The previous two chapters have dealt with traditions of string quartet composition that have been largely determined by the history and nature of the medium. Composers writing string quartets in a conservative style have been guided and influenced by masterpieces of the great European string quartet repertoire, while composers of experimental and innovative string quartets have been encouraged by the potential which the medium offers for a varied and intricate musical expression without the need for catering to the demands and requirements of public taste. The composers of the string quartets to be studied in the present chapter have steered a middle course between these two extremes, mediating between a conservative reliance on previous models and the modernist rejection of the lessons of music history.
As Laurier noted in the quotation which heads this chapter, moderation and conciliation may be thought of as quintessentially Canadian attributes. The founding of Canada as an independent nation was an act of compromise between British monarchical and U.S. republican ideals. The Fathers of Confederation chose to retain the British monarch as the head of state, but they called the nation a Dominion, not a Kingdom, in order not to offend the United States. As the nation began, so has it continued; acts of compromise are negotiated virtually every day between competing regions and interest groups in order to keep the nation intact. Few countries expend as much time and effort in reconciling extreme points of view as Canada does. It is a national pastime, and successful conciliators abound in the fields of labour arbitration, political negotiation and even, as we shall see, musical composition.
Many Canadian composers have been in touch both with recent developments in music and with their musical heritage, but have consciously chosen to compose neither in a modernist nor in a conservative style. Instead they have incorporated elements from both ends of the stylistic spectrum in their music and created a synthesis of the past and the present in their music. Indeed several Canadian composers, writing about their string quartets, have spoken of the desire to reconcile the new with the old in their music. As we shall see, these composers are often the very ones whose music has been called "typically Canadian."
Some of the works to be analysed in the present chapter are by composers whose music has already been discussed in one of the earlier chapters; it is not, after all, uncommon for a composer to change his or her style over the years. An early quartet by a composer may be conservative in style, assimilating the lessons of the past, while a later quartet might incorporate innovatory features and be included in the present chapter. Alternatively, the early quartet might be the more radical work, throwing down the gauntlet, while a later quartet by the same composer might incorporate this adventurous spirit into a more conservative style.
Still other composers have cultivated a schizophrenic musical personality, writing avant-garde works on some occasions and middle ground compositions on others. There are a number of reasons for this phenomenon; Malcolm Forsyth, a university-based composer, has referred in this connection to a split between his academic or "research" music and his intuitive, more accessible works.1 In addition composers writing on commission will sometimes accommodate their style to the needs and abilities of the performing group for whom the work is intended. These are some other reasons why a composer might have appeared in one of the earlier chapters and then reappear in the present chapter. However it should be noted that there was no overlap between the conservative and modernist composers. The act of conciliation is between conservative and modernist extremes, but while composers may at times write in one or the other of the two extremes as well as in the middle ground between them, no composer has yet swung from the conservative camp all the way to the modernist ranks within his or her string quartet output.
The earliest Canadian string quartet to demonstrate this spirit of compromise is the String Quartet in C Minor by Ernest MacMillan, which was begun in 1914. MacMillan visited Germany during the summer of 1914. He attended the Bayreuth Festival from late July to August, was in Nuremberg from late August 1914 to March 1915 and then was interned at Ruhleben, a racetrack near Berlin which had been converted into a civilian prisoner-of-war camp, for the remainder of the First World War.2 MacMillan began to compose his quartet in Bayreuth in August 1914 and continued to work on it in Nuremberg and Ruhleben. There was an active musical and cultural life at Ruhleben; MacMillan not only worked on his quartet there but he also gained conducting experience and wrote a cantata based on Swinburne's ode England.
There has been some confusion and disagreement about the exact sequence and dating of the composition of the four movements of MacMillan's String Quartet. George Proctor stated that MacMillan wrote the first two movements in Nuremberg and continued to work on the last two movements in Ruhleben between 1914 and 1918, but that he did not revise and complete the work until 1921.3 This sequence agrees with MacMillan's own summary discussion of the composition of the quartet which he provided for the note to accompany the 1967 Deutsche Grammophon recording of the work by the Amadeus Quartet.4
The autograph manuscript of the work, located in the National Library of Canada, gives a slightly different sequence of events. This manuscript is in ink, in two small manuscript books in red covers with two movements in each book. The third movement was actually the first to be completed; it is dated "Bayreuth August 1914" at the end. The first movement is dated "Sept, 1914" and the second movement "Nürnberg Sept. 1914" while the last movement is not dated at the end. The first half of the last movement is in ink while the rest of the work has been added in pencil, and is only in sketch form. This autograph manuscript preserves an early form of the work that is quite different from the final version which is present in the score (also an autograph manuscript) held in the Canadian Music Centre. Only the slow movements of the two versions are substantially the same; the other three movements are quite different in the two manuscripts.
Keith MacMillan has revealed that in a letter of May 1916 his father wrote "that he 'was completing' the first version of his String Quartet in C Minor."5 Keith MacMillan notes that since the composition was never performed in Ruhleben, despite the presence of a good string quartet and an active musical life there, it may not have been completed at that time. The fact that only the first half of the score of the last movement is in ink and that this movement is not dated at the end supports this idea. Weighing these factors together, it seems MacMillan did not complete his String Quartet until sometime before the first performance of the work in 1924. As noted above, Proctor wrote that the quartet was completed in 1921, and Keith MacMillan adds that his father rewrote the work "apparently in 1921."6 Both men likely took this date from the short note provided for the 1967 Canadian Music Centre Catalogue of Chamber Music (page 179); no documentary evidence has come to light which supports the date.
Unfortunately the Canadian Music Centre autograph manuscript is not dated, so it cannot even be ascertained whether the first performance of the work in 1924 was of the first or second version. As the Canadian Music Centre manuscript is the only version of the work that is complete in good copy, though, it stands to reason that this score was completed for the first performance. Whether it was completed in 1921 or not remains uncertain given the present state of research.
The Hart House String Quartet gave the first performance of MacMillan's String Quartet. This took place on 7 August 1924 in Toronto as part of a conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. At the end of an all-Canadian programme that included Willan's Piano Trio in B Minor, songs by Willan, MacMillan and Smith and a piano solo by Colin McPhee, the Hart House String Quartet performed MacMillan's String Quartet in C Minor. The first movement was omitted; this may simply have been due to time constraints as the concert began at 5:00 p.m. The Hart House String Quartet played the entire MacMillan String Quartet on 8 February 1925 as part of its first regular season, and the work was also performed the next season on 15 February 1926. The slow movement of the work was played by the Hart House String Quartet on 1 July 1927 as part of a Diamond Jubilee of Confederation broadcast from Ottawa. Due in no small measure to these performances by the Hart House String Quartet, the MacMillan String Quartet was well on its way to becoming recognized as the first major achievement in the string quartet medium by a Canadian composer.
MacMillan's String Quartet can be regarded as a Canadian contribution to the British chamber music revival of the early twentieth century. Composers such as Elgar, Smyth, Holbrooke, Bridge, Scott and Goossens, among others, wrote works for string quartet between 1905 and 1921. Although so widespread a movement cannot be traced to one single source, the Cobbett Chamber Music Competition, begun in 1905, was clearly a major impetus in this revival. In the first year alone, 67 quartets were written in competition for the Cobbett prize.
MacMillan studied music in Edinburgh from 1905 to 1908 and in Edinburgh and London from 1910 to 1911. In the latter year he was awarded the B.Mus. Oxoniensis and was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. His exposure to British music training and education was intensified during his internment at Ruhleben, for the camp's musical life was thoroughly British. In Ruhleben, MacMillan wrote a number of fugues for string quartet on subjects used in previous Oxford Mus.D. examinations. Three such fugues, written in 1917, are preserved in the National Library of Canada, and they are based on the Oxford Mus.D. test subjects from 1911, 1912 and 1913. There is also a fourth fugue for string quartet written by MacMillan in 1917 preserved in the National Library of Canada; it is based on a theme by Benjamin Dale, an English musician who was also interned at Ruhleben and was a good friend of MacMillan. Many more such fugues must have been discarded or lost, for MacMillan noted in his memoirs that during the last year and a half of his internment he wrote "a fugue a day as well as numerous exercises."7 The hard work paid off, for MacMillan was awarded the Oxford Mus.D. in 1918.
Like many other works written during the British chamber music revival, MacMillan's String Quartet is, in the composer's own words, "quite conventional in form and key relationships."8 The quartet is derivative in style, but it is also a remarkably assured effort for a first essay in the medium by a 21-year-old composer. The most obvious influences at work on the MacMillan work are German romanticism and the music of the turn of the century English school. The former influence is most evident in the scherzo, which calls to mind the scherzo from Schubert's String Quartet in G Major, D. 887 (Op. 161), while the latter influence is felt in the Elgarian thrust of the outer movements, most notably in the second theme of the finale.
MacMillan's forms are traditional in nature (sonata form and ternary form) and the harmonic language is for the most part that of the late nineteenth century. As John Beckwith has noted, MacMillan was "resistant by taste and training to avant-garde trends."9 The writing for strings, while not astonishingly original, is certainly competent and it is always idiomatic. MacMillan writes for four independent parts consistently, and the thematic material is shared nicely among all four instruments, a procedure that was made possible by the composer's well-developed feeling for the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in his thematic material. The first theme of the first movement, for example, is broken down into a number of smaller units which appear as accompanimental motives, often in an imitative texture. Example 4-1 shows this process at work in the first four bars:
Example 4-1: MacMillan String Quartet, I bars 1-4
Such examples could be multiplied many times over to show how MacMillan uses contrapuntal techniques to organize his melodic material and fashion a unified and cogent musical structure. To give just one more instance, Example 4-2 is drawn from the transition section between the first and second subjects of the slow movement. Here MacMillan uses the opening of the first theme in imitation, at first in augmentation and then in diminution of its original note values:
Example 4-2: MacMillan String Quartet, III bars 25-29
The derivative nature of the style of much of MacMillan's quartet can be attributed in part to the composer's youth, in part to the conservative nature of his musical education, and in part to the weight of historical precedent in the medium in which he choose to express his many fine ideas. What surprises one about the work, though, is a brief foray into impressionistic harmonies in the manner of Debussy at the opening of the fourth movement. It is interesting in this connection to learn that MacMillan gave a lecture on Debussy at Ruhleben, "probably some time in 1917,"10 in other words shortly after he had finished work on the first draft of most of his String Quartet. Although pre-World War I European experiments in extreme chromaticism and atonality were not taken up by MacMillan, he did manage to keep up with recent trends in French, Russian and English music by composers such as Debussy, Scriabin and Delius during his period at Ruhleben. In addition to the conservative influences noted earlier, MacMillan had evidently also heard and been influenced by the Debussy String Quartet. As Example 4-3 shows, the ending of the introduction to the fourth movement of MacMillan's String Quartet calls to mind a similar passage in the corresponding section of Debussy's String Quartet:
Example 4-3: a. MacMillan String Quartet, IV bars 32-35
b. Debussy String Quartet, IV bars 5, 12-14
The enharmonic progression and shifting parallel seventh chords of Example 4-3a are as contemporary as MacMillan's harmonic language would ever get. His String Quartet is predominantly conservative in style, but the influence of Debussy is already present in the earliest version of the work. Given the prevailing musical style in 1914, not just in Canada but in most other places as well, the nod to Debussy, though admittedly brief, marks an important early example of the attempt to reconcile the past and the present.
MacMillan had little time for composition once he resumed his musical activities in Canada after the First World War. This is greatly to be regretted, for on the basis of his String Quartet, it is evident that MacMillan might have steered Canadian composition gently into the twentieth century had the opportunity and the inclination presented itself. Instead his time was taken up with conducting and administration, and the compromise between the musical past and the new ideas of Debussy which MacMillan's String Quartet tentatively put forward was destined to remain an isolated gesture without immediate repercussions either in MacMillan's own compositions or on the course of composition in Canada.
It was not until many years after MacMillan's String Quartet that the next example of a conciliatory work mediating between conservative and avant-garde music appeared in the Canadian string quartet repertoire. The decades after MacMillan's String Quartet witnessed the final works in the conservative tradition by the older generation of Canadian composers, and this stage was followed by the first tentative essays in modernism by younger composers during the later 1940s and early 1950s. Only after the case for modernism had finally been won did composers once again begin to search for a compromise between old and new.
By the late 1950s, twelve-tone music had become not only accepted by many Canadian composers, but even expected as a sign of intellectual respectability. Some composers began to question the new orthodoxy and tried to combine twelve-tone techniques with older forms and styles of music. This, of course, was anathema to rigorous, hard-line serialists, for whom tonal implications used in twelve-tone music were a betrayal of the fundamental tenets of serial music. It has been argued that few composers have ever written a "strictly" serial work, and that some degree of flexibility is required in any artistic system. But by mixing non-serial and serial techniques, conciliators went further and tried to have the best of both worlds. Such attempts were not always successful, but in Otto Joachim's String Quartet of 1956, a powerful and convincing synthesis of twelve-tone techniques and musical ideas from earlier periods was effected.
Joachim was by temperament and choice among the most avant-garde Canadian composers of his generation. He was one of the first composers in this country to use chance procedures, and he even set up his own private electronic music studio in order to learn about this medium and the opportunities it offered for a new range of musical expression. But Joachim was also the violist of the Montreal String Quartet, and so he had an intimate first-hand knowledge of the historical repertoire for string quartet. He was singularly well-qualified to create in his String Quartet an important compromise between new compositional techniques and the historical exigencies of the string quartet repertoire.
Joachim had already written several twelve-tone works before completing his only acknowledged work for string quartet. There are, in fact, two other string quartets by Joachim, one dating from the mid-1930s when he was resident in Singapore, and one written in the late-1950s, shortly after the quartet presently under consideration; both of these works have been withdrawn.11 By the time he wrote his 1956 quartet, then, Joachim already had some experience both in twelve-tone techniques and in writing for string quartet.
In 1960 Udo Kasemets wrote an analysis of the Joachim String Quartet which merits quoting at length:
Tradition of a different nature is the backbone of Otto Joachim's work. Strict dodecaphony - that is, straightforward serial writing - underlies his ... String Quartet ... The extraordinary talent of this composer shows already in the basic tone rows. Compiled of a succession of intervals which enable the creation of sensitive melodic curves and intense harmonies, they establish an element of thematic power which never relaxes during the various manipulations of the total form ... Often he employs two-part counterpoint between outer voices while the inner parts articulate rhythmic pedal points or ostinati. Canons over fragmentary rhythmic punctuation in the Quartet ... are not mere mechanical constructions, but inspired formal complexities with enormous inner power. Webernesque frailties appear in contrast to multiple-stop rhythmic orgies ... A performing artist himself, Joachim makes no errors in scoring. Every detail is worked out with meticulous care and consideration for clarity and balance.12
Kasemets' analysis needs clarification in some details, but it is a good starting point for an examination of Joachim's quartet and it serves as the basis for the following discussion.
The label "strict dodecaphony" is something of a misnomer as applied to Joachim's quartet. The very opening of the work, for instance, dramatically establishes a tonal centre on the note D and much of the harmonic and melodic gravity of the work revolves about this note. Furthermore a good deal of the dramatic tension in the work is created by the contrast between the fairly strict unfolding of the various permutations of the row and the frequent reiterations of the pitch D, which is not only the second note of the prime form of the row but which also acts as a tonal centre in some ways. The pitch D occurs as a stable reference point at the opening and close of the first movement and also at the close of the final movement, and it is also used in a pedal point (together with the pitch E) in the second movement. Joachim's String Quartet is not "in D" or even "on D," but this pitch is used to articulate several important structural moments. The choice of the pitch D as a stable reference point seems to result as much from considerations of string quartet scoring (the note resonates richly on string instruments, whether played as a stopped note or open string) as from any pre-compositional decisions about combining tonal features with twelve-tone techniques. Other features of Joachim's row usage that depart from "strict dodecaphony" include the repetition of notes or note cells within the row before the entire row has been presented and other occasional deviations from strict adherence to the regular unfolding of the notes in the row.
The shape of the basic tone row does indeed, as Kasemets stated, already show Joachim's constructive imagination. As seen in Example 4-4, the row is made up exclusively of minor and major seconds and thirds:
Example 4-4: Joachim String Quartet, prime form of the row (PO)
The structure of the row gives a homogeneous character to the melodic material of Joachim's String Quartet, as fourths and fifths are never used melodically except in those few places where the row is deployed vertically instead of horizontally. The row also exhibits inversional hexachordal combinatoriality, but Joachim was not aware of this feature of the row and it did not influence his choice of row forms in the work.13 A further feature of the row is that the last nine notes of PO form an intervallic palindrome. One result of this aspect of the row is the close relation between prime forms and their retrograde inversion transposed eight semi-tones higher, as shown in Example 4-5:
Example 4-5: Joachim String Quartet, rows PO and RI8
Joachim was aware of this relationship and it did sometimes determine his choice of row forms. Thus in the second movement, to name but one example, three bars before figure 5 in the first violin there occurs a three note pivot from RI11 to P3, which exploits the fact that the last three notes of the former row and the first three notes of the latter are the same (G-F-E flat), as seen in Example 4-6:
Example 4-6: Joachim String Quartet, II rehearsal no. 5 (violin 1)
The three-note pivot in Example 4-6 is an extension of Joachim's often-used one note pivot, wherein the last note of one row becomes the first note of the next. This one note pivot is used when a row form is followed immediately by its retrograde.
As Kasemets pointed out, pedal points are used for lengthy periods in each of the four movements, and they often occur in close connection with ostinati, as shown in Table 4-1. Canons appear in each of the first two movements (I bars 60-78, violin 1/2, and II bars 37-45, 48-51 and 63-66, violin 2/viola) and also as part of the fugue in the last movement (bars 85-156). One other example of an "inspired formal complexity" (Kasemets) is the mirror structure which occurs in the last movement from bar 39 beat 3 to bar 42 (the central pivot is bar 41 beat 1).
Table 4-1: Joachim String Quartet, pedal points and ostinati
I Pedals 29-36 134-141 146-163 Ostinati 29-36 41-59 86-115 134-141 II Pedals 10-28 Ostinati none III Pedals 1-20 74-92 Ostinati none IV Pedals 68-83 133-156 Ostinati 85-132 157-195
Joachim maintained a link with the past not just through the use of such detailed tonal procedures as pedal points or ostinati and the use of deviations from strict unfolding of the row forms. He also relied on classic formal models, based on the principles of thematic contrast and recollection, to create the large-scale formal structures of his String Quartet, as shown in Table 4-2:
Table 4-2: Joachim String Quartet, overall structure (numbers in square brackets are rehearsal numbers in the score)* based on Intro to IV and Fugue subject in augmentation
Section Bar Number Rehearsal Number Total Bars I Intro 1 - 10 Opening to [1]-5 10 A 11 - 40 [1]-4 to [4]-1 30 B 41 - 115 [4] to [11]-1 75 A 116 - 145 [11] to [14]+4 30 Coda 146 - 167 [14]+5 to End 22 II A 1 - 28 Opening to [4]-1 28 B 29 - 68 [4] to [8]-1 40 x {29 - 58} {[4] to [7]-1} {30} y {59 - 68} {[7] to [8]-1} {10} A' 69 - 81 [8] to [9]-1 13 B' 82 - 125 [9] to End 44 x' {82 - 104} {[9] to [11]-1} {23} y' {105 - 125} {[11] to End} {21} III Intro 1 - 10 Opening to [1]-1 10 A 11 - 32 [1] to [3]+3 22 B 33 - 73 [3]+4 to [7]-1 41 C 74 - 92 [7] to End 19 IV Intro 1 - 17 Opening to [4]-1 17 A 18 - 84 [4] to [9]-1 67 B Fugue 85 - 156 [9] to [15]-1 72 Expos {85 - 132} {[9] to [13]-1} {48} Stretto {133 - 156} {[13] to [15]-1} {24} C* 157 - 195 [15] to [18]-2 39 Coda+ 196 - 214 [18]-1 to End 19
+ based on Coda to I
Twelve-tone composition is a technique rather than a style, and each twelve-tone composer has an idiosyncratic way of using this technique to fashion his own personal style. One of the ways in which twelve-tone works differ from each other is in their melodic style. Every twelve-tone composition is in a sense a theme with variations, as the prime form of the row provides the theme and the permutations of the row are the variations. Joachim, in his String Quartet, at times brings this theme and variations aspect of twelve-tone composition to the forefront. All eight occurrences of the prime form of the row in the first movement of Joachim's String Quartet are given in Example 4-7; these eight statements are like variations on an unstated theme, the unstated theme being PO. This is another example of how Joachim combined twelve-tone methods with traditional compositional processes to successfully reconcile the old and the new. This is not to say that Joachim lacks imagination in his use of row forms, or that he does not make use of a variety of row permutations in his quartet. In fact the quartet is extremely rich in its exploitation of the available permutations; 44 of the 48 possible row forms are used in the work.
Example 4-7: Joachim String Quartet, I - forms of PO
Joachim's String Quartet not only presents an intricate and cleverly worked out balance between twelve-tone techniques and tonal procedures, it is also extremely well written and conceived for the resources of the string quartet. The textures are nicely varied, ranging from such "Webernesque frailties" (Kasemets) as the opening of the second movement or the section beginning at rehearsal number 4 in the last movement, to the powerful writing in the introduction and coda of the first movement or the fully scored driving rhythms in the last movement from rehearsal number 15 to the end of the work. Each of the instruments has an important solo. Little use is made of special string effects, but every bar of the work betrays the experienced and masterful hand of an inspired and knowledgeable string player.
Hans Keller once noted that the greatest string quartet composers have all been performers who have experienced the medium primarily from "the coign of vantage of the viola."14 In support of his theory, Keller cites the examples of Haydn, Mozart and Mendlessohn. To this list we can now add Otto Joachim, for Joachim was indeed an experienced string quartet violist, and his String Quartet is not only a successful reconciliation of classical and modern techniques, it is also one of the finest works in the medium by a Canadian composer.15
Joachim was not alone in combining contemporary techniques with traditional methods to create a synthesis of old and new musical ideas during the late 1950s. Harry Somers in his String Quartet No. 3 (1959) combined techniques of the Baroque era and the twentieth century to create a synthesis of twelve-tone and neo-classical features. This quartet was written on a commission from the Vancouver International Festival for the Hungarian String Quartet, which premiered it in the summer of 1959. It was the first quartet in which Somers used twelve-tone techniques, and also one of his first works in a completely non-tonal idiom. Many of Somers' works from the 1950s exhibit the use of style juxtaposition, that is a mixture within a single piece of tonal and non-tonal idioms; tonality is dispensed with altogether in the String Quartet No. 3.
Although written in one continuous movement, Somers' String Quartet No. 3 is in four movement-like sections in the tempo relationship of slow-fast-slow-fast. The first two of these sections (opening to two bars after rehearsal number 4; three bars after rehearsal number 4 to rehearsal number 17) are related somewhat in the manner of a slow introduction followed by a scherzo, whereas the third section (rehearsal number 17 to rehearsal number 30) is a slow movement and the final section (rehearsal number 30 to end) is a double fugue.
Brian Cherney has demonstrated the influence of Bartók on Somers' String Quartet No. 216 and the same influence is at work in the present quartet. Somers' String Quartet No. 3 opens with a substantial cello solo upon which much of the later material of the quartet is based; this cello solo thus plays a role similar to the opening viola solo in Bartók's String Quartet No. 6. In addition, Somers' scoring for string quartet, with its use of short points of imitation, varied quartet textures and the complete independence of all four instruments, owes a certain debt to the example of Bartók. The section between rehearsal numbers 27 and 28 in the Somers quartet, for instance, employs a texture similar to that used by Bartók in the fourth movement of his String Quartet No. 5, beginning at bar 64. In the Bartók excerpt (Example 4-8a) the two violins are bound together in a loosely imitative fashion over an accompaniment of rapid scale passages in the lower two instruments. In the Somers quartet (Example 4-8b) the two violin lines are related in that the second violin line is based on a row which is the retrograde of the first violin's row, and once again the two lower instruments play rapid scale passages as accompaniment.
Example 4-8: a. Bartók String Quartet No. 5, IV bars 64-68
This score excerpt not included in HTML version of thesis.
Example 4-8: b. Somers String Quartet No. 3, rehearsal no. 27 to rehearsal no.28
This score excerpt not included in HTML version of thesis.
John Beckwith pointed out in 1956 that an important feature of many works by Somers was the "Bartókian formal crescendo."17 In this quartet the crescendo appears in the very first bar and it continues to be the dominating element of the use of dynamics in the quartet until its final dramatic appearance in the last four bars of the work. Cherney considers this dynamic shape to be the single most important form-giving characteristic of the first section of the quartet (up to rehearsal number 17).18 From smaller scale dynamic figures such as those in the opening cello solo, the crescendo expands to the point in the final section of the quartet where it extends over many bars and involves all four instruments (e.g. from rehearsal number 32 to 34). Somers may have borrowed the idea for using the crescendo as a form-giving device from Bartók, but in exploiting it so thoroughly and so masterfully he certainly made it his own.
Twelve-tone techniques lie at the heart of the melodic and harmonic organization of Somers' String Quartet No. 3, but like Joachim, Somers used these techniques with considerable freedom. The opening cello solo presents the basic row of the quartet. As Harvey Olnick relates in his article on Somers
Those who have heard Somers' opera The Fool (1951-3) will be aware that the latter work opens with this row stated in the identical rhythmic shape. This is not to suggest that the quartet is an instrumentalization of the opera. The intervallic sequence, the registers employed, and the rhythmic properties of the row have for Somers the potential of two completely unique works. As a matter of fact, he told me that he even had in mind using this row for a cello concerto.19
One reason why Somers was able to create two such different works out of the same row was that he often altered the order of the pitches in the row. In the quartet the first four pitches of the row remain more or less stable, but the last eight pitches appear in a variety of sequences. The main ordering of the series is that which is presented at the outset by the cello (Example 4-9a) but another important ordering of the row is introduced by the first violin at the Presto Scherzando section after rehearsal number 4 (Example 4-9b):
Example 4-9: Somers String Quartet No. 3, two row orderings
a.
b.
The cello row (Example 4-9a) is used in the introduction (at rehearsal number 1),20 for the main melody of the "slow movement" (rehearsal number 17, beginning with the second note of the row) and for both of the fugue subjects in the double fugue. The violin row (Example 4-9b) is used for the first violin line at rehearsal number 15 and for the two violin lines in one of the fugue episodes beginning at rehearsal number 41. Other orderings of the row are also used on occasion, and of course the two main orderings occur in more than just the above-cited places.
Such freedom in the ordering of the pitches in the row was not allowable according to strict twelve-tone theory. Wolfgang Fortner, for instance, has been quoted as saying that:
It seems to me that a series loses its point if the first, third, fifth, etc., note of the series appear before the second, fourth and sixth. This is really the appearance of a new series and it destroys the mental idea of using one chosen series for a certain work.21
Unlike Fortner, Somers regarded the row as a flexible construct. In addition to changing the order of the pitches in the row, Somers also made use of the "slow exposure" technique, wherein earlier pitches in the row may be repeated before all twelve pitches have been presented. This technique is in evidence from the opening cello solo and it is a consistent feature of Somers' use of the row in the quartet. By rearranging the order of the pitches in the row and by using the "slow exposure" technique, Somers effected a workable compromise between the dictates of strict serialism on the one hand and abandoning the use of his row altogether on the other.
The aspect of the quartet which most clearly demonstrates Somers' attempt to reconcile the conservative and the modernist approaches to music is his use of polyphonic techniques. Regarding this feature of his music, Somers has stated that
During the early fifties I was very involved with contrapuntal technique, attempting to unify conceptions of the Baroque and earlier, which appealed to me enormously, with the high tensioned elements of our own time.22
The frequent use of short points of imitation and the double fugue which ends the work point out the underlying polyphonic conception of much of the quartet; these features are combined with the nervous, driving rhythms and the use of twelve-tone techniques that Somers obviously considered the "high tensioned elements" of the twentieth century. A good example of the level of polyphonic complexity which the quartet sometimes attains is given in Example 4-10. At this point the two violins are in canon at the octave for two bars, as are the viola and cello; the two canonic subjects are the inversion of each other. In the third bar of this example, all four instruments have a short point of imitation.
Example 4-10: Somers String Quartet No. 3, three bars before rehearsal no. 5
The most thoroughgoing example of polyphonic writing in this work is the double fugue which begins at rehearsal number 30. The first exposition (rehearsal number 30 to rehearsal number 34) is constructed in an unusual way. The four entries of the fugue subject share a driving rhythm with repeated sixteenth notes, but they are all quite different in melodic outline as each entry is based on a different permutation of the cello row (P8, I10, R6 and RI10 in order of appearance). The second exposition (two beats before rehearsal number 35 to rehearsal number 39) is more conventional in form. The four entries of the second subject are identical with respect to rhythms and intervals, as they are each based on a prime form of the cello row (P1, P4, P3 and P0 respectively). Each entry of the second subject is coupled with a new entry of the first subject. These new entries of the first subject are all based on inverted forms of the cello row (I0, I3, I2 and I11 respectively) and this allows the first subject to be modified so that each new entry of the first subject is now built from the same intervals.
The construction of the two fugue expositions is based on the cello row P8, which is also the row used for the first presentation of the first subject at rehearsal number 30. As Example 4-11 shows, the pitch level at which the successive subject entries begin on is determined by row P8. The fifth and twelfth pitches of this row are not used for subject entries, but these two pitches, E flat and D, and their neighbours, E and D flat, are the principle pitches from which the transition between the two expositions (rehearsal number 34 to 35) is built.
Example 4-11:Somers String Quartet No. 3, pitches of the subject entries in the two fugue expositions
The use of row P8 to construct these two fugal expositions is an extension of a technique which Somers employed in his Passacaglia and Fugue for Orchestra (1954). In that work, the row form I0 was used to govern the pitch level of the various subject entries of the fugue.23 In the quartet this technique is carried one step further, so that the two separate expositions of the double fugue are both governed by the row form of the first presentation of the subject in the first exposition.
By combining Baroque fugal procedures with twelve-tone techniques and contemporary dynamic and rhythmic gestures, Somers mediated between the past and the present in his String Quartet No. 3. The result was a successful composition that remains one of the outstanding contributions to the spirit of compromise in the Canadian string quartet repertoire. The importance of this work was already evident at its first performance; it is one of only a few Canadian string quartets to have been premiered by a major ensemble from abroad (The Hungarian String Quartet). Since that first performance, the work has been performed in Canada and elsewhere by a variety of string quartet ensembles and has been recorded twice by two different Canadian quartets.24 Neither experimental nor outmoded in style, Somers' String Quartet No. 3 was conceived within the mainstream of the great string quartet tradition, but it enlivened that tradition by injecting a measure of vitality and freshness, combining a variety of old and new techniques in an assured and mature synthesis. The work captures the essence of that spirit of conciliation towards which Somers, in common with many Canadian composers, was consciously striving.
A third Canadian string quartet that mediated successfully between twelve-tone techniques and more traditional compositional methods was John Weinzweig's String Quartet No. 3. This work was written in 1962 and premiered by the Canadian String Quartet in Toronto on 17 January 1963, one year to the day after that ensemble's first public performance. Weinzweig had completed his second string quartet sixteen years earlier; the third and to date last of his quartets reflected the composer's development in the intervening years. The String Quartet No. 3 is conceived in especially intimate terms and was completed as a memorial to the composer's mother, who died during the composition of this work.
The quartet is in five movements, of which the first, third and fifth are all in exactly the same slow tempo (Adagio, dotted quarter note = 46) while the second and fourth are contrasting fast movements. The last movement is subtitled "In Memoriam" as a tribute to Weinzweig's mother. The "In Memoriam" makes use of the opening motive of the Kol Nidre, the Jewish prayer which serves as an introduction to the service for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The ancient melody of the Kol Nidre has also been used in Beethoven's String Quartet in C Sharp Minor, Opus 131 and in many other works by numerous composers.
In spite of reminiscences of Stravinsky at the opening of the second movement and of Webern at the start of the third movement, this quartet is stamped throughout with Weinzweig's personal style characteristics. Indeed the driving 'Stravinsky' rhythms and the sparse 'Webern' textures of these two sections were by this time as much a feature of the Weinzweig style as of these two composers.
The five movements of this Weinzweig work are all based on the same row (Example 4-12a), though the order of the last seven notes is switched around in the fourth movement (Example 4-12b):
Example 4-12:Weinzweig String Quartet No. 3, two row orderings
a.
b.
A programme note by John Beckwith about this composition states that "Weinzweig calls the Quartet a 'surrealistic' work, and connects its creating with the 'free association' literary method of James Joyce."25 Weinzweig, in describing his quartet this way, may in part have been thinking of his treatment of the row in the work, for he deviates from strict serial procedures in some of the same ways that Somers did in his String Quartet No. 3. In addition the melodic writing and formal structure of Weinzweig's work demonstrate a new sense of freedom that may have something to do with the example of Joyce.
The first time that each different form of Weinzweig's row is presented, the notes usually unfold in the correct order, but there is much repetition of pitches in keeping with the "slow exposure" method of presenting the row. This technique, whereby previously exposed notes of the row are repeated before the whole row has been presented, was also featured in the works by Joachim and Somers discussed in this chapter. Although used by several Canadian composers, this "slow exposure" technique had also been used much earlier in compositions by Alban Berg.
Weinzweig avoids octave sonorities in this work, with the one important exception of the dramatic moment at the end of the work when all four instruments play in octaves. However other tonal references are not avoided altogether. Occasionally the inner voices are doubled in thirds (e.g. I bars 49-52 and III bars 19-30) and the odd passing reference is even made to tonal chord structures (e.g. V bar 51, an augmented triad). But no attention is drawn to these tonal features, and they do not act as a disruptive influence in the work; instead they fit almost imperceptibly into the prevailing twelve-tone idiom. The one exception to this is the ending of the entire work. At this point (V bar 76 to the end of the work) the octave sonorities settle on a long held C, and the prime form of the row is unfolded in the four instruments from top to bottom in such a way as to emphasize tonal outlines. John Kraglund wrote in his review of the premiere performance of this quartet that "[t]he fragments were apparently indicative of a quest and the closing bars of the final movement suggested that what was being sought was really something with a definite tonality."26 These tonal references include the use of the Kol Nidre motive. It thus seems more likely that the closing tonal gestures were the result of a search for a peaceful ending to this movement, which is a memorial tribute to the composer's mother, rather than a purely abstract flight from the prevailing twelve-tone idiom to the safer realm of tonality, as Kraglund implied.
Weinzweig often dwells at great length upon one row form, exploring its melodic and harmonic possibilities fully before gradually introducing other permutations. The most extreme case of this is the third movement, in which bars 1 to 41, comprising fully two-thirds of the movement, use only the form R5. Another example is the first movement, in which bars 1 to 31 and bars 55 to 69 use only the form P0. The second of these two sections in the first movement acts as a compressed recapitulation of the opening of the movement. The last movement also makes quite extensive use of P0, especially at the beginning and end of the movement; P0 thus seems to act as a "home row" in a somewhat analogous fashion to a "home key" in tonal music.
One characteristic of the row for this work is that when it is inverted at the interval of a tritone, the inverted row begins with the same five pitches as the original form. This feature of the row, taken together with the fact that Weinzweig occasionally mixes up the order of the pitches in his row forms, leads at times to a certain ambiguity as to which row form is being used. In addition, as mentioned above, in the fourth movement a new order of the last seven pitches of the row is used. These are all characteristic aspects of Weinzweig's row technique. He views the row not as a strictly ordered collection of pitches from which no deviations are allowed, but rather as a collective entity, the smaller components of which can be rearranged to some extent without damaging the overall serial configuration.
These features of row technique in the String Quartet No. 3 are not radically different from those found in earlier works by Weinzweig, or indeed by Somers. On this level, a newly felt influence of the free association literary method of James Joyce could not have been of overwhelming importance, if indeed it was a factor at all. Udo Kasemets, in his review of the premiere of the work, suggested a number of ways in which this quartet did represent a departure from Weinzweig's earlier compositions:
Indeed, Weinzweig has changed his approach to questions of form, style and expression. He has done away with systematic development of musical ideas. His music is not any more driven by restless motoric rhythms and ever-shifting syncopations. There are no elaborate melodies, no pre-set form schemes.27
There are indeed but few places in the quartet where the melodic line is sustained for more than two or three bars. Instead short motives are passed from instrument to instrument, in slightly different rhythmic configurations. Driving rhythms, on the other hand, are dispensed with in the three slow movements but are very much in evidence in the two fast movements. Thematic development is largely done away with, as it had been in the Somers quartet. Instead a wealth of motivic ideas are used and these are often turned into ostinato figures; indeed ostinati are used almost as frequently in this work as in the Joachim String Quartet. Apart from the brief recapitulation in the first movement (bars 55 to 69), the return of previously heard motives at a later point in a movement usually has the nature of a reminiscence rather than a recapitulation. As a result the formal plans of the movements are additive rather than repetitive. It is perhaps this sense of freedom and spontaneity in the melodic writing and in the formal structure of this quartet that Weinzweig had in mind when he spoke of this work as surrealistic and mentioned that it was influenced by the literary techniques of James Joyce. But the work is more remarkable for its balanced compromise between old compositional techniques and new ideas such as these, and it is therein that the importance of the quartet lies.
During the 1960s, the ranks of Canadian composers who were searching for a reconciliation between the past and the present swelled. But not all of these composers were as successful as Joachim, Somers and Weinzweig had been in combining twelve-tone techniques with traditional compositional methods. Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux completed her String Quartet in April 1966 while she was studying composition with Gilles Tremblay and Clermont Pépin at the Conservatory in Montreal. The composer expressly stated her purpose in writing this work as follows:
This string quartet links the assimilation of traditional technique[s] of writing with a departure for the acquisition of new techniques of musical expression ... [it] is at the cross-roads of two tendencies in my approach to the problem of musical composition: a break with the past and an opening towards new adventures.28
This was one of the composer's last works for a traditional instrumental ensemble. In 1967 she won the Prix d'Europe and travelled to Paris to undertake advanced studies in electronic music. The use of traditional forms and techniques in this string quartet is thus all the more striking in light of the fact that the composer abandoned such elements in her later works. Unlike her teacher Pépin, who had predicted that he would abandon the string quartet in favour of electronic music but subsequently continued to write string quartets, Saint-Marcoux did turn to electronic music after one essay in the string quartet medium.
For Saint-Marcoux, attempting to reconcile the past and the present in her String Quartet meant using classical forms and traditional melodic and rhythmic procedures, while avoiding tonal references. The three movements of the work are cast in modified versions of sonata, lied and rondo form respectively. Tonal implications are largely absent from the harmonies employed in the quartet, although the melodic lines, perhaps inadvertently, often outline tonal structures. The composer maintains that all of the musical parameters are serialized in the second movement of the work, but if this is indeed the case it is accomplished without a noticeable break in style with the outer two movements.
The difficulty with the Saint-Marcoux String Quartet is that rather than integrating twelve-tone techniques with traditional procedures into a successful synthesis of new and old as was the case in the Joachim, Somers and Weinzweig quartets, the composer has instead forced the old and new together in an uncomfortable juxtaposition. This is especially evident in the two outer movements, where the classical rhythmic and formal procedures clash uncomfortably with the atonal harmonic organization. The listener is left with the impression that past and present have not been reconciled but rather joined against their will.
A similar problem exists with the Permutations on a Paganini Caprice for string quartet written in 1966 by Paul McIntyre. In a letter to Keith MacMillan written in 1977, McIntyre expressed his artistic credo as it relates to this work:
If there is a common stylistic thread to what I have been doing over the years, I think it is an attempt to find a reconciliation between serialism and tonality. That is what the Paganini Variations are all about.29
Saint-Marcoux and McIntyre approached the same end through quite different means, however. Saint-Marcoux incorporated old forms and technical procedures within a serial framework, but she attempted to avoid references to tonal procedures. McIntyre, on the other hand, started with a theme that has definite tonal outlines and proceeded to draw serial implications from this tonal reference point.
McIntyre wrote his Paganini Variations in the summer of 1966 while he was teaching at the University of Minnesota and the work was written, appropriately, for Henri Temianka and the Paganini Quartet. (The ensemble had disbanded, however, by the time the work was completed.) The composition consists of what McIntyre refers to as a "theorem" with eleven "permutations" and a coda. The theorem is the famous theme from Paganini's 24th Caprice for Solo Violin, Opus 1, which served as the inspiration for compositions by many composers, including Schumann, Liszt, Brahms and Rachmaninoff. McIntyre's theorem could be stated in words as follows: if some portions of the Paganini theme are transposed, a twelve-tone series results which can form the basis for a set of variations.
This theorem is then subjected to eleven permutations which correspond to Paganini's eleven original variations. McIntyre follows the Paganini model quite closely at first, but by the ninth permutation the relationship to Paganini becomes quite remote. Each permutation uses a new twelve-tone series obtained by transposing phrases or parts of phrases of the Paganini theme, often by the interval of a tritone. Most of the permutations use canon and other contrapuntal techniques to expand Paganini's single melodic line into a four-voiced texture. In the coda, the theorem returns in the first violin, accompanied this time by twelve-tone figures in the lower three instruments.
McIntyre's experiment was an interesting one, but ultimately unconvincing. In the first place, Paganini's theme is so well known in its original form that McIntyre's alteration of it to form his theorem conveys the unintentional but distinct aura of parody. Rather than reconciling tonality and serialism, the work lies uneasily with a foot in both camps. On the one hand, the tonal expectations raised by the use of Paganini's theme are frustrated, but on the other hand a rigorous use of serial techniques is also not present. The Paganini Variations are serial only in the loosest sense of the word. McIntyre most often constructs twelve-tone themes by combining tonal phrases that are pitched a tritone apart; the end result is if anything a polytonal rather than serial organization. The work is true neither to the aesthetic of Paganini nor to that of Schoenberg.
As the 1960s progressed, composers became less interested in attempting to reconcile twelve-tone techniques with traditional compositional methods. Conciliators turned their attention to other compositional idioms of the twentieth century and explored ways of linking them with older musical ideas. One of the most eloquent and convincing manifestations of this trend was the String Quartet No. 2 by Jean Papineau-Couture. This work was commissioned by the French network of the CBC for the centennial celebrations of 1967 but it was not premiered until 24 June 1970, when the Orford String Quartet performed it at the Orford Arts Centre.30 The composition was dedicated to Papineau-Couture's former teacher, Nadia Boulanger, on the occasion of her eightieth birthday (16 September 1967). The mastery of technique and the disciplined forms that are the hallmarks of many of Boulanger's students are very much evident in Papineau-Couture's quartet.
The technical complexity and imaginative colouristic devices of this work are immediately evident, but further analysis shows that a controlled, rational structural organization underlies these surface features. Thematic analysis of the work reveals the following simple formal patterns:
Table 4-3: Papineau-Couture String Quartet No. 2, structure
Movement Section Bar Numbers Total Bars I A 1 - 26 25 B 26 - 53 28 A' 54 - 72 19 Coda 73 - 78 6 II A 79 - 108 30 B 109 - 122 14 A' 123 - 137 15 C 138 - 164 27 A'' 165 - 187 23 III A 188 - 222 35 B 223 - 248 26 B' 249 - 266 18 A' 267 - 283 17 IV A 284 - 305 22 B 306 - 318 13 A' 319 - 347 29 B' 348 - 360 13
These simple formal structures are wedded to a complex and freely organized atonal melodic and harmonic idiom, which is described in an anonymous programme note for the work (presumably written by the composer) as follows:
Du point du vue langage, l'oeuvre est atonale et pourrait peut-être se décrire comme une succession d'aglomérats de 12 sons se répartissant de façons diverses à travers l'échelle sonore, aglomérats qui se présentent soit sous forme d'accords, soit sous forme d'arpèges, soit sous forme d'égrènement en ligne mélodique accompagnée contrapuntiquement ou verticalement. Ceci amène un usage fréquent d'ostinatos et de répétitions de motifs transposés ou variés.31
Sometimes all twelve pitches are presented immediately, without repetition, as in the opening of the first and second movements, and at other times all twelve pitches are presented with certain notes repeated, as in bars 18-21. On occasion melodies are even built up from smaller pitch collections, such as the cello line from bars 109-122, which uses only ten pitches.
String sonorities used in the quartet are traditional, but are often combined in new and effective ways. In bars 236-239, for instance, four different string colours - sul ponticello, sul tasto, pizzicato vibrato, and artificial harmonics - are combined. Each is not unusual in itself, but the use of all four together creates a striking colouristic effect. The opening of the work (from bar 3-17) brings to mind the end of the development section of Beethoven's "Harp" Quartet Opus 74, as both works feature long held notes in the first violin and accelerating pizzicato arpeggios in the lower three instruments. In Papineau-Couture's quartet however the arpeggios use eleven different notes (the twelfth being the first violin's held note) and the first violin's held note constantly changes timbre.
The use of natural and artificial harmonics is meticulously notated by Papineau-Couture throughout the quartet. The care which the composer takes in this matter can be seen from the two cello solos beginning at bars 27 and 109. The first of these solos is accompanied by a sul ponticello cluster in the upper three instruments while the second is accompanied by a flowing ostinato in the violins and double stopped artificial harmonics in the viola:
Example 4-13: Papineau Couture String Quartet No. 2
a) bars 27-37 (cello) b) bars 109-115 (cello)
a.
b.
Another example of detailed instructions to the cellist about the performance of harmonics occurs in bar 238 where the composer repeats the same note four times, alternating between artificial and natural harmonics. Presumably Papineau-Couture asks for this because of the slight difference in sound that it entails. The coda of the first movement is another example of the care the composer takes to notate exactly the required colour. The overall effect of this passage (bars 73-77) is simply that of two diverging glissandi, with the violins going up and the viola and cello going down. The effect is worked out in great detail, however, as the second violin and viola have chromatic scales while the first violin and cello have whole tone scales, so that each instrument actually diverges from each other instrument. The passage opens up from the beginning semi-tone cluster to the final widely spaced chord. These are just a few of the many ways that traditional string sonorities are combined in new and unusual ways in this work. Instead of moderating avant-garde techniques through the influence of more conservative compositional methods, Papineau-Couture has updated traditional sonorities by ingeniously making them sound fresh and new.
In addition to a fine ear for the colouristic possibilities of the string quartet medium, Papineau-Couture also has great intellectual control over the formal organization of his quartet. The work is divided neatly into two approximately equal halves; the first half consists of the first two movements (which are to be played together without a pause in between) and the second half consists of the third and fourth movement. The duration of the two halves is 7'04" and 7'20" respectively in the recorded performance of the work by the Orford String Quartet (RCI 362). The first half of the quartet ends with a composed rallentando (pitches are repeated from bars 178 to 185 with progressively longer rhythmic values), while at the end of work there is a composed accelerando (from bars 355 to the end). The outer movements balance each other in length and weight (two fast movements of 78 and 77 bars respectively) while the two middle movements constitute an element of contrast (a fast movement of 109 bars and a slow movement of 96 bars).
The return of thematic material within the simple three- or four-part structures of each movement is never literal, but rather varied by inversion, rhythmic alteration, transposition and other similar manipulations. The presentation of the thematic material is evenly spread among the four instruments; indeed the writing requires virtuoso technique from each of the four players, as well as consummate ensemble abilities. It is perhaps these technical difficulties that have kept the quartet from gaining wider currency and more performances. This is unfortunate, for it is a work of great skill in its mediation between traditional string quartet techniques and formal principles on the one hand, and an inspired and altogether individual contemporary idiom and colouristic ideas on the other. Few works have managed to reconcile the past and the present as successfully as Papineau-Couture's String Quartet No. 2.
Up to roughly 1970, the conciliators had been concerned with bridging the gap between traditional compositional methods and avant-garde techniques. During the 1970s a new and important reconciliation took place in the Canadian string quartet. Within a period of some ten years, a number of composers arrived at the same end through a variety of means. The end towards which these composers were working was the reconciliation of the European origins and traditions of the string quartet as a genre with the North American musical environment and the Canadian soundscape within which these compositions were created and would flourish.
As noted earlier, there had been a brief, abortive attempt in the 1920s and 1930s to create a specifically Canadian string quartet repertoire through the use of folksong. This movement proved to be of only limited success and influence, however, for the use of indigenous melodic material did not prove to be the answer to the question of how to adapt the string quartet to the Canadian musical condition. Some would argue that this question does not even need to be asked or answered - the simple act of writing a work for string quartet in Canada makes the resulting composition inherently and unavoidably Canadian, and thus different from its European model. The music is from here, and so it tells us something about what this country sounds like and it is by its very origins Canadian and not European.
The issue of national characteristics of musical style is an involved and vexed one, and much ink has been spilled over this question without resolving it. Many writers have attempted over the years to define what Canadian musical style characteristics are, or indeed if there is or can be a uniquely Canadian musical style.32 This issue was not, however, of overriding importance during the 1970s as the string quartet was adapted to Canadian surroundings. Composers did not consciously attempt to write string quartets using a musical style that sounded specifically Canadian. They were, however, creatively stimulated and inspired by aspects of the musical and sonic environment of Canada, and this was reflected in their string quartet compositions.
A brief but important example of the influence of the Canadian environment on a string quartet composition occurs at the climax of Harry Freedman's Graphic II for string quartet, which was completed in May 1972. Freedman regards this work as an important turning point in his oeuvre 33 because of its incorporation of such avant-garde techniques as proportional notation, special string effects, tone clusters, imprecise pitch notation using X-shaped note-heads (an effect resembling Sprechgesang) and the use of humming, rhythmic speaking and shouting. Despite the use of these avant-garde methods, the work is not difficult or abstruse but rather engaging and immediate in its appeal. David Boothroyd has provided a useful descriptive analysis of the work, wherein he identifies the section between figure 9 and figure 11 as the climax of the work.34 During this section, while performing a trilled chord the players recite a text printed below the staff. Freedman has written about this section as follows:
The text is taken from the map of Ontario; names of towns, lakes and rivers are from the language of the Ojibwa Indian nation. "I chose these particular names simply because I found them fascinating as sheer sound. The graphic equivalent of course is that of a collage."35
The names Freedman selected are Wawiash-kashi (recited twice), Kamini-stikwi-kwasi-kwasi, Nabakwasi, Kau-kau-kawakanika, Kao-tachika and Chipikowa. Although Freedman selected these names purely for their value as abstract sound, they nonetheless can summon up images for some listeners. David Boothroyd has pointed out that to a listener familiar with the Ojibwa language, the names would have specific connotations: Kamini-stikwi-kwasi-kwasi, for instance, means "place with lots of islands."36 For another listener, these names might call to mind the vast, unpopulated tracts of Northern Ontario, an area where geographical names of European origin are greatly outnumbered by names such as these, drawn from the languages of Canada's first inhabitants.
This hypothetical listener might have a strong feeling of dislocation when, in the midst of a work for string quartet, a medium so closely tied to European and North American urban civilization, he or she is suddenly transported to the wilds of Northern Ontario. The effect would be radically different, for instance, if Freedman had chosen instead the names Mississauga, Toronto and Oshawa. The vaguely familiar and yet exotic names Freedman has chosen serve to place Graphic II in the context of a specific Canadian environment where the string quartet is an utterly foreign phenomenon. The powerful impact of this passage in Graphic II is created in part by the very fact that the listener does not expect string quartet performers to vocalize in this manner. But the shock value of this unexpected occurrence is enhanced by the juxtaposition of diverse images and associations created by the text that Freedman has selected.
Eight years after he completed Graphic II, Freedman wrote another work for string quartet that relates this genre to the North American musical context. Blue, subtitled "2nd String Quartet," was written in 1979 and 1980 and revised in 1981. This work is more conservative in style than Graphic II but is of interest for its combination of jazz-influenced characteristics with a modern music idiom. The influence of jazz on Western art music has a long and distinguished history in this century, but of the many works one could cite as examples of this phenomenon, there are few for string quartet before Freedman's Blue.
Freedman's interest in jazz dates back to his earliest days as a music student, but it was not until comparatively late in his career that this interest had an effect on his work as a composer. In 1980, just before Blue appeared, Gail Dixon described Freedman's relationship as a composer to jazz:
A final fingerprint of the Freedman style is the presence, veiled in early works but becoming steadily more prevalent, of jazz elements. He readily admits that Duke Ellington has as great an influence on his development as Debussy or Bartók. For years he had the impression that jazz did not "belong" in the musical language of a serious composer, and he consciously curbed his natural proclivity toward that idiom. However, as his confidence in himself as a composer grew, he began to see that jazz is such a vital part of North American culture that it can, and indeed should, find legitimate expression in the more traditional art forms. He is now attempting to evolve a language which includes the inflections of jazz as part of its very essence, not as a set of characteristics which are merely superimposed.37
Blue is one of the works that Freedman was working on at this time in his attempt to include jazz elements naturally in his own musical style. There is no use of jazz improvisation in this work; the jazz element is confined to rhythmic features and the use of melodic patterns associated with the blues. This work can only represent the first step in Freedman's attempt to evolve an idiom in which jazz is an essential rather than a superficial element.
Indeed, Freedman has stated that Blue is not jazz; he wanted to write a jazz string quartet but realized that there would be a problem finding a string quartet interested in and knowledgable about jazz that would be able to play such a work. After writing Blue, Freedman sent it and Graphic II to the Kronos Quartet of San Francisco, one of the only string quartet ensembles with a strong background in jazz, hoping that the group would play these works. It has not yet done so, but if Freedman does write a jazz string quartet, the Kronos Quartet would be the ideal ensemble to play it. Blue, however, is not a jazz string quartet but rather a work in a contemporary music idiom that is influenced by jazz. As such it is an extremely rare example of an attempt to mediate between the contemporary string quartet repertoire and jazz.38
While the Canadian environment played a brief but important role in Freedman's Graphic II, it is the single determining factor in R. Murray Schafer's String Quartet No. 2, subtitled "Waves." This work was directly influenced by Schafer's work on the World Soundscape Project. In an interview he gave in May 1975, eight months before he began work on "Waves," Schafer revealed what was to become the major formative idea for his string quartet. In reply to the question "How do you see your own music fitting in with your interest in the Soundscape project? How do the two connect up?" Schafer replied:
They do insofar as a lot of things that I've learned about the soundscape are probably reapplied in musical expression. For example, we discovered when we measured the water of the Pacific Ocean lapping against the West Coast of Vancouver Island that the breakers came in approximately every eight to ten seconds, and I've found that makes a very nice kind of movement. It happens to correspond approximately with our breathing when we're in a relaxed state, and one can develop that musically in terms of an articulation - in phrasing, for instance, - that has a parallel to wave motion ... I think we could learn a lot from the natural soundscape and perhaps incorporate it into art: perhaps save some of that natural soundscape before it's completely destroyed.39
In January 1976, Schafer began to write his String Quartet No. 2, and it was exactly this study of the ocean waves that determined the musical shape of the work. In a programme note published in the score of the work, Schafer explained how he translated this idea into music in "Waves" as follows:
In the course of the World Soundscape Project, we recorded and analysed ocean waves on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Canada. The recurrent pattern of waves is always asymmetrical but we have noted that the duration from crest to crest usually falls between 6 and 11 seconds. Fewer ocean waves are of longer or shorter duration than this. It is this wave motion that gives the quartet its rhythm and structure. The listener will readily hear the dynamic undulations of waves in this piece, and as the piece develops several types of wave motion are combined. Aside from this, I have sought to give the quartet a liquid quality in which everything is constantly dissolving and flowing into everything else. That is to say, the material of the work is not fixed, but is perpetually changing, and even though certain motivic figures are used repeatedly, they undergo continual dynamic, rhythmic and tempo variation. Although the work has waves as its theme (or rather its form) no program is intended.40
Conventional rhythmic notation and proportional notation are both used in "Waves." A time log underneath the score marks off the time in units that continually expand in one second increments from six seconds up to eleven seconds and then decrease back to six seconds again. At ca. 9'18" the second violin introduces a secondary wave motion, which is then taken up by the other three instruments, with the result that between 12'34" and 15'20" the periodic ebbing and flowing of time units is disrupted. At 15'20" the primary wave motion is restored and there is a return to the music of the opening of the work. Another natural sound is introduced by the cellist at 15'44" - this is the call of the white-throated sparrow, which the cellist imitates by playing harmonics, doubled softly by whistling. The work ends with the cellist alone on stage; Schafer's String Quartet No. 3, written in 1981, takes up from this point, for it begins with the cellist alone on stage.41
Schafer's musical language in "Waves" owes little to such previous water tone poems as Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture or the opening of Wagner's Rhinegold; it is more closely related to the musical style and procedures of minimalism. Like Philip Glass and other proponents of minimalism, Schafer in "Waves" has severely limited his musical materials, and he allows the work to create its effect largely by the hypnotic repetition of simple melodic patterns that weave in and out of synchronization. Most of these melodic patterns are derived from a simple seven-note scale (d, e flat, f sharp, g sharp, a, b, c). Quarter tones, glissandi and other special playing effects are also used, but the overall impression that the work creates is of a restriction of musical materials that reflects the simple beauty of ocean waves - ever unchanging but ceaselessly varied.
Perhaps the most thorough attempt at reconciling the European traditions of the string quartet with the realities of contemporary North American musical life is John Beckwith's Quartet of 1977. The title was carefully chosen. The wealth of associations and the weight of tradition conjured up by "String Quartet" is avoided, and instead we are presented with the title Quartet. This is a work for the four instruments of the string quartet, but the historical string quartet repertoire is only one of many traditions upon which this remarkable work draws.
Beckwith has long been interested in the question of how to reflect the Canadian experience in his music. In 1972 he stated
I believe in the importance of environment, local colour, 'accent'. Music, no less than its sister arts, achieves universality at least partly through loving care and attention paid to these things. (Look at Bach, Chopin, Ives.) All this is not simply the old advocacy of 'folk' all over again; nor does it rule out the necessity for awareness of international technical and linguistic advances ... [but there is] a lot of untapped possibility in the Canadian experience.42
Beckwith has tapped into the possibilities of the Canadian experience many times in his works, but perhaps nowhere more successfully than in his Quartet. This work combines not only new and old musical styles but also folk and art music, European and North American string playing idioms and more besides into a fascinating synthesis of disparate elements.
In his record jacket note about the Quartet, Beckwith wrote
Most composers write string quartets as student exercises. For some reason I escaped doing so, and the work which I wrote in 1977 was in fact my first encounter with the medium. The experience made me understand the continuing hold which it has had on composers ... The Quartet incorporates images of the kinds of string music which one might regard as indigenous to Canada - banjo, guitar, ukelele, mandolin, and, above all 'old-time' fiddle. Although the Quartet contains no actual quotations it evokes at various points these instrumental colours and the literature associated with them.43
In a longer version of this note, written for a presentation given at a meeting of the Canadian Association of University Schools of Music in 1979, Beckwith expanded upon his personal reasons for incorporating these Canadian string playing idioms into his Quartet:
My father owned a mandolin and played in a mandolin orchestra during his undergraduate years at McGill. One of my sons plays the folk guitar. The violonneux [sic] and old-time fiddling traditions are in a state of vigorous good health in several parts of the country, and, though not actively acquainted with them, I intensified my interest by reading Prof. George Proctor's articles on the subject, by listening to some recordings of Carignan, and by looking through the Ash Collection, an early-19th-century family ms. of Ontario recently acquired by the National Library of Canada.44
The imitation of other string instruments is confined to the two violins and the viola. To create a banjo sound, the instruments are held across the body and chords are strummed with a cardboard pick; the mandolin is imitated by playing pizzicato using the fingernail. The fiddle is evoked by musical characteristics such as the use of mordents and open-string drone accompaniments; further refinements are left to the discretion of the performer, who is instructed to play in "'Old-time fiddling' style."45
The work is based upon the row given in Example 4-14:
Example 4-14: Beckwith Quartet, prime form of the row (P0)
The composer has pointed out that this row can be regarded as falling into segments, for instance the first hexachord is quite tonal, while the second hexachord is more atonal, and in addition the last eight notes form an intervallic palindrome scale which is used separately at many points.46 There is a good deal of variety in the way Beckwith presents the row forms in this work, ranging from a strict unfolding of the pitches in the correct order to a very free treatment in which any pitches in the row may be repeated. The row form in Example 4-14, for instance, is used strictly to form a sustained melody for viola at letter G, but it is also presented in a much freer way to form a twelve-tone fiddle tune beginning one bar after letter N. At other times only smaller sections of the row forms are used. In short, twelve-tone techniques provide the basis for the melodic structure of the work, but they are frequently subordinated to expressive requirements.
In terms of its structure, Beckwith's Quartet falls neatly into an arch form consisting of five sections which are joined together in one continuous movement that is just under 20 minutes in duration. Section One (beginning to letter D) and Section Four (letter M to letter N) are introductory and lead into Section Two (letter D to letter G) and Section Five (letter N to the end of the work) respectively. Sections Two and Five both feature North American string playing idioms (banjo, country fiddle and mandolin in the former and country fiddle in the latter) and each consists of three variation-like sections. Section Three (letter G to letter M) forms the heart of the work, and it too consists of three sections that are related in the manner of variations. The coda at the end of the work refers back to material heard in Sections One and Three. This structure is shown in Table 4-4:
Table 4-4: Beckwith Quartet, relationship of component sections
In many other details, Beckwith's Quartet is an intricately worked out and carefully controlled composition. The rhythmic notation is varied and subtle. The principle melodic lines are often written out in strict notation and the accompanying lines, by turns urgent and forceful or tender and muted, are written in proportional notation, allowing the performer much freedom to enhance the expressive quality of these commentaries. The two violinists share a third violin whose lower three strings are tuned a semi-tone higher. This not only allows a wider palette of colours on open strings and natural harmonics but also subtly changes the timbre of the sound of the scordatura instrument on the lower three strings. In addition this injects an element of theatricality as the two violinists share the third instrument.
In his use of serial techniques and the firm intellectual control he exercises over the structure of the work, Beckwith aligns his Quartet with the mainstream of twentieth century string quartet writing. But the use of North American string playing idioms brings the work into the realm of the specific musical surroundings of Beckwith's own time and place. These two influences are brought together perhaps most successfully in the final section of the work (one bar after letter N) with its twelve-tone fiddle tune. During much of the work, the principle melodic ideas are accompanied by an urgent sub-text of musical commentary, a process that injects a deeply personal element into the score. Beckwith ends his record jacket note on the Quartet by referring to the possible avenues of interpretation of this work that a curious listener might explore:
I do not regard music as a pure or abstract phenomenon, even in such a traditionally rarefied Western-art medium as the string quartet. Connections with tradition, with a social environment, and with human-life attitudes are bound to be apparent. But what they are is for individual listeners to determine.47
Kenneth Winters has provided a sensitive analysis of one possible way of looking at the message of Beckwith's Quartet.48 The beauty of the work is that each listener is free to read his or her own meaning into the work following the guidelines, both musical and connotative, that have been provided by the composer.
The spirit of compromise, which was responsible for so many excellent string quartets from the 1950s through to the end of the 1970s, has been less in evidence during the 1980s. The most important determining factor of the 1980s has been the return of conservative values in music, as in other areas of Canadian life. There were also many innovative works in this decade. But there were not many attempts at reconciling the spirit of adventure with the new conservative ideals that have held sway for most of the decade. This attempt will doubtless be made in the future, though. For while the traditionalists and the innovators have made and will continue to make important contributions to the Canadian string quartet repertoire, among the most intriguing and challenging works have been those by composers who have managed to synthesize old and new ideas. And this spirit of compromise, while perhaps not unique to this country, has certainly proven to be one of the most prominent and important characteristics of the Canadian string quartet repertoire.
CONCLUSION
There has been a great deal of string quartet activity in Canada during the 200-year period covered in this thesis. There are some 370 works for string quartet listed in Appendix I and Appendix II, and a great many string quartet ensembles have existed in Canada over the years. Despite this substantial degree of interest in the medium, though, both the performance and the composition of string quartets have experienced periods of intense activity and times of relative neglect. This ambivalent response to the string quartet is matched by the inherent duality of the medium itself, for it is both the most elitist and the most democratic of musical institutions.
The history of string quartet performance in Canada begins at the end of the eighteenth century as a colonial manifestation of the golden age of the string quartet in Europe. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Canada was visited by touring string quartet ensembles, and a number of prominent European string players came to Canada and helped to establish professional chamber music activity in this country. Since the end of the First World War, a more or less continuous stream of string quartet ensembles has been active in Canada, both semi-professional and, from the time of the Hart House String Quartet (1926-46) to the present, fully professional. While immigrant musicians have played and continue to play an important role in the chamber music life of this country, many Canadian performers have also been involved in string quartet performance. During the past twenty years, however, no new fully professional string quartet ensemble has been formed. While very recent developments give reason for hope of improvement in this regard, the fact remains that string quartet performance is not cultivated with the same degree of enthusiasm in Canada as it is in the United States and certain European countries.
String quartet composition and performance have been closely allied in Canada. Although there have been some notable performances of Canadian string quartet compositions by ensembles from abroad, the majority of the repertoire has been played, if at all, only by Canadian ensembles. It is not surprising that periods when there have been many string quartet ensembles active have also been the times when the greatest number of string quartet compositions have been written in Canada. This is a result not only of the direct influence on composers that ensembles have had through the commissioning process, but also of the indirect encouragement and stimulus that a healthy chamber music performance situation provides to composers.
From tentative beginnings towards the end of the nineteenth century, activity in the field of string quartet composition has in general increased through the years. The earliest compositions in the Canadian string quartet repertoire align with a conservative view of the medium. But the influence of the great European masterpieces in the string quartet repertoire has continued to exercise a strong hold on the imagination of many Canadian composers up to the present time. The continuity in the conservative view of the string quartet medium is demonstrated by the fact that Couture in 1875 and Hawkins in 1984 were both influenced by European string quartet compositions dating from 75 years before their time (by Beethoven and Stravinsky respectively).
Other Canadian composers have drawn on an equally important vein of experimentation in the string quartet repertoire to create works that have challenged audiences and performers as well as our very conception of the string quartet as a means of musical expression. Avant-garde compositional techniques, timbral explorations and tampering with the physical makeup of the medium, both acoustically and through the application of electronics, have been characteristic of these works.
In the final analysis, though, the unique Canadian contribution to the string quartet has been in neither of these two areas, but rather in the attempt to find a reconciliation between them. Several Canadian composers have written important and interesting works that mediate between the past and the future, between the traditional and experimental nature of the string quartet, and between its European roots and contemporary Canadian surroundings.
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