Although the string quartet did not regain the privileged position it enjoyed during the Classical period, many twentieth-century composers from many different cultural backgrounds and stylistic positions looked to the genre as a context suitable for their most intimate thoughts. Throughout the century the string quartet was often viewed not only as a medium conducive to experimentation and formal innovation, but also for its positive re-engagement with tradition; this double focus was symptomatic of the multifarious nature of modernism, an ‘ism’ which encapsulated the defining aesthetic trends of the early decades of the century. This sense of experimentation and innovation often led to an expansion of playing techniques, an increase in the expressive parameters of the music and departures from the standard four-movement pattern of the Classical quartet. However, despite its use as a vehicle for change, the string quartet continued to provide a generic framework which reflected the inherited traditions and conventions as accumulated through the history and stylistic developments of the genre, even if in some cases it was only to construct a point for new departure. This relationship between tradition and innovation, a relationship which was at times oppositional, at others interactive, will come to be seen as a defining reference point for a generalised understanding of the string quartet repertory of the twentieth century. It will become pertinent through regional/national surveys of some of the main composers and works in the medium. Such surveys are not necessarily intended always to suggest national style groupings; rather they are used merely as a convenient and accessible format through which the principal works can be presented.

The exclusive image of the string quartet, established relatively early in its history and lasting up to the present day, has determined that only a narrow range of works from the eighteenth century remains in general circulation. There is a comparative lack of editions, recordings and above all live performances of quartets by any composers other than Haydn and Mozart. This might seem to mirror the current representation of later eighteenth-century music altogether, confined like that of no other period to a tiny number of ‘Classical’ figures. Nevertheless, one senses a greater openness to unfamiliar repertory with other genres. It seems to have been assumed that it is the quartet that most readily finds out the lesser figures, that sorts the great from the good. The collective image of these lesser figures tends not to accord them much dignity: they are lightweights, and any attempted revival of their music may well prompt a bemused reaction.

This reflects an attitude towards the whole musical language of the time: that it is inherently undemanding, that only the best can transcend its expressive and technical blandness. This reflects (and misinterprets) the marked preoccupation with medium and low styles in this language, the aesthetic preference for accessibility, to the relative exclusion of a high style that was by definition associated with a less accessible past. The heart of the matter concerns technical rather more than expressive tone: just what constitutes good technique, how does it relate to genre and how conspicuously ought it to be displayed for the listener? Once more the question arises of how distinct a role the quartet plays in such a larger reception history.

This chapter can give only a flavour of the myriad ways in which twentieth-century composers extended the frontiers of string playing in their quartets and, hence, the timbral palette of ensembles. Restrictions of space allow only a general overview, together with some detailed discussions of specific trends, techniques and expressive effects, with pertinent examples from the repertory. In many respects the weight of Classical tradition and the perceived limitations in the technical possibilities of stringed instruments initially resulted in the genre resisting radical change to a greater extent than most other media. Despite the extraordinary variety and concentration of texture and timbres in Webern's Bagatelles Op. 9, for example, performers are consistently required to pursue their traditional roles of hearing and feeling as a unified ensemble, interpreting each note as belonging to a single melody of timbres.

This is in sharp contrast to the more individualistic roles encouraged later in the century, when the genre became a vehicle for remarkable experiment and radical compositional thought. Bartók's quartets, with their wide range of pizzicato effects, vibrato indications, col legno and microtones, provided the most significant spark to those composers seeking to expand the vocabulary of available sounds and timbres. The chromaticism, the rhythmic and metrical devices and the colouristic and textural use of glissandi in Bartók's Third Quartet, for example, were all highly unusual for the sometimes retrogressive 1920s; furthermore, Hindemith's contemporary Second Quartet (Op. 16) requires the second violinist to reiterate a figure without regard to the pulse of the other parts (finale, bb. 458–511), a technique tentatively foreshadowing the development of aleatory devices such as appeared in, for example, Gunter Schuller's First Quartet (1957), with its opportunities for improvisation.

Introduction

As has clearly been demonstrated in the previous chapters, the art of the string quartet was taken to its heights by the Austro-German composers of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that equally fertile traditions began to emerge elsewhere. These trends, discussed in this and the subsequent chapter, signal the development of the genre into a medium adopted by composers worldwide, who gradually exploited it as a vehicle for the most concentrated, the most experimental, the most radical as well as the most intimate compositional thought.

Austro-German influence nevertheless remained predominant; in Britain, for example, even the major string quartet ensemble of the second half of the nineteenth century, the (English) Joachim Quartet, was led by a German, Joseph Joachim. American composers had still to find their own voice; and whatever Italian ensembles there were continued to perform the works of the Austro-Germans to the exclusion of almost everything else, so immersed were their fellow countrymen in vocal music, and particularly in opera and in the instrumental traditions fostered by the Viennese Classical composers. Despite the relatively large number of string quartets composed in France during the nineteenth century, no distinctively French string quartet tradition developed until the late 1880s, when César Franck (1822–90) and his circle of composers contributed to a native quartet tradition in France, albeit with a strong German seasoning.

In the developing national musical traditions of the nineteenth century, certain genres, inevitably, were privileged. Given its explicit, decorative, often political nature, opera became the major mode of projecting nation and national character, followed at some distance by the symphonic poem and programme symphony. In such an environment the string quartet, which of all the major genres of the eighteenth century that continued to flourish in the nineteenth tended to retain its abstract credentials, was hardly a priority as a means of expression for the more nationally inclined composer. The landmarks of nationalism, such as Musorgsky's Boris Godunov, Moniuszko's Halka and Smetana's The Bartered Bride and My Country represented the public face of the composer both serving and dramatising the nation, courting and exploiting the aspirations of contemporary fashion in their nations' passage towards the construction of an identity.

For the reflective composer working within national traditions, the string quartet offered the chance to explore a hard-won compositional technique, but also, notably in the case of Smetana, to project a more personal mode of expression once the requirements of the nation had been served. Thus, paradoxically, given its abstract origins, the quartet, reimaged by nineteenth-century aspirations, not only could embody the rigour of orthodoxy, but for the programmatically orientated Smetana proved also to be the means of explicitly dramatising his life; and in the hands of the Russians Tchaikovsky and Arensky the quartet could in the manner of Renaissance and Baroque tombeaux commemorate a life.

Introduction

This chapter is not primarily intended as a manual for playing quartets; nor is it a description of what actually transpires in the privacy of any particular rehearsal room. Rather, it aims to describe the main issues which ensembles, in their own way, have to resolve in preparing their performances. After a brief exploration of the notion of a collective interpretation, the main body of the chapter deals with some important aspects of rehearsing, principally in relation to facets of ensemble playing such as voicing, blend, intonation, rhythm, tempo, articulation, phrasing and structure. There follows a discussion of different strategies for coping with residual disagreements, and then some concluding thoughts.

First movement: interpretation

The concept of musical interpretation

Any musician preparing a work of classical music for performance faces the challenge of developing an interpretation which reveals the soul of the work with conviction and freshness. Such a challenge is amplified for a string quartet, because the players have the additional task of reaching their interpretations collectively.

Even without the problem of collective decision-making, what does ‘interpretation’ involve? Just as Shakespeare's The Tempest can seem to be a multitude of extraordinarily different plays in the hands of different theatre companies (especially from various cultures and centuries), so there can be a comparable variety of readings of, say, Mozart's ‘Dissonance’ Quartet (K. 465), even if each group is aiming simply to be ‘true to the score’. This is because it is impossible for a composer to notate for musicians any more precisely than a playwright can for actors.

In the last years of the nineteenth century, the prototype of the modern string quartet ensemble emerged: democratic, virtuosic, well rehearsed and no longer tied to one locality but willing to travel in search of work. It was necessary to embrace the work ethic because concert fees had to be split four ways: a front-rank violinist such as Adolf Busch would receive as much for playing one concerto as his entire quartet would earn for playing the equivalent of three concertos in an evening. Summer festivals were virtually unknown in 1900 and artists lived for the whole year on what they could make in the winter season. Only a fortunate few ensembles had wealthy sponsors; hence the members of many quartets supported themselves partly by teaching or by orchestral playing – and it was common for the string principals of an orchestra to appear as a quartet, whether they matched well or not.

The almost obsessive perfectionism that would mark twentieth-century ensembles was still unknown; but before long, it was beginning to take shape in response to the demands of the new music. As with most developments in the history of string playing, technical progress was patchy and sporadic. However, two countries in particular, Bohemia and Hungary, consistently led the way in advancing standards. The emergence of the gramophone record, the proliferation of chamber music societies and the ease of modern transport, which made touring by professional quartets a viable proposition, all played their parts in these developments; and the two World Wars acted as watersheds for the introduction of new generations of ensembles. By midway through the century, festivals were beginning to spring up all over the world in the summer months; and the idea of having a resident quartet in an educational institution was catching on.

String quartet performance might at first seem an unpromising area for the practice of historical awareness. After all, there is no mystery about the instruments required and the musical texts are so explicit that there can be little room for radical re-interpretation. Yet the huge amount of music written in the first seventy or so years of the string quartet's existence was played on instruments substantially different from their modernised twentieth-century successors. The Classical repertory from Haydn to Schubert and the even more numerous contributions from their lesser contemporaries were written for instruments and bows whose construction reflected their historical position midway between the late Baroque and the early nineteenth century. And although the opportunities to decorate or alter the notes on the page became increasingly rare as the eighteenth century progressed, the manner in which these notes were played was also far removed from conventional twentieth-century practice.

The early quartets

An indication of the historical and stylistic location of the early quartets of the mid eighteenth century is given by the fact that several of their composers also produced collections of trio sonatas, a Baroque form then on its last legs. The variety in this early quartet repertory is reflected in its range of titles, from ‘quartetto’ to ‘cassatio’. The content of these works ranged from straight fugues through simple sonata forms to light divertimento movements. Two sets stand out. One of the earliest references to a quartet party is in the autobiography of Dittersdorf, where he recalls tackling ‘six new quartets by Richter’.

Although the first full-time professional string quartet ensemble did not emerge until 1892, the nineteenth century saw a steady improvement in the standard of quartet playing. Several trends can be seen running through the century as a whole: a gradual strengthening of the actual sound emitted by the players; the emergence of Beethoven as the recognised king of quartet composers; and the espousal of the heritage or museum-style concert in which music of a previous age was presented. The last two of these developments were largely precipitated by Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), whose giant personality cast its shadow over the second half of the century.

The sound of the quartet

It is possible to make an informed guess at the kind of sonority produced by a typical string quartet ensemble at the start of the century. With rare exceptions, quartets were played in large rooms rather than halls, and there was no need to strive for a powerful sound. The tone of even the top violin soloists was not large. Bows had reached their evolutionary peak but most instruments still had their original shorter necks and the fingerboards ran more parallel with the bodies, so that the gut strings were under relatively light pressure.

Full-time violists were unknown, although the Stamitz brothers both played the instrument to a high standard, and the viola in a quartet would invariably be played by a violinist who would adapt violin technique to a smallish instrument and would therefore make a quite narrow, nasal sound. The cello had no endpin and the cellist held it resting on his lower legs, partially muffling the tone. Although there is not complete agreement on how much vibrato was generally applied, it is likely that, especially in quartet music, the effect was used sparingly, like an ornament, and never in chordal passages. We therefore have in our mind’s ear a quite small, delicate, ‘straight’ sonority which various twentieth- and twenty-first-century period-instrument groups have striven to reproduce, with varying success.

Few of the world's top string players perform in public now a days on instruments made by contemporary luthiers. Most opt instead for antique instruments, especially examples by Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737), Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù (1698–1744) or other Italian master luthiers, which they are either sufficiently wealthy to own or fortunate to have on extended loan. This is no recent trend. Rightly or wrongly, it has long been believed that the sound potential of most violins will mature with age and playing.

There is naturally good reason for the esteem in which both Stradivari and Guarneri have been held, even though during their lifetime the tonal qualities of the highly arched models of the Amati family and the Austrian Jacob Stainer (?1617–83) generally held favour. The instruments developed by Stradivari, Guarneri and their contemporaries began to reign supreme only after they, in company with most other extant instruments of the violin family, had been subjected to various external and internal modifications towards the end of the eighteenth century, to make them more responsive to changes in musical style and taste. These modifications occurred between c. 1760 and c. 1830 as a response to the demand for greater tonal sonority, volume and projection, resulting from the increasing vogue for public concerts discussed in Chapter 1. Developments in bow construction at about the same time led to the standardisation (c. 1785) of bow design, measurements, weights and materials by François Tourte (1747–1835).

The golden age of crime fiction is usually taken as the period between the two world wars, though some start it earlier, with the publication of E. C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case in 1913, and the first critic to use the term dated it from 1918 to 1930, followed by 'the Moderns'; major texts in 'golden age' style were also produced after 1940, both by new writers and by figures from the earlier period. The term 'golden age' has been criticised as being unduly homogenous and seen as inappropriately 'replete with romantic associations': in fact the types of crime fiction produced in this period were far from uniform - the psychothriller and the procedural began, there was a wide range of practice in the mystery and the stories do regularly represent types of social and personal unease which would contradict a notion of an idyllic 'golden' period.

However, while recognising variety in the period, as well as the relative uncertainty of its borders, it is still possible to identify a coherent set of practices which were shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by most of the writers then at work. Elements that were randomly present in earlier crime fiction suddenly become a norm, like multiple suspects, and some earlier tendencies largely disappear, notably the use of coincidence and historical explanations. A genre of crime fiction, best named for its central mechanism as the clue-puzzle and epitomised by Agatha Christie and ‘S. S. Van Dine’, clearly forms a recognisable entity by the mid-1920s.

The Newgate novel and the sensation novel were sub-genres of the literature of crime, which enjoyed a relatively brief but quite extraordinary popular success in the 1830s and 1840s and the 1860s respectively. The Newgate novel was associated exclusively with male authors. The sensation novelists, on the other hand, included a number of best-selling female authors, and this fact made for important differences of emphasis in the two sub-genres, and also for significant differences in the critical response to them. Both generated debates whose terms extended beyond the literary, and which overlapped in interesting ways. Thus, as well as being entertaining and often absorbing narratives in their own right, these novels and the controversies they engendered tell us a great deal about cultural anxieties and social and literary change at two key points in the Victorian period. Newgate novels enjoyed enormous popularity and some notoriety in the early 1830s, and generated great debate and controversy in the late 1830s and the 1840s.

Given that it contains a potent and provocative pun, 'private eye' is as good a title as any for a chapter on the emergence of a home-grown, American sub-genre of crime fiction. The obvious alternative, 'hardboiled', is appropriately folksy in its reference to a tough-minded behavioural code but covers more territory and is less resonant. In association with 'private', the eye/I(nvestigator) in question already conjures up some of the defining characteristics of what was to become a popular heroic type in the American grain. A private eye suggests among other things: a solitary eye, and the (forbidden) pleasures associated with Freud's scopic drive; a non-organisation man's eye, like the frontier scout's or the cowboy's; an eye that trusts no other; an eye that's licensed to look; and even, by extrapolation, an eye for hire. To propose further that private eye also connotes those specifically American concepts of 'orneriness' and 'libertarianism' is a stretch, but to anyone familiar with the fictional type, the connection is soon apparent.

When the thriller writer Robert Ludlum died in March 2001, several of his obituarists tellingly recalled the reaction of a Washington Post reviewer to one of the author's many, phenomenally popular novels: 'It's a lousy book. So I stayed up until 3am to finish it.' This anecdotal, tongue-in-cheek confession neatly captures the ambivalence associated with a hugely successful mode of crime writing, a guilty sense that its lack of literary merit has always somehow been inseparable from the compulsiveness with which its narrative pleasures are greedily gobbled up, relegating the thriller to the most undeserving of genres. To describe a thriller as 'deeply satisfying and sophisticated' (to pluck a blurb at random from the bookshelves) is already to beg the insidious question: how satisfying and sophisticated can it be?