Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 5 in

B-flat major B-flat major is a major scale based on B, with pitches B, C, D, E, F, G, and A. Its key signature has two flats. Its relative minor is G minor and its parallel minor is B-flat minor. The B-flat major scale is: Changes needed for ...

, Op. 92, was composed in autumn

1952 Events January–February * January 26 – Cairo Fire, Black Saturday in Kingdom of Egypt, Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses. * February 6 ** Princess Elizabeth, ...

. It was premiered in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

on 13 November 1953 by the

Beethoven Quartet The Beethoven Quartet (, ''Strunnyĭ kvartet imeni Betkhovena'') was a string quartet founded between 1922 and 1923 by graduates of the Moscow Conservatory: violinists Dmitri Tsyganov and Vasily Shirinsky, violist Vadim Borisovsky and cellist S ...

, to whom it is dedicated.

Structure

It consists of three

movement Movement may refer to: Generic uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Movement (sign language), a hand movement when signing * Motion, commonly referred to as movement * Movement (music), a division of a larger co ...

s, performed without a break: Playing time is approximately 30 minutes. The work grows from a five-note motif, C–D–E–B–C, which contains the four pitch-classes of the composer's musical monogram:

DSCH This is a list of tetragraphs in the Latin script. These are most common in Irish orthography. For Cyrillic tetragraphs, see tetragraph. Arrernte Tetragraphs in Arrernte transcribe single consonants, but are largely predictable from their compone ...

(E being ''Es'' and B being ''H'' in German). This motif appears in a number of his other compositions, including String Quartet No. 8, the first

Violin Concerto A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ensemble (customarily orchestra). Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up thro ...

, and the Symphony No. 10.Griffiiths (2012)

Notes

References

* *

External links

* #05 1952 compositions Compositions in B-flat major {{chamber-composition-stub