String Quartet in D major (1889-90)

“At last,” said César Franck after the gratifyingly successful first performance of his String Quartet in Paris in 1890, “the public is beginning to understand me.” Having waited until he was 68 before addressing the most challenging of classical forms, and having produced a considerable    masterpiece, César Franck could die a happy man - which, six months later, he did. Within a few years, as it happened, the supremacy of the Quartet in D major in the French repertoire was challenged by two works by much younger composers and it was eventually usurped by them. But neither Debussy’s Quartet in G minor nor Ravel’s in F major would have been written as they are – if they had been written at all – without Franck’s example. The cyclic form adopted by both Debussy and Ravel in their string quartets though rarely anywhere else is sufficient proof of that.

Franck’s first movement was long ago identified by his disciple Vincent d’Indy as a ternary Poco lento combined and intercut with a sonata-form Allegro. Actually, you could look at it another way, seeing the Poco lento – which firmly establishes the all-important cyclic theme – as an introduction to the whole work integrated with, rather than simply succeeded by, an Allegro first movement. Either way, the most significant event in the opening Poco lento episode is the opening proclamation high on first violin of a fervent melody in D major over solemn, double-stopped harmonies in rest of the ensemble. The melody is then taken up by the cello and developed at some length before the tempo changes for the entry of the first subject, an agitated theme in F major, of the sonata-form Allegro. The second subject, which is to assume greater importance in the last movement, is introduced on the lower strings of the cello below repeated quavers on the other instruments. Before the potential of this material can be explored, however, the tempo changes back to Poco lento for the viola to initiate a serious fugal examination of the cyclic theme. It is only then, after another change of tempo, that the Allegro material is developed and, eventually, recapitulated. The movement ends with a quiet recall of the cyclic theme and others associated with it in the opening Poco lento.

The Scherzo, in which all four instruments are muted most of the time, seems at first remote from the issues of the first movement. In its deftly scored outer sections, particularly in the delicate staccato articulation but also the F sharp minor theme introduced by first violin, it is far closer to Mendelssohn’s elfin world than the organ loft of Sainte-Clotilde. At the central point of the contrasting middle section, however, where legato bowing predominates, the cellist is instructed to remove the mute for eleven bars – which allows just enough time and which secures just enough textural prominence to issue a clear reminder of the cyclic theme.

The Larghetto, which was the first part of the work to be written, is more than just a slow movement. While its model might well have been some equivalent, similarly sustained expression of thought and feeling in late Beethoven, it is an intimately personal confession with implications that extend beyond this particular work. The B major opening section, beginning without preliminaries as though already well into an emotional declaration, is expressive enough. But the middle section, where Franck discards his contrapuntal conscience and projects the first violin high over cascades of arpeggios on second violin and viola, actually surpasses it in passion. If the allusion to the Symphony in D minor offers no clue as to the precise nature of the inspiration of this outburst it is certainly an indication of its personal significance. Not discarding his structural conscience, Franck incorporates that allusion into the reprise of the opening section towards the end of the movement.

Franck’s structural conscience is hard at work at the beginning of the Finale. To bring together the disparate elements of the work so far, he adopts a strategy not unlike that of Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony, alternating gruff anticipations of the Allegro molto with references back to the Larghetto, the Scherzo and, just before the quiet beginning of the Allegro molto proper, the Poco lento cyclic theme.

These are far from being the only reminders of that earlier material. The cyclic theme, for example, can be heard as an accompanying figure on viola to the serene main theme of the Allegro molto on violin. And that is not the only material that is recalled: the cello’s second-subject theme from the first Allegro is extended and evened-out to make a new theme here and is augmented yet again in an episode of calm before the Allegro molto is resumed. But, though the cyclic theme is never absent for very long, the clinching structural achievement is the extended coda, where once again the Scherzo, the Larghetto and, most dramatically and most emphatically, the Poco lento are integrated with each other and with the Finale itself.

Gerald Larner©2002

“At last,” said César Franck after the gratifyingly successful first performance of his String Quartet in Paris in 1890, “the public is beginning to understand me.” Two weeks later, at a reception held in Franck’s honour after the triumphant first Belgian performance in Tournai, the celebrated violinist Eugène Ysaÿe paid his distinguished compatriot the singular compliment of leading his quartet through another reading of the new score before letting him go to bed in the early hours of the morning. Having waited until he was 68 before addressing the most challenging of classical forms, and having produced a considerable    masterpiece, César Franck could die a happy man - which, six months later, he did.

Within a few years, as it happened, the supremacy of the Quartet in D major in the French repertoire was challenged by two works by much younger composers and it was eventually usurped by them. Certainly, both Debussy’s Quartet in G minor and Ravel’s in F major are shorter, more manageable scores, to most ears more attractive in sound and more varied in colour. But they would not have been written as they are – if they had been written at all – without Franck’s example: the cyclic form adopted by both Debussy and Ravel in their string quartets though rarely anywhere else is sufficient proof of that. And, for all their youthful genius, neither of them was bold enough to undertake anything as ambitious in construction as either the first or last movement of the Quartet in D major.

Franck’s first movement was long ago identified by his disciple Vincent d’Indy as a ternary Poco lento combined and intercut with a sonata-form Allegro. Actually, you could look at it another way, seeing the Poco lento – which firmly establishes the all-important cyclic theme – as an introduction to the whole work integrated with, rather than simply succeeded by, an Allegro first movement.

Either way, the most significant event in the opening Poco lento episode is the opening proclamation high on first violin of a fervent melody in D major over solemn, double-stopped harmonies in the rest of the ensemble. The melody is then taken up by the cello and developed at some length before the tempo changes for the entry of the first subject – an agitated theme in F major – of the sonata-form Allegro. The second subject, which is to assume greater importance in the last movement, is introduced on the lower strings of the cello below repeated quavers on the other instruments. Before the potential of this material can be explored, however, the tempo changes back to Poco lento for the viola to initiate a serious fugal examination of the cyclic theme. It is only then, after another change of tempo that the Allegro material is developed and, eventually, recapitulated. The movement ends with a quiet recall of the cyclic theme and others associated with it in the opening Poco lento.

The Scherzo, in which all four instruments are muted most of the time, seems at first remote from the issues of the first movement. In its deftly scored outer sections, particularly in the delicate staccato articulation but also the F sharp minor theme introduced by first violin, it is far closer to Mendelssohn’s elfin world than the organ loft of Sainte-Clotilde. At the central point of the contrasting middle section, however, where legato bowing predominates, the cellist is instructed to remove the mute for eleven bars – which allows just enough time and which secures just enough textural prominence to issue a clear reminder of the cyclic theme.

The Larghetto, which was the first part of the work to be written, is more than just a slow movement. While its model might well have been some equivalent, similarly sustained expression of thought and feeling in late Beethoven, it is an intimately personal confession with implications that extend beyond this particular work. The B major opening section, beginning without preliminaries as though already well into an emotional declaration, is expressive enough. But the middle section, where Franck discards his contrapuntal conscience and projects the first violin high over cascades of arpeggios on second violin and viola, actually surpasses it in passion. If the allusion to the Symphony in D minor offers no clue as to the precise nature of the inspiration of this outburst it is certainly an indication of its personal significance. Not discarding his structural conscience, Franck incorporates that allusion into the reprise of the opening section towards the end of the movement.

Franck’s structural conscience is hard at work at the beginning of the Finale. To bring together the disparate elements of the work so far, he adopts a strategy not unlike that of Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony, alternating gruff anticipations of the Allegro molto with references back to the Larghetto, the Scherzo and, just before the quiet beginning of the Allegro molto proper, the Poco lento cyclic theme.

These are far from being the only reminders of that earlier material. The cyclic theme, for example, can be heard as an accompanying figure on viola to the serene main theme of the Allegro molto on violin. And it is not the only material that is recalled: the cello’s second-subject theme from the first Allegro is extended and evened-out to make a new theme and is augmented yet again in an episode of calm before the Allegro molto is resumed. But, though the cyclic theme is never absent for very long, the clinching structural achievement is the extended coda, where once again the Scherzo, the Larghetto and, most dramatically and most emphatically, the Poco lento are integrated with each other and with the Finale itself.

Gerald Larner ©2002