String Quartet No.2 [1915-1917]

The Second String Quartet was composed when Bartok’s mature style, his synthesis of East European and North African folksong with certain Western elements, was still developing. But if there are contradictions in the opening Moderato, between distinctively Magyar and clearly diationic material, he certainly makes an absorbing drama out of them. The emotional implications of events in the Moderato are swept aside in the Allegro molto capriccioso, a breathtaking display of primitive rhythmic energy based on Arab material collected in Biskra, but explored in searching detail in the closing Lento – with a conclusion apparently as bleak as the time at which it was written.

Bartók’s aim as a composer, he declared in an interview in 1939, was to create a synthesis of East-European folksong with what he regarded as the best of West-European music - Bach’s counterpoint, Beethoven’s dynamic structures, Debussy’s harmony. There is a good examples of the synthesis in the first movements of the Second String Quartet which – completed in 1917, after more than ten years intensive research into East European (and North African) folksong –  is the first score in which his newly developed language is applied to a major classical form.

Rising and falling on first violin over an irregularly throbbing and anxiously dissonant accompaniment, the opening theme of the Moderato is distinctively Magyar in its prominent fourths. The second subject, on the other hand, introduced molto espressivo by the two violins in octaves over double-stopped harmonies on viola and cello, is based on thirds and fifths and is clearly in F sharp minor. The two themes are in fact related both to each other and to the lyrical closing theme of the exposition floated on violin and viola set two octaves apart. After a fiercely argumentative development section devoted largely to the first subject and after a much altered recapitulation, a reflective coda demonstrates just how the second and third themes are related to the first.

The savage Allegro molto capriccioso is a kind of Arab rondo based on the violin tune first heard after a short introduction of bouncing tritones. With its drumming accompaniment and its chromatically slithering cadences, the rondo theme clearly derives from the material Bartók had collected on his visit to Biskra in 1913. Beginning a with a painfully attenuated echo on the two violins of the end of the Allegro molto capriccioso, the closing Lento comprises a searching review of earlier material. The most prominent item is the Magyar theme from the opening Moderato but usually with its fourths compressed to minor thirds. The muted chorale in the middle section changes the subject but, in spite of the passion it inspires in the first violin, gives way to nothing more consoling than further scrutiny of the main theme and, finally, two minor thirds in bleak pizzicato on cello and viola.

The Second String Quartet was written in a bleak period for Bartók. Disappointed by the lack of interest in his opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and progressive new music in general, he had withdrawn into seclusion at Rékoskeresztúr to concentrate on folksong research. Although wartime conditions severely limited the area of his collecting activity, he did have the time to make arrangements of folk material he had already recorded and it might well have been this work - in the course of which he absorbed more and more of the peasant idiom into his own musical language - that encouraged him, gradually, to return to composition.

Of the three most important compositions he completed before the end of the war - the one-act ballet The Wooden Prince, the piano Suite Op.14 and the Second String Quartet - it is only the last that reveals the desolate state of mind he was in at the time. It is also the first score in which his newly developed language is applied to a major classical form.

Rising and falling on first violin over an irregularly throbbing and anxiously dissonant accompaniment, the opening theme of the Moderato is distinctively Magyar in its prominent fourths. The second subject, on the other hand, introduced molto espressivo by the two violins in octaves over double-stopped harmonies on viola and cello, is based on thirds and fifths and is clearly in F sharp minor. The two themes are in fact related both to each other and to the lyrical closing theme of the exposition floated on violin and viola set two octaves apart. After a fiercely argumentative development section devoted largely to the first subject and after a much altered recapitulation, a reflective coda demonstrates just how the second and third themes are related to the first.

Unlike his self-consciously Hungarian colleague Zoltán Kodály, Bartók was open to “any influence, be it Slovakian, Romanian, Arabic, or from any other source as long as it is clean, fresh and healthy!” The savage Allegro molto capriccioso is a kind of Arab rondo based on the violin tune first heard after a short introduction of bouncing tritones. With its drumming accompaniment and its chromatically slithering cadences, the rondo theme clearly derives from the material Bartók had collected on his visit to Biskra in 1913.

Beginning a with a painfully attenuated echo on the two violins of the end of the Allegro molto capriccioso, the closing Lento comprises a searching review of earlier material. The most prominent item is the Magyar theme from the opening Moderato but usually with its fourths compressed to minor thirds. The muted chorale in the middle section changes the subject but, in spite of the passion it inspires in the first violin, gives way to nothing more consoling than further scrutiny of the main theme and, finally, two minor thirds in bleak pizzicato on cello and viola.

Bartók’s Second String Quartet was written between 1915 and 1917 - which, although domestic life was happy enough for the husband and father he had become by then, was a bleak period for the composer. Disappointed by the general lack of interest in his opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and by the collapse of the recently founded New Hungarian Musical Society in 1911, he had withdrawn into seclusion at Rékoskeresztúr to concentrate on folksong research and teaching rather than composition and performing. Then the war intervened, severely limiting the area of his research through the inevitable travel restrictions. He did, on the other hand, have the time to make arrangements of folk material he had already collected and it might well have been this work - in the course of which he absorbed more and more of the peasant idiom into his own musical language - that encouraged him, gradually, to return to composition.

Of the three most important compositions he completed before the end of the war - the one-act ballet The Wooden Prince, the piano Suite Op.14 and the Second String Quartet - it is only the last that reveals the desolate state of mind he was in at the time. It is also the first score in which his newly developed language is applied to a major classical form.

The opening theme of the Moderato, rising and falling on first violin over an irregularly throbbing and anxiously dissonant accompaniment, was adumbrated at the end of the Suite, Op.14. But here it is part of the fabric of the whole, closely unified work. It is true that its distinctively Magyar fourths might be expanded, as they are when the cello takes up the theme in dialogue with the first violin, but the three-note rhythm that goes with them remains the same. It is true also that the second subject, introduced molto espressivo by the two violins in octaves over double-stopped harmonies on viola and cello, is based on thirds and fifths and is clearly in F sharp minor. But the two themes are in fact related, as is the lyrical closing theme of the exposition floated on violin and viola set two octaves apart. After a fiercely argumentative development section devoted largely to the first subject and after a much altered recapitulation - most prominently featuring a nostalgic version of the closing theme over pizzicato chords on the cello - a reflective coda demonstrates just how the second and third themes are related to the first.

Unlike his self-consciously Hungarian colleague Zoltán Kodály, Bartók was open to “any influence, be it Slovakian, Romanian, Arabic, or from any other source as long as it is clean, fresh and healthy!” The savage Allegro molto capriccioso of the Second String Quartet derives in part from his memories of North Africa where he had been collecting folk-song examples from the nomadic Arab tribes of Biskra in 1913. The grotesque opening gestures are synthesised out of tritones. The main theme on first violin, with its drumming accompaniment and its chromatically slithering cadences, is an organic growth from Arab folk song. Its function here, although it never appears in the same form twice, is to act as a kind of rondo theme. The intervening episodes are devoted to developments of the tritonal introductory material, which presents itself in a variety of forms, including an ironically tuneful one, before a whispered prestissimo version of the main theme expands into the emphatic final bars.

The final Lento begins with a painfully attenuated echo on the two violins of the end of the Allegro molto capriccioso. As the cello considers the thematic implications of these opening bars, the first violin clearly, though quietly and very slowly, alludes to the main theme of the first movement and a little later compresses its fourths to minor thirds to provide an alternative version. So now, starting with a dolce new melody introduced by first violin and incorporating both the foregoing allusions to earlier movements, the search for reconciliation can begin. The middle section is based on a muted chorale which, in spite of the passion it inspires in the first violin, can find no light in the melodic material it has inherited. The main theme of the first movement returns in its melodically compressed version for further scrutiny but with no more conciliatory effect than a brief and inconclusive recall of the dolce melody on first violin and, finally, two minor thirds in bleak pizzicato on cello and viola.