contemporary music
Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included se ...
literature. Written in 1971 and premiered on May 15, 1972, by the Concord String Quartet, the third string quartet was an important move away from
serialism
In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were also ...
for the American composer.
Background of composition
Early in his career George Rochberg wrote in a total serialist style that was popular with post
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
composers.''Rochberg: String Quartets No 3-6/Concord String Quartet,'' New World Records (album booklet) Rochberg's first and second quartets are written in this modernist style. Then in 1961 tragedy struck when Rochberg's son became ill with an ultimately fatal brain tumor. His son's death three years later left the composer deeply changed and struggling to compose.George Rochberg: String Quartet No. 3 inca Quartet (Retrieved 24 January 2008) His eventual conclusion that he was unable to adequately express his profound grief and loss through serialism led him towards his more mature style, an aesthetic which often mixes tonality and atonality and has sometimes been labeled “ neo-romanticism.” Rochberg described his goal in this new style as an attempt to achieve “the most potent and effective way to translate my musical energy into the clearest and most direct patterns of feeling and thought.”
Style and structure
String Quartet No. 3 is composed in five movements, with the first two and last two movements played without pause. This ultimately results in the work being heard in three large sections. Sections of atonality are superimposed with tonal and expressionist sections. The string quartet is written in a modified
arch form In music, arch form is a sectional structure for a piece of music based on repetition, in reverse order, of all or most musical sections such that the overall form is symmetric, most often around a central movement. The sections need not be repea ...
.
Part A
I. Introduzione: Fantasia
As in the last movement, this movement presents the emotional contours of the third quartet in microcosm. The movement comprises six ideas repeated to form eighteen short sections. The work starts off with a highly charged
glissando
In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the ...
motif
Motif may refer to:
General concepts
* Motif (chess composition), an element of a move in the consideration of its purpose
* Motif (folkloristics), a recurring element that creates recognizable patterns in folklore and folk-art traditions
* Moti ...
, but quickly passes through sections of lyric tonality, atonality, and florid ornamentation.
II. March
This movement is a dissonant march which has been compared to Bartok. It begins without pause after the first movement.
Part B
III. Variations
This central movement forms the cornerstone of the
arch form In music, arch form is a sectional structure for a piece of music based on repetition, in reverse order, of all or most musical sections such that the overall form is symmetric, most often around a central movement. The sections need not be repea ...
. It is composed of new material in a traditional
theme and variations
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.
Variation techniques
Mozart's Twelve Va ...
form. Rochberg said this movement drew from “the harmonic/polyphonic palette of the Classical and Romantic traditions.”
Part C
IV. March
The central movement is followed by this second march, which is thematically connected to the first, but includes further development of the ideas.
V. Finale: Scherzos and Serenades
This finale, which completes the quartet's arch form, is also written in an internally palindromic form. The scherzo is highly chromatic in character, although still tonal. It is followed by the expressive serenade. After several interruptions from the scherzo theme, the original glissando motive from the beginning returns to complete the work.
Transcendental Variations
Following a suggestion by
Vilem Sokol
Vilem Sokol (May 22, 1915August 19, 2011) was a Czech-American conductor and professor of music at the University of Washington from 1948 to 1985, where he taught violin, viola, conducting, as well as music appreciation classes directed primar ...
, in 1975 Rochberg arranged the third movement for orchestra under the title Transcendental Variations, highlighting its relation to Rochberg's vision of timelessness.
Christopher Lyndon-Gee
Christopher is the English version of a Europe-wide name derived from the Greek name Χριστόφορος (''Christophoros'' or '' Christoforos''). The constituent parts are Χριστός (''Christós''), " Christ" or " Anointed", and φέρ ...
Chandos Records
Chandos Records is a British independent classical music recording company based in Colchester. It was founded in 1979 by Brian Couzens. The composer's work was described by some major critics, such as Andrew Porter of
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...
, as “almost irrelevant.”
While academics scoffed at the work, Rochberg's String Quartet No. 3 was very popular with audiences and musicians. During the 1970s the piece received many performances, and the Concord String Quartet quickly commissioned three more quartets.