the same, Bartok develops this theme by using a different texture to accompany it now,

which is the new “buzzing” thirty-second notes. In 65, we get the secondary theme played

simultaneously in the first violin and cello. Some similar material in the development includes

the overlapped entrances in stretto in bars 69-72, as well as contrary motion glissandi in bars 75-

81, all motivic devices that Bartok has already used and is simply making more prominent.

Bartok plays with the thirty-second note motive (previously heard at 58) and different segments

of the primary theme, alternating between both in bars 83-92. In bar 92, the primary theme in the

three lower voices serves as an elision between the development and the recapitulation, which

starts at 93 just as the primary theme ends.

The recapitulation at 93 begins in a similar way as the first few bars of the exposition. We

have similar motivic material, such as the familiar stretto in bar 101, except going from high to

low voice this time. There is also a repetition of the glissandi in contrary motion, previously used

in the exposition. However, the secondary theme enters in a different way in the recapitulation

than in the exposition. Instead of the viola and cello playing ostinato-like figures, they play the

secondary theme (the “folk-like” melody). The cello begins the play the secondary theme at 104,

then the viola in 105, then the second violin in 106, and then finally the first violin at 107, all

overlapping each other. Bartok lets the strings take turns in bringing out the secondary theme.

For example, the theme is most audible in the viola at bar 108 because it is the highest melody.

Then the secondary theme is most audible in the second violin at bar 111. Then, it is handed off

to the viola again in 112, and then the first violin in 113. The “battling of the voices” happens

again in stretto with the violins versus the viola and cello with the primary theme in bars 115-119
(again, the two halves of the quartet are one beat off). In bars 119-126, we get similar material

that we heard in 30-43. For instance, we hear the octatonic and whole tone scales again. This

time however, scalar motion is in the viola and cello in stretto, while the two violins play in

rhythmic unison. One can clearly see how much Bartok loved to pair different instruments of the

quartet together to create different textures and colors. Also, he constantly employed segments of

the primary theme, such as the motive of the two sixteenth notes that we hear multiple times in

inversion or transposition, especially in this section (119-126).

The coda starts at the piú mosso section, at bar 126. In bars 126-135, the sixteenth-note

motive of the primary theme is combined with motivic material from 44 (which are the repeated,

driving eighth notes). The combination of these elements serve to build tension, becoming more

climactic (interestingly, Bartok’s coda is the most climactic section of the whole piece). In bar

135, there is segmentation and elongation of repeated motives. The primary theme is played

forte in between a contrasting piano motive of one quarter note, G# (in bar 135-136). This

quarter note becomes two quarter notes of G#, then G#, B, and then G#, B, D#, etc., elongating

this motive while the primary theme played in between becomes more segmented (like in bar

142, where we hear just the second motive of the primary theme). The ascending line of G#, B,

D# etc. becomes progressively longer, until this motive takes over entirely in bars 145-146. Bars

150-151 become quite climactic, with the pairing of higher and lower voices in stretto, except

this time all the voices are ascending. In bar 152, we have grace note figures interrupted by the

primary theme, followed by the primary theme in stretto in bar 157. The quartet finishes with the

primary theme, slow and pesante for one last demonstrative reiteration. All the strings play C as

their last note, bringing us back to the axis of symmetry and the tonal center of the piece.