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by Arnold Steinhardt
Joseph Haydn, more or less the father of the string quartet form, began writing quartets
almost 300 years ago. Since then, literally hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of
string quartets have been written by countless composers. And of these, a great many are
considered by almost any standard certifiable masterpieces. Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van
Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert
Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dvorak, Bedrich Smetana, Claude Debussy,
Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartk, and Dmitri Shostakovichthese are just a few composers off
the top of my head who all wrote quartets of dazzling beauty and great depth of feeling.
Ive often had the sense, admittedly prejudiced as I am as a professional string quartet
player, that composers poured some of their most creative juices into the quartet form. Very
few composers wrote absolutely no quartets, and for many, it must have been considered a
rite of passage to write at least one. Debussy wrote only one, the only work of his he
deemed worthy of an opus number, opus 10. Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Faur wrote only
one, as did Giuseppe Verdithe only composition of his without voice. For other
composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Bartk,
and Shostakovich, the writing of string quartets was a life-long occupation.
What is it about the string quartettwo violins, a viola, and a cellothat has drawn
composers to it? Or to ask another question, what is it about other chamber music
formationssay the string trio, quintet, sextet, or even octetthat has not inspired them to
the same extent? After all, you can count the number of exceptional string trios, quintets
and sextets each pretty much on two handseven on one hand for octets.
In musical harmony, however, the number four has great value. A single note unadorned
may please, but its a naked and lonesome thing. Add to it, three notes up, the interval of a
third, and youve got a major or minor tonality. Then combine this with the fifth degree of the
scale, and voil, youve formed a triad, the basic building block of tonal harmony, and a
chord with a certain fullness to it. And by adding a fourth note to the triadlets say the
octave above that first note, the chords rootyouve put a roof on the house. The four
notes together have a satisfying completeness to them. They foster an almost physical
sense of well-being. Whats more, the four-voiced chord is ready to travel. It can go on any
number of harmonic journeys with its four passengers on board
There is something in four different voices played together that is rock-bottom basic. A
Bach chorale is in four-voice harmony. So is a barbershop quartet or even an old-fashioned
rock-n-roll group. The expression in perfect four-part harmony appears to exist as an
outcome of something appealing, natural, and inevitableperhaps drawn from the
overtone series in nature itself. Albert Einstein, himself a passionate string-quartet player,