Concertino (1920)

Three Pieces (1914)

Double Canon (1959)

Stravinsky was not naturally drawn to the string quartet. But for the interest taken in his music by the Flonzaley Quartet - named after the Swiss estate of its American patron, Edward J. de Coppet - the Three Pieces would not have been written, or not in string-quartet form at least, and it was the Flonzaley who commissioned the work that, some time after the fee had been paid, turned out to be the Concertino. The Double Canon, designed as much for the eye as the ear, could have been scored for more or less any four instruments capable of producing a balanced sound within the required pitch range.

Having given the first performance of the Three Pieces for string quartet in 1915, the Flonzaley Quartet cannot have been too surprised by the score Stravinsky sent them in 1920 in response to their request for a new piece to add to their mainly classical repertoire. Like the earlier work, the Concertino offers few of the conventional string-quartet gratifications in terms of colour and texture. Its sound derives from much the same image - peculiar to Stravinsky at that time - of the string quartet as a primitive instrument, grumbly rather than lyrical, appropriate more to marking incisive rhythms than to turning elegant phrases.

However, although the form and length of the piece were left to the composer’s discretion, Stravinsky did offer a concession to the string players on this occasion by introducing a virtuoso element into the score. As he put it, “I wrote a piece in one single movement, treated in the form of a free sonata allegro, with a definitely concertante part for the first violin - hence, taking its small scale into account, the diminutive title of concertino (little concerto).” So, after an entertainingly gruff opening only a little more sophisticated in texture than the first of the Three Pieces, there is an Andante middle section featuring a thoughtful double-stopped violin cadenza accompanied mainly by pizzicato cello. The last section is not so much a reprise of the first as an extension and development of it, recalling at one point the rather more colourful violin writing of The Soldier’s Tale. A brief recall of the central Andante dies out on a dissonant sigh.

The Three Pieces are among several small-scale experimental works that Stravinsky wrote in Switzerland in the aftermath of The Rite of Spring in 1914 and 1915. Although the first of them was probably not specifically conceived in string-quartet terms, an enquiry from the Flonzaley Quartet, who wanted a new work for a forthcoming European and America tour, seems to have concentrated his mind on defining the scoring and adding two more pieces to make a viable item for a concert programme. Even then, however, it was not intended as a significant addition to the literature of the string quartet. In their brevity and the concentration on a single mode of expression in each one, the three pieces are more like studies in what (at this stage in Stravinsky’s development) had to be a new way forward. Certainly, nothing like them had been written for string quartet before and, as it turned out, their future was in other areas of the repertoire.

When the Three Pieces were published in 1922 they bore no titles and no tempo directions apart from metronome marks. It was not until Stravinsky arranged them and incorporated them (with the pianola Study) in the Four Studies for orchestra in 1928 that he gave any clue as to the meaning of these gnomic utterances. The first of them, identified in the orchestral score as “Dance,” is based on a primitive four-note tune which is repeated over a drone and an ostinato bass line. It was immediately developed in Pribaoutki and the Cat’s Cradle Songs. The rhythmically and harmonically unpredictable second piece, “Eccentric”- inspired by the clowning of Little Tich, whom Stravinsky saw in London in 1914 - is the most prophetic of the three in that it finds echoes even in works as late as Agon and Movements. The third piece, “Canticle,” which Stravinsky considered “some of my best music of that time,” is clearly recalled in the chorale material of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments.

Although the Double Canon bears the dedication “Raoul Dufy in Memoriam,” it is not a personal tribute to the artist. Never having met the Dufy, who had died in 1953, Stravinsky presumably added the dedication at the request of the private patron for whom he wrote the first version of the piece, a duet for flute and clarinet, in Venice in 1959. Later in the same year he expanded the two-part canon into a four-part double canon for string quartet. Based on a twelve-note row of interlocking thirds, it presents one canon for the two violins and a second canon for viola and cello, the latter two instruments making their entry after the first statement of the theme their exit just before its final recall in retrograde inversion.

String Quartet in E flat major, Op.127 (1825)

Maestoso - allegro

Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile

Scherzando vivace - presto - tempo I

Finale - allegro con moto

The first performance of the late Quartet in E flat met with a disappointingly cool reception. Ignaz Schuppanzigh, who had fought hard to secure the new work for the opening of his 1825 season in Vienna, maintained that it was not his fault. Certainly, having been forced to withdraw the piece from his January concert because the score was not ready on time, he had had little opportunity to rehearse it even for the March concert. Beethoven was not there but was so angry with Schuppanzigh that he insisted that the second performance should be led by Joseph Böhm and that, deaf though he was, he should supervise the rehearsals himself. This time it was a great success.

Apart from the obvious technical difficulties, the problem for Schuppanzigh - apparently working, unlike Böhm, without the benefit of the composer’s advice - must have been in understanding and interpreting a concept so contrary to expectations. A slow introduction was common enough, it is true, and the transition from the firmly double-stopped E flat major chords of the Maestoso to the tenderly lyrical opening bars of the Allegro can only have roused admiration for the exquisite quality of Beethoven’s textural imagination at that point. No one, on the other hand could have expected that this Maestoso/Allegro transition would become the focus of the composer’s attention. Its two further appearances (in G and C major respectively) are of far more structural significance than such conventional landmarks as the entry of the second subject, which has no sharply defined personality, or even the recapitulation of the main theme, which happens as if by accident shortly after the second recall of the Maestoso material.

Schuppanzigh’s audience would have known many slow movements in variation form but none based on a theme as extended and as seriously expressive as that of the Adagio ma non troppo in A flat major. Nor would they have known one so elusive in structure. As Beethoven presents it, as a continuous development in one tempo and one key except in the conspicuously different central area - the Andante con moto with its luxuriant violin duet followed by the Adagio molto espressivo in a profoundly meditative E major - it could almost be taken as a ternary design.

The last two movements would have been less problematic. The Scherzando vivace conforms to type at least in its scherzo-and-trio shape, eccentric though it is in its obsession with one rhythmic figure in the outer sections and its relentless pursuit of the first violin in the Presto middle section. As for the Finale, it happily follows its uncomplicated sonata-form course until - the ultimate inspiration - the radiant Allegro con moto coda elevates it to a new level of euphoria.

Gerald Larner ©2005