String Quartet in F Major
MAURICE RAVEL
Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées
Died December 28, 1937, Paris

Ravel wrote his only string quartet in 1902-3, while still a student at the Paris Conservatory, and the first performance was given by the Heymann Quartet in Paris on March 5, 1904, two days before the composer's twenty-ninth birthday. Ravel dedicated the work "To my dear teacher Gabriel Fauré," who was directing Ravel's work at the Conservatory.

One of the most distinctive features of Ravel's quartet is its cyclic deployment of themes: the first movement's two main themes return in various forms in the other three movements, giving the quartet a tight sense of unity. Ravel subtly modifies the color, harmony and mood of each reappearance of these themes so that from this unity comes enormous variety.

The first movement is marked Allegro moderato, but Ravel specifies that it should also be Très doux. This movement is built on two distinct theme-groups. The calm first subject is heard immediately in the first violin over a rising accompaniment in the other voices, and this leads-after some spirited extension-to the haunting second theme, announced by the first violin and viola, two octaves apart. The relatively brief development rises to a huge climax-Ravel marks it triple forte-before the movement subsides to close with its opening theme, now gracefully elongated, fading gently into silence.

The second movement, Assez vif-Très rythmé, is a scherzo in ternary form. The opening is a tour de force of purely pizzicato writing that makes the quartet sound like a massive guitar. Some of this movement's rhythmic complexity comes from Ravel's use of multiple meters. The tempo indication is 6/8(3/4), and while the first violin is accented in 3/4 throughout, the other voices are frequently accented in 6/8, with the resulting cross-rhythms giving the music a pleasing vitality. The slow center section is a subtle transformation of the first movement's second theme. At the conclusion of this section comes one of the quartet's most brilliant passages, the bridge back to the opening material. Here the pizzicato resumes quietly, gathers speed and force, and races upward to launch the return of the movement's opening theme. This is wonderful writing for quartet, and the scherzo drives straight to its explosive pizzicato cadence.

The third movement-Très lent-is in free form, and perhaps the best way to understand this movement is to approach it as a rhapsody based loosely on themes from the first movement. Beneath these themes Ravel sets a rhythmic cell of three notes that repeats constantly, but it remains an accompaniment figure rather than becoming an active thematic participant. The movement's impression of freedom results in no small part from its frequent changes of both key and meter.

After the serene close of the third movement, the fourth-Agité-leaps almost abrasively to life. Agitated it certainly is, an effect that comes from its steadily driving double-stroked passages, and this mood continues across the span of the movement. The basic metric unit here is the rapid 5/8 heard at the beginning, though Ravel changes meter frequently, with excursions into 3/4 and 5/4. Once again, material from the first movement returns, and after several lyric interludes the finale takes on once again the aggressive mood of its opening and powers its way to the close.

Ravel's quartet generated a mixed reaction at its première in 1904. One of those most critical was the dedicatee, Gabriel Fauré, who was especially bothered by the unorthodox finale, which he thought "stunted, badly balanced, in fact a failure." But when Ravel, troubled by such criticism, turned to Debussy for his estimation, the latter offered the best possible response: "In the name of the gods of Music and for my sake personally, do not touch a note of what you have written."