String Quartet in F major (1903)

Vif et agité

Just as Debussy’s Quartet in G minor would not have been written without César Franck’s example, Ravel’s in F would not have been written without Debussy’s. That is clear enough not only from the exotic harmonies and seductive scoring but also from the cyclic construction inherited, via Debussy, from Franck. Both the main themes of the Allegro moderato have a long-term function. The second subject supplies the thematic basis for the pizzicato and and the legato elements of the Très vif scherzo, the first is echoed in the Très lent and, metrically transformed, both animate the Vif et agité finale.

Vif et agité

The two most frequently performed of French string quartets were both written by comparatively young composers - Debussy’s in G minor in 1893 when he was thirty-one and Ravel’s in F major in 1903 when he was twenty-eight. Neither score would have existed, however, without the example of the Quartet in D major by César Franck who in 1889, at the very end of his life, had achieved the breakthrough by completing the first major work of its kind in the French repertoire. Neither Debussy nor Ravel was enthusiastic about Franck’s music in general but they both acknowledged their debt to him in this case by discreetly adopting his cyclic method of construction and devising a system of thematic cross-references from movement to movement.

Both the main themes of Ravel’s Allegro moderato first movement – the supple melody heard on first violin in the opening bars and the tenderly expressive second subject introduced by violin and viola in intimate octaves – have a long-term function. In the meantime, Ravel makes it his business to integrate them so thoroughly that by the end of the movement they assume a common identity. It is the second subject rather than the first, however, that supplies the thematic basis for both elements of the following Assez vif scherzo, which is a brilliantly realised confrontation of percussive pizzicato material in 6/8 and legato melody in 3/4. The slower trio section, which introduces an eloquent new theme on cello, is similarly ingenious in its metrical transformations.

Neither of the themes of the first movement has much influence on the formation of the material of the Très lent, least of all in the rhapsodically melodious middle section. The construction is, on the other hand, suffused with echoes, the most prominent among them being the curiously remote appearances made by a motif from the first subject of the Allegro moderato in apparent response to a worried viola in each of the outer sections.

As for the Vif et agité finale, the two main themes – both introduced by violin after the aggressive opening of tremolandos in 5/8 – are triple-time variants of, respectively, the first and second subjects of the first movement. Out of their true metrical character, they concede that they have no choice but to go along with the prevailing quintuple-time tendency, which ultimately sweeps them away in its unstoppable momentum.