Dvořák’s sudden burst to fame in his late thirties was the result of help from powerful friends, primarily Brahms, who recognized the Czech composer’s talents and did much to get him launched, including getting his own publisher–Simrock of Berlin–to publish Dvořák’s music. There were others–critic Eduard Hanslick and violininst Joseph Joachim among them–who promoted and performed Dvořák’s music, and the young composer found himself in debt to a number of prominent German musicians. Dvořák was not entirely comfortable in the new world that he seemed to be conquering, for his new German friends wanted him to move from Prague to Vienna, to give up his Czech identity, and to use his talents to write music in the mainstream German tradition. Dvořák was grateful for their help, but he refused to surrender his past or his identity, and when Simrock suggested that Dvořák change his first name from the Czech Antonin to the German Anton because it would make him more attractive to German audiences, Dvořák exploded and insisted on maintaining his Czech identity.

The Quartet in E-flat Major makes clear how Dvořák found himself trapped between these two worlds at this moment in his life. It was commissioned by the German violinist Jean Becker, and it was first performed privately at the Berlin home of Joachim; the first public performance was in Magdeburg, and the Hellmesberger Quartet performed it in Vienna before it was heard in Prague. All this suggests how completely Dvořák had conquered the German musical establishment, but the music itself remains unmistakably, adamantly Czech. Even as he writes for German performers and audiences, Dvořák insists on using Czech rhythms, sounds, and forms–it is as if he is declaring his place in both musical worlds at once.

Dvořák began this quartet on Christmas Day 1878 and completed it three months later, on March 28, 1879. This is exceptionally lovely music, one of those hidden treasures that leave one wondering how they could ever have been neglected. From the first instant one knows that this will be relaxed music, content to make its way on the beauty of its material and the quality of its craftsmanship rather than through conflict or exploring the dark places of the soul. After a couple of tentative gestures, the opening theme of the Allegro ma non tanto unfolds upward. Dvořák’s biographer John Clapham hears an echo of the beginning of the Mendelssohn Octet here, but more striking is the little rocking three-note tag at the end of the phrases in this theme. This figure outlines the shape of the polka rhythm, and Dvořák builds the dancing second subject on that rhythm. A further theme feels more animated, but happy spirits will prevail in this movement, and in the development Dvořák deftly presents the opening theme with accompaniment from the polka rhythm.

The second movement is in one of the most Czech of forms, the dumka, though Clapham points out the Dvořák had little clear sense of the formal meaning of that term. For him, a dumka was simply melancholy, lamenting music from which brighter moods would suddenly flash out. This one demonstrates that perfectly: it opens with a grieving melody in the first violin (Dvořák marks it dolce) and even introduces a singing second subject of similar character. But suddenly the music leaps ahead and dances furiously. The sudden change to G major makes it seem all the more sunny, and the impressive thing is that Dvořák has derived this theme from the opening dumka–they share the same shape and many of the same notes. The dark opening returns, but Dvořák ends with a return of the fast material, and this wonderful movement–full of such different kinds of music–trails off into nothing.

The Romanze can seem a little more conventional–it is the one movement in the quartet without a specifically Czech element–but it is still notable for its harmonic freedom and melodic shading: this music hovers delicately between keys. The energetic finale (correctly marked Allegro assai) zips along on an opening violin theme that seems made to order for a rondo-finale, but the theme quickly begins to develop and change. This theme appears to be derived from an old Czech leaping dance for men, and Dvořák really lets it fly. This is the most extroverted and virtuosic of the four movements, and in its closing moments Dvořák pushes the tempo ahead faster and faster to the ringing final chords.

String Quartet No. 3, Opus 94
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Born November 22, 1913, Lowestoft, England
Died December 4, 1976, Olderburgh, England

In 1973 Benjamin Britten–frail and facing a heart operation–composed his final opera, Death in Venice. Based on Thomas Mann’s 1913 novella, the opera summed up many of the themes of Britten’s artistic career: as the aging novelist Aschenbach embarks on a quest for spiritual redemption in a city assaulted by the plague, he is torn between his search for beauty and the corrupting force of his own physical desires. Two years later, in the fall of 1975, Britten composed his String Quartet No. 3. It would be (except for a short choral piece for children) his final composition, for Britten died of heart failure the following year. The Amadeus Quartet gave the official premiere of this quartet on December 19, 1976, two weeks after the composer's death, though Britten had heard this music played through shortly after he completed it.

In the course of composing the quartet, Britten returned to Venice–a city he loved–and in fact he composed the quartet’s final movement there. Inevitably, that visit reawakend memories of his opera and this quartet makes explicit references to Death in Venice: specific themes, key relationships, and mottos that had appeared in the opera return in the quartet. This all raises a troubling question: does one need to know Death in Venice to understand the Quartet No. 3? The answer to that question must be no–this quartet will stand on its own merits–but it may help to know that this was Britten’s final instrumental work and that it draws on music about a spiritual quest.

The String Quartet No. 3 is in five unrelated movements, and Britten at first thought of titling this music Divertimento rather than Quartet; he finally became convinced that it had sufficient unity and seriousness to merit the latter name. Though Britten’s Third String Quartet does not sound like Bartók, it has some of the same arch-structure favored by the Hungarian master: the three odd-numbered movements are at slower tempos, while the two even-numbered movements are fast. Each of the five movements has a descriptive title. The opening Duets is built on a series of pairings of instruments in different combinations, beginning with the rocking, pulsing duet of second violin and viola. The movement, in ternary form, offers a more animated central episode. Ostinato, marked “very fast,” drives along a ground built on a sequence of leaping sevenths; lyric interludes intrude into this violence, and the movement eventually comes to a poised close. The title of the third movement, Solo, refers to the central role of the first violin, which has the melodic interest here, often above minimal accompaniment from the other three voices far below. Britten marks the opening “smooth and expressive,” but the central sequence is cadenza-like in its virtuosity; the movement comes to a calm close on a widely-spaced C-major chord. In sharp contrast, the Burlesque is all violent activity, and this movement has reminded more than one observer of the music of Britten’s good friend Shostakovich. Longest of the movements, the finale also has the most unusual structure. It begins with a Recitative that recalls a number of themes from Death in Venice, and after these intensive reminders, the music settles into radiant E major (a key identified with the figure of Aschenbach in the opera), and the first violin launches the gentle Passacaglia theme of the final section. Britten marks this cantabile and names this section La Serenissima. That sounds like a conscious invocation of Beethoven, who gave the finale of his String Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 18, No. 6 the title La Malinconia, but here it refers to the musical motto associated with the city of Venice in Britten’s opera. The Passacaglia proceeds calmly to its close, where the ambiguous concluding chord dissolves as the upper three voices fade away, leaving the cello’s deep D to continue alone and then drift softly into silence. Britten’s comment on this ending was succinct: “I wanted the work to end with a question.”

String Quartet in G Minor
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Born August 22, 1862, St. Germain-en-Laye, France
Died March 25, 1918, Paris

Early in 1893, Debussy met the famed Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaÿe. Debussy was at this time almost unknown (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun was still a year in the future), but he and Ysaÿe instantly became friends–though Ysaÿe was only four years older than Debussy, he treated the diminutive Frenchman like “his little brother.” That summer, Debussy composed a string quartet for Ysaÿe’s quartet, which gave the first performance in Paris on December 29, 1893. Debussy was already notorious with his teachers for his refusal to follow musical custom, and so it comes as a surprise to find him choosing to write in this most demanding of classical forms. Early audiences were baffled. Reviewers used words like “fantastic” and “oriental,” and Debussy’s friend Ernest Chausson confessed mystification. Debussy must have felt the sting of these reactions, for he promised Chausson: “Well, I’ll write another for you . . . and I’ll try to bring more dignity to the form.”

But Debussy did not write another string quartet, and his Quartet in G Minor has become one of the cornerstones of the quartet literature. The entire quartet grows directly out of its first theme, presented at the very opening, and this sharply rhythmic figure reappears in various shapes in all four movements, taking on a different character, a different color, and a different harmony on each reappearance. What struck early audiences as “fantastic” now seems an utterly original conception of what a string quartet might be. Here is a combination of energy, drama, thematic imagination, and attention to color never heard before in a string quartet. Debussy may have felt pushed to apologize for a lack of “dignity” in this music, but we value it today just for that failure.

Those who think of Debussy as the composer of misty impressionism are in for a shock with his quartet, for it has the most slashing, powerful opening Debussy ever wrote: his marking for the beginning is “Animated and very resolute.” This first theme, with its characteristic triplet spring, is the backbone of the entire quartet: the singing second theme grows directly out of this opening (though the third introduces new material). The development is marked by powerful accents, long crescendos, and shimmering colors as this movement drives to an unrelenting close in G minor.

The Scherzo may well be the quartet’s most impressive movement. Against powerful pizzicato chords, Debussy sets the viola’s bowed theme, a transformation of the quartet’s opening figure; soon this is leaping between all four voices. The recapitulation of this movement, in 15/8 and played entirely pizzicato, bristles with rhythmic energy, and the music then fades away to a beautifully understated close. Debussy marks the third movement “Gently expressive,” and this quiet music is so effective that it is sometimes used as an encore piece. It is in ABA form: the opening section is muted, while the more animated middle is played without mutes–the quartet’s opening theme reappears subtly in this middle section. Debussy marks the ending, again played with mutes, “As quiet as possible.”

The finale begins slowly but gradually accelerates to the main tempo, “Very lively and with passion.” As this music proceeds, the quartet’s opening theme begins to appear in a variety of forms: first in a misty, distant statement marked “soft and expressive,” then gradually louder and louder until it returns in all its fiery energy, stamped out in double-stops by the entire quartet. A propulsive coda drives to the close, where the first violin flashes upward across three octaves to strike the powerful G major chord that concludes this most undignified–and most wonderful–piece of music.