S.Q. "Daily" Update

The combination of slightly more employment and a dwindling number of weeks remaining this summer session has caused me to rethink this S.Q. Daily enterprise. It's been great fun and a wonderful learning experience for me so far, but the frequency is becoming detrimental to my dissertation's progress.

I will still likely post once every week or two, possibly focusing on Shostakovich's quartets 5-8. Sarah Reichardt has an intriguing book on this very subject that came out last November. (Composing the Modern Subject: Four String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich at Amazon, Google, and Ashgate.com)

Hopefully I will find some time to explore these quartets and Dr. Reichardt's work. But more importantly, hopefully I get my own quartet off the ground!

Update: I've now got a well-polished A section for Movement II, and a fine melody and sketches for the Movement III scherzo section. Hooray!

S.Q. Daily #17: Shostakovich No. 2 (complete)

S.Q. Daily: A Composer's Listening Journal

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Day #17: Dmitry Shostakovich
String Quartet No. 2 (complete)

Listening to the Fitzwilliam Quartet again. (6 CDs for $12)

I'm starting to focus on Shostakovich's quartets because there are a lot of them (15, like the symphonies), they span nearly his entire life, and they each exhibits originality through solid musical craft.

I was so impressed with its second movement last night that I decided to give the entire second quartet a listen today while washing dishes. Movement II still stands out due to its stark textural contrast (two recitatives framing a "romance"), but the others combine to make this a quartet worth noting.

In the first movement the first violin spends quite a lot of time above the staff. This range can be beautiful, dramatic, and arresting, but stay up there too long, and it can become piercing as well. The movement as a whole is successful, though, with clear motives, varied textures, and a good balance of unity and variety.

The third movement is second only to the second in immediate interest for me. The low and winding cello solo, later picked up by none other than the first violin, is a great contrast to the pulse-less feel of the previous section. The action gets heavier and louder until, at about 70% of the way through, the dynamic suddenly drops before fading into nothing at the end.

The fourth movement I definitely need to listen to again. I had a terrible time discerning the form, or the emotional development of the movement in general. Then I looked at the score and discovered it's a Theme and Variations. Silly!

Give this whole work a listen. It's pretty cool.

S.Q. Daily #16: Shostakovich No. 1 (mvt. II), No. 2 (mvt. II)

S.Q. Daily: A Composer's Listening Journal

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Day #16: Dmitry Shostakovich
String Quartet No. 1, Movement II, &
String Quartet No. 2, Movement II

Since recording Shostakovich's complete fifteen string quartets - and premiering his final three - the Fitzwilliam Quartet has laid strong claim as the definitive interpreters of these works.

Their complete set audio CD is still available on Amazon for under $1 per quartet.

For the past few weeks, I've been struggling with the second movement of my own quartet (the first movement I'm attempting). It's a slow ABA song form that experiments with multiple tempi and time signatures in the outer sections. I like the ideas I came up with, but not their implementation, so the writing has been crawling along quite slowly.

For inspiration, tonight I listened to the second movements of Shostakovich's first and second quartets. His first, in a moderate tempo but acting like the quartet's slow movement, didn't really light my fire in any particular way, beyond his typical solid craft and ear for melody.

The second quartet was a different story. Its ABA structure is immediately clear from a glance at the score: the outer A sections are "recitatives", framing an inner "romance" (whatever that is). The recitatives are really that: the lower three parts sustain very soft chords indefinitely while the first violin winds its way through a series of dramatic, unmetered phrases. The B section is more straightfoward. It's in tempo and gradually speeds up towards the end, just before the return to the free-meter A'.

This isn't exactly what my dual-tempo A sections do, but it's a nice model for slowly evolving, "timeless" material framing a more steady inner section. The only real problem is, Shostakovich's great second movement is 11 minutes long, while I'm only 30% of the way to my goal of 7 minutes! Well, we'll see if he inspires me before tomorrow afternoon's lesson...

Any suggestions? (generic or specific)

S.Q. Daily #12: Shostakovich No. 11

S.Q. Daily: A Composer's Listening Journal

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/izzyplante/2151275207/

(Photo by izzyplante, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.)

Day #12: Dmitry Shostakovich
String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 118

My own quartet needs some inspiration and, moreso, some hard work on my part. I hope to have Movement II sketched by Saturday.

Wiki, the ever-present though tenuous source of information on everything, has a functional list of notable string quartets. Maybe I should pick from these...

Tonight on S.Q. Daily I'll give a few brief words on Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 11. Among the shortest of his fifteen quartets (which is why I chose to listen to this one while doing tonight's late-night dishes), the eleventh consists of seven miniatures, each no more than roughly four minutes.

3. Recitative has some really awesome dissonant chords - I'll have to figure them out later.
4. Etude is a brilliant, fluttering finger-study for the first violin
Movements 1, 6, and 7, while perfectly fine, are less brilliant and immediately attention-grabbing.

The set as a whole is still quite cohesive thematically, regardless of its variety of its constituent forms and moods. I believe this is due to a certain "popular" (for lack of a better word) leaning in Shostakovich's writing that strives to grab the ear on the first listen. (That's not to say that the pieces have no substance that would reward repeat hearings.) I don't know if this is an inherent element of his style, a reaction to or result of the populist guiding hand of the Party that long held sway over much of life and the arts in Russia, or what. Just an observation.