String Quartet No.1, Op.7 [1908-1909]

1 Lento - 2Allegretto 3 Introduzione: Allegro - 4 Allegro vivace

Bartók began his First String Quartet as a romantic and ended it as a modernist. He was suffering at the time from the misery of rejection by Stefi Geyer, a young violinist with whom he was hopelessly in love.

The composition of the work, which was completed eleven months after that traumatic event, proceeded in parallel with his immediate reaction to it and the beginning of his recovery from it. As his colleague Zoltan Kodaly put it at the time, “It contains an inner drama, a man’s return to life after travelling to the very borders of non-existence.” The opening Lento, which Bartók described as “my funeral dirge,” is not just a self-indulgent lament for lost love, however. The composer is also thinking in the longer term here. The quicker middle section, introduced by a gruffly articulated drone on the cello and an emphatically passionate statement from the viola, anticipates at least two themes that will become prominent later in the work.

It is with the same concern for continuity that he takes the last three notes at the end of the first movement and, in a seamless transition into the Allegretto, transforms them into a motif which is to assume more and more importance as the work goes on. After a transitional Introduzione linking the second and third movements, it is definitively presented on viola and cello in unison as the main theme of the Allegro vivace. This theme, incorporating a grotesque parody of the sighing phrases the first movement, is Bartók’s way out of his emotional trauma.

Bartók began his First String Quartet as a romantic and ended it as a modernist. He was suffering at the time from the trauma of rejection by Stefi Geyer, a young violinist with whom he was hopelessly in love and for whom he had just composed a two-movement Concerto in, as he described it, “a narcotic dream.” That work – which she never performed and which remained undiscovered until after her death in 1956 – was written between July and December 1907. In February 1908, just a few days after he finished the orchestration, Stefi wrote to the composer definitively breaking off the affair, such as it was.

The composition of the First String Quartet, which was completed eleven months later, proceeded in parallel with his immediate reaction to that event and the beginning of his recovery from it. As his colleague Zoltan Kodaly put it at the time, “It contains an inner drama, a man’s return to life after travelling to the very borders of non-existence.” If that statement seems to be over-dramatising the situation, it is no more of an exaggeration than Bartók’s own confession to Stefi that the first movement “is my funeral dirge.” The opening Lento is not just a self-indulgent lament for a lost love, however. It is true that the sadly sighing phrases on the two violins in the opening bars derive from the Violin Concerto he had recently written for Stefi. But Bartók is also thinking in the longer term here. The quicker middle section, introduced by a gruffly articulated drone on the cello and an emphatically passionate statement from the viola, anticipates at least two themes that will become prominent later in the work.

It is with the same concern for continuity that he takes the last three notes uttered by violin and cello at the end of the first movement and, in a seamless transition into the Allegretto, transforms them into a motif which is to assume more and more importance as the work goes on. After a transitional Introduzione (or Introduction) linking the second and third movements, it is definitively presented on viola and cello in unison as the main theme of the Allegro vivace. This theme, incorporating a grotesque parody of the sighing phrases the first movement, is Bartók’s way out of his emotional trauma.

It is also his way out of the romantic impasse in that it readily lends itself to an idiom he was just beginning to develop. Actual folk themes – like the wonderful “Peacock” melody he had recently collected in Transylvania and which he twice quotes in broad Adagio episodes here – he would not in future attempt to integrate into his quartets. But, as the entertainingly imaginative treatment of the main theme in the middle section confirms, a language derived from the rhythmic and harmonic features of Hungarian folk song has infinite possibilities. The joy of that discovery was probably as much an inspiration in this joyful finale as the composer’s “return to life” from suicidal melancholy.

Bartók began his First String Quartet as a romantic and ended it as a modernist. He was suffering at the time from the trauma of rejection by Stefi Geyer, a young violinist with whom he was hopelessly in love and for whom he had just composed a two-movement Concerto in, as he described it, “a narcotic dream.” That work - which she never performed and which remained undiscovered until after her death in 1956 - was written between July and December 1907. In February 1908, just a few days after he finished the orchestration, Stefi wrote to the composer definitively breaking off the affair, such as it was. The composition of the First String Quartet, which was completed eleven months later, proceeded in parallel with his immediate reaction to that event and the beginning of his recovery from it.

Why he chose the string quartet as the medium for such a message is not entirely clear. It seems likely, however, that Bartók and Kodály, who were working closely together at this point, had agreed that they would have their respective first string quartets ready to spring on Budapest at the same time. Certainly, the two works were first performed within two days of each other in March 1910 by an ensemble, the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, specifically formed for that purpose. Kodály not only influenced the final form of his colleague’s Quartet but also knew all about the intimate circumstances in which it was conceived: “It contains an inner drama,” he said, “a man’s return to life after travelling to the very borders of non-existence.” If that statement seems to be over-dramatising the situation, it is no more of an exaggeration than Bartók’s own confession to Stefi that the first movement “is my funeral dirge.”

The opening Lento is not just a self-indulgent lament for a lost love, however. It is true that the sadly falling sixths interlinked on the two violins in the opening bars derive, as Bartók himself pointed out to Stefi, from the first theme of the second movement of the Violin Concerto he had recently written for her. There is no question of “a narcotic dream” in this case, however: it is clear from the slow and contrapuntally orientated first movement and the progressively quicker tempi of the succeeding movements that Bartók had Beethoven’s Op.131 firmly in mind as a classical precedent. His texture in the opening Lento is not fugal like Beethoven’s in his opening Adagio but the elaborate imitative development sustained by two intertwining pairs of instruments - the violins on the one hand and the viola and cello on the other - is no less thoughtful and, in its way, no less accomplished.

Bartók is also thinking on the longer term here. The quicker middle section, introduced by a gruffly articulated drone on the cello and an emphatically passionate statement from the viola, anticipates at least two themes that will become prominent later in the work. It is with the same concern for continuity that he takes the last three notes uttered by violin and cello at the end of the movement and, in a seamless transition into the Allegretto, transforms them into a motif which is to assume more and more importance as the work goes on. For the moment, however, the function of that motif is to act as an ostinato accompaniment as the second violin introduces the waltz-like first theme of the Allegretto. It is a curiously unsettled movement which seems to be taking shape as a sonata-form construction but which is diverted from its course by a variety of distractions, including an increasingly dramatic treatment of the accompaniment motif and an eery whole-tone melody drawn by first violin over an obstinate pizzicato on the cello.

In the end it is the accompaniment motif that emerges as the most significant material. After a transitional passage (marked Introduzione) linking the second and third movements, it is definitively presented on viola and cello in unison as the main theme of the Allegro vivace. This theme, with its grotesque parody of the languishing falling sixth of the first movement, is Bartók’s way out of his emotional trauma. It is also his way out of the romantic impasse in that it readily lends itself to an idiom he was just beginning to develop. Actual folk themes - like the wonderful “Peacock” melody he had recently collected in Transylvania and which he twice quotes in broad Adagio episodes here - he would not in future attempt to integrate into his quartets. But, as the entertainingly imaginative treatment of the main theme in the middle section confirms, a language derived from the rhythmic and harmonic features of Hungarian folk song has infinite possibilities. The joy of that discovery was probably as much an inspiration in this joyful finale as the composer’s “return to life” from suicidal melancholy.