SKU: PR.16400272S

UPC: 680160588442. 8.5 x 11 inches.

My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements. I see this theme as Mary's Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change.   I The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]   The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals. Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal. The style of the painting doesn't yet show Cassatt's originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face. Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above. The music begins with Mary's Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an alla Spagnola-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter. It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla.   Midway through, there's an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music. The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style. Cassatt's painting, too, is rather conventional.   II At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts]   This painting is one of Cassatt's most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage. Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her - though it is not him that she's looking at. It's an intriguing picture.   This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional. The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type mini-overture lasting less than a minute, based on Mary's Theme. My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box. What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of Soldier's Chorus from Gounod's FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello. This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment. On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod. It's as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it. Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first). This music isn't at all Gounod-derived; it's entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary's Theme and its scale. The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin's aria Avant de quitter ce lieux reappears in a kind of coda for all four players. It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however. The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream.   III Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts]   The painting, one of Cassatt's last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture. The colors are pastel and yet bold - and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure. It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody - three melodies, to be exact (Young Woman, Green, and Sunlight). No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies. I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy's song Green, from Ariettes Oubliees. 1909 would have been Debussy's heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this.   Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined - something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss. My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a pure form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting. This makes an interesting two ways form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1.   String Quartet No.3 (Cassatt) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.

SKU: HL.370494

ISBN 9781705147009. UPC: 840126994025.

The First String Quartet in C major, Op. 37, was written in the autumn of 1917 and earned Szymanowski the first prize in a competition organized by the Ministry of Religious and in a competition organized by the Ministry of Religious and Educational Affairs in January 1922. The First String Quartet is notable for its clar and simple construction. The first movement is in the formof a sonata allegro; the Andantino semplice (in modo iuna canzone) in the middle is a cross between ternary and variation form. The final Scherzando alla burlesca also keeps to the form of a sonata allegro. The combinations and proportions of formal factors and the treatment of thematic material betray a fairly conventional adoption of classical models. Similarly, the expressive and structural use of melodic material shows a respect for traditional norms. Szymanowski created, in other works from the same period, his own individual type of melodic line, which was strongly expressive and achieved its effect chiefly by its tonal qualieties; nevertheless in this Quartet he returns to a fluid, cantilena-like, symmetrically shaped melodic line, which runs along in broad phrases of a concentrated, reflective character. Melody becomes the chief factor in the development of the form, both in thematic usage and in the application of a more polyphonic texture. Harmonic and tonal means are considerably simplified in the Quartet []. Most of the writing is linear, or horizontal, with individual treatment of each part, the parallel continuation of the four sound planes, almost a matter of principle. The functions of the particular instruments in realizing these planes are constantly changing,which accounts for the even greater variedy of tone-colour. The decision to forego experiment with forms and sonorities is reflectedin the overall approach to musical expression. The predominant atmosphere of restrained emotion, quiet lyricism and serenity is strongly suggestive of classical aestetic models. (Based on Zofia Helman Commentary on Szymanowski Complete Edition, Vol. B6) (II) The ''Second String Quartet'' represents an interesting attempt to revert to classical form coupled with the new harmonic and tonal vocabulary worked out previously in the ''Slopiewnie'', ''Stabat Mater'' and ''Mazurkas''. It was also the first time the composer had used folk elements in the framework of a major classical form. The ''Second String Quartet'' is in a special category among Szymanowski's works. Though it dates from the composer was still occupied with folk music, it nevertheless shows him returning to classical models, but at the same time using an aesthetic of subjective expression, which gives the work its own individual stamp. The ''Second String Quartet'' synthesis of the various directions in which Szymanowski was attempting to develop. The sonority and texture used in the first.