Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914)

The Three Pieces for String Quartet 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. Alfred Schnittke learned something from it too.