String Quartet No.4, Op.46

Vif

Funèbre

Très animé

Thinking no doubt of Beethoven, Milhaud once declared that it was his intention to write eighteen string quartets, and between 1912 and 1951 - along with much, much else - that is precisely what he did. The most remarkable of them, in terms of technique, are the Fourteenth and Fifteenth which can be played separately in the normal way or simultaneously as an octet. The most successful are the Fourth and the Seventh.

Written in Rio de Janeiro in 1918 (while he was acting as secretary to the most distinguished of all French ambassadors to Brazil, Paul Claudel) the Fourth is the first of Milhaud’s string quartets to display that harmonic speciality of his known as “polytonality,” which is basically a matter of writing music in more than one key at once - not in his case for any anarchic purpose but to create an interesting effect or even to clarify the texture. The opening of the first movement, where violin and cello present a pastoral-style melody in F major and second violin and viola accompany them in A major, is a particularly pleasing example. The second main theme, introduced by viola over pizzicato, seems to be designed both to contrast with the first and to combine with it in counterpoint.

The central slow movement - written perhaps in memory of a friend recently killed in the war, the poet Léo Latil, to whom Milhaud dedicated his Second and Third Quartets - is a passionate funeral march incorporating a fugue in the middle and ending with a protest on the cello. Happiness is restored in the last movement, most joyously in the third main theme, which is introduced by second violin and later combined with the other two themes in a virtuoso passage of counterpoint not long before the vigorous conclusion.