String Quartet No.4 (formerly No.3) Op.22 (1921)

Fugato: sehr langsame Viertel (very slow crotchets) –

Schnelle Achtel, sehr energisch (quick quavers, very energetic)

Ruhige Viertel, stets fliessend (calm crotchets, always flowing)

Mässige schnelle Viertel (moderately fast crotchets) –

Rondo: gemächlich und mit Grazie (unhurried and graceful)

Like other progressive composers in the years immediately following the First World War, Hindemith had firmly turned his back on romanticism. Unlike Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Bartók, however, he was not sure even in the early 1920s which way to go instead. That much is clear from the fascinatingly many-sided String Quartet No.4 – which was known as No.3 until 1994 when, in their wisdom, Schott and Co published a rediscovered early work as String Quartet No.1 and renumbered the others accordingly (and confusingly). Written in 1921 and first performed at Donaueschingen a year later, it avoids Schoenberg’s atonalism but clearly allies itself to Bartók and also pursues a neo-baroque line in parallel to Stravinsky’s neo-classicism. At the same time there are violent echoes of the expressionism of his recent one-act operas and a contrastingly sensitive lyricism.

In the absence of stylistic uniformity, unity depends here on the symmetry of the construction. It is built round the central slow movement (Ruhige Viertel) which, flanked by a linked pair of movements on either side, is in every sense the heart of the work. As its title suggests, the opening Fugato represents the neo-baroque element, far from authentic fugue though it is. It begins like one, with a chromatic theme introduced by first violin and taken up by viola and cello in turn. But even before the cello has completed its entry there is an urge not only to change the subject but also to accelerate the tempo. In spite of reminders of the fugue theme, a growing frenzy rushes to a central Presto and fff climax. After a comparatively uneventful wind-down to the opening tempo, the first violin recalls the fugue subject in its original form but now accompanied by a pizzicato cello.

The Bartókian Schnelle Achtel, follows immediately. Like the Fugato, it has no time signature and, indeed, it changes metre almost bar by bar. The five opening, heavily emphatic down bows, which are to be a recurrent feature, suggest 5/8 time but the next bar is in 12/8 and the one after that is in 6/8, and so it goes on through a dynamically liberated first section. The slower middle section retains the metrical freedom but, based on a poised violin melody later shared with the cello, is rather more civilised. Reminders of the five down bows on viola and cello eventually rouse the whole ensemble into a recall of the first section which, with a fff climax marked wild, sounds even more primitive than it did before – although it does have time for an echo of the middle section before the Presto coda.

The central slow movement, the only one with a regular metre, is muted throughout and seems to belong to a different sound world. It is not a romantic confession – Hindemith is careful to direct the main theme to be played “with little exression” – but it is a highly melodiious and harmonically euophonious inspiration based for the most part on the melody introduced by second violin over plucked crotchets in the opening bars. After a not very assertive climax, where the main theme on first violin is accompanied by four-note pizzicato chords from the others, the ending is even slower and quieter than the beginning.

The last two movements, like the first two, are linked. A series of expressionist cadenzas mainly for cello and viola (Mässige schnelle Viertel) leads directly into the Rondo. A resourcefully polyphonic treatment of two themes introduced simultaneously by viola and cello and incorporating two tuneful episodes, this last movement is a prophetic indication of the way Hindemith was to find his way out of the post-war impasse.

The Amar Quartet, which gave the first performance of the work (with Hindemith himself on viola) played it 126 more times in the eight years of the ensemble’s existence.