Download Quartet No - Heraclitus

Irene Mairis
SHOSTAKOVICH STRING QUARTETS
No.
Key
Date Op. Movements
1
C major
1938
49
4: Moderato: Moderato: Allegro molto: Allegro
2
A major
1944
68
3
F major
1946
73
4
D major
1949
83
4: Overture, Moderato con moto: Recitative and Romance,
Adagio: Waltz, Allegro: Theme with Variations, Allegro.
5: Allegretto: Moderato con moto: Allegro non troppo:
Adagio: Moderato. For the premiere Shostakovich renamed
the movements in the manner of a war story: 1.Blithe ignorance
of the future cataclysm 2.Rumblings of unrest and anticipation
3.Forces of war unleashed 4.In memory of the dead 5.The
eternal question: Why? And for what?
4: Allegretto: Andantino: Allegretto: Allegretto.
5
Bb major
1952
92
3: performed without break: Allegro non troppo: AndanteAndantino- Andante- Andantino- Andante: ModeratoAllegretto-Andante.
6
G major
1956
101
4: Allegretto: Moderato con moto: Lento: Lento-Allegretto.
7
f# minor
1960
108
8
c minor
1960
110
3: performed without break: Allegretto: Lento: AllegroAllegretto-Adagio.
5: performed without break: Largo: Allegro molto: Allegretto:
Largo: Largo
Other Information
Traditional. Movements in sonata form, variations, scherzo, Lively
finale.
Censured by authorities. Furiously denounced due to the horrors
the music portrays and because it ends in ambiguous, inconclusive,
fashion. Some critics accused Shostakovich of hiding coded
subversive messages against Stalin within it.
Notable for the sustained passionate part written for the first
violin in the Andantino which rises to ecstatic heights, and also for
the suspenseful and complex final movement.
The work grows from a five note motif: C, D, E flat, B and C sharp,
which contains the composer's musical monogram - DSCH - (E flat
being S and B being H in German). This appears other string
quartets, including the 8th. as well as his 10th Symphony.
The first movement creates a carefree mood using nursery tunes.
The second movement is a cheerful dance in E b major, the third
movement a chaconne in b minor.
Written in memory of his first wife Nina Vassilyevna Varzar who
died in December 1954.
Opens with the DSCH motif which is used in each movement.. This
slow sad theme (also used in his Cello Concerto No 1, Violin
Concerto No. 1, Symphonies 10 and 15, Piano Sonata No.2). The
work is filled with quotes of other pieces by Shostakovich: the 1st
movement quotes 1st and 5th Symphonies, the 2nd movement uses a
Jewish theme used in Piano Trio No.2; the 3rd movement quotes
the Cello Concerto No.1 and the 4th movement quotes a 19th
century revolutionary song ‘Tormented by Grievous Bondage’ and an
aria from his opera, ‘Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk’ District.
Irene Mairis
9
Eb major
1964
117
10
11
Ab major
f minor
1964
1966
118
122
12
Db major
1968
133
13
bb minor
1970
138
14
15
f# minor
eb minor
1973
1974
142
144
5: performed without break: Moderato con moto: Adagio:
Allegretto: Adagio: Allegro.
4: Andante: Allegretto furioso: Adagio: Allegretto-Andante.
7: Introduction-Andantino: Scherzo-Allegretto: RecitativeAdagio: Etude-Allegro: Humoresque-Allegro: Elegy-Adagio:
Finale-Moderato.
2: Moderato –Allegretto -Moderato –Allegretto –Moderato:
Allegretto –Adagio –Moderato –Adagio –Moderato –Allegretto.
1: Adagio –Doppio movimento- Tempo primo.
Dedicated to his third wife, Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, whom
he had married in 1962.
Dedicated to his close friend Moisei Weinberg.
Dedicated to the violist of the Beethoven Quartet, and the viola is
given a prominent role in the piece. It opens with a 12-tone-row
played on the viola, and concludes with a long viola solo in the high
register. The work requires players to tap the bodies of their
instruments with their bows at several points; such techniques had
become almost commonplace in the West by this time, but were
not typically used in Soviet music of this period.
3: Allegretto – Adagio – Allegretto.
6 linked movements – all slow: Elegy –Adagio: Serenade –Adagio:
Intermezzo –Adagio: Nocturne –Adagio: Funeral March –Adagio
molto: Epilogue –Adagio.
Like most of the composer's late works, it is an introspective
meditation on mortality. Shostakovich told the Beethoven Quartet
to play the first movement "so that flies drop dead in mid-air, and
the audience start leaving the hall from sheer boredom".
Further contextual information for String Quartet No. 8 in C minor (Op. 110)
The piece was written shortly after two traumatic events: the composer's diagnosis with myelitis, and his joining the Communist Party reluctantly.
According to the score, it is dedicated "to the victims of fascism and war"; his son, Maxim, interprets this as a reference to the victims of all
totalitarianism, while his daughter Galina says that he dedicated it to himself, and that the published dedication was imposed by the authorities.
Shostakovich's friend, Lev Lebedinsky, said that Shostakovich thought of the work as his epitaph and that he planned to commit suicide around this time.
The work is one of his most private; in a letter to Isaak Glikman he described it as "an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs... It is a pseudo-tragic
quartet, so much so that while I was composing it I shed the same amount of tears as I would have to pee after half-a-dozen beers".
Source: Wikipedia