Let's listen to Bartok String Quartets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsGHyrxXYPU

1909, considered "kid's stuff" for Bartok, but afaic the richness of his harmonic language was already mature. I love how young Bartok builds to big consonant fan service moments (2:00, 4:00, 8:00) which will immediately shudder and collapse. Sounds like destruction! This movement is inspired by the first mvt. of Beethoven #14 op. 131.

Bookmarked! Listening later!

I have all six of these in my iPod - the Takacs Quartet recordings. Awesome stuff.

Am listening at the moment. Great stuff, great thread.

Listening now. I'm only gonna do one movement at a time as per the thread. I'm going with the Hungarian Quartet (dg) rather than my other sets (takacs and Emerson) cause I'm feeling more woody and lyrical right now.

It's not a world away from schoenberg's first two quarters and Verklarte Nacht, this movement. But as flamgoon points out, the climaxes are glanced away from. I love the viola soliloquy where the cello then joins in. Any moments of viola ogling are appreciated by me always. I just love that timbre.

i am so excited about this

A lot of writes online and in my little chapbook, they talk about the Beethoven influence in this quartet. "Inspired by Beethoven," they say. What do they mean? It doesn't exactly 'sound' like Beethoven.

Beethoven's strength as an author of 4tets imo was his ability to switch gears so effortlessly. "All instruments playing together at the octave" -> "sudden violin solo" -> "call and response between low instruments and high instruments" -> "fugato" -> "cello takes the lead", etc. Aurally it's the equivalent of a flock of starlings scattering and rejoining.

You're going to hear a lot of that same stuff in Bartok 1,ii

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8I3MhchEfs

You hear? All four players are usually contributing, but always in groups of 3-1 or 2-2, changing and re-organizing themselves. Fuck me at 1:30, viola and second violin having this dialogue between the murmur of the cello and first, sensual!
(Bartok also attempts a very Beethovenesque development of that opening riff, note its reappearance at 3:15. Anyway. Beethoven.)

Compositionally, the 1st quartet is the "least original" of the six. But this starling-esque shift of ensemble, the flighty lines, diverging and converging, this is pure ecstasy for the performers, complete bliss. Later quartets, you'll hear extended technique and nutty broken stuff, but this quartet, more than the others, is imbued with that 19th century sensation of sport. It's a show piece, it's written 'idiosyncratically' for the instruments-- that is to say, the music just falls off the fingerboard. As a performance piece this is one of the most satisfying in the repertoire.

And the reason I've typed all this and jumped the gun on posting the 2nd movement, it was just a roundabout way of saying "yay Emerson". I love Takacs, especially their performances of the 2nd and 3rd, but Emerson have an unspeakably good sense of ensemble and to my ears it lends itself well to the 1st (and the 4th)

"Fuck me at 1:30", uh these days I'm pressing "submit post" before a spell and content check, it's more fun

these are really cool AND i have no idea how to talk about them

Me neither, I'm not a writer (and I'm actually going a little nuts from too-much-computer-work) but if I'm going to take a minute break from scoring some bullshit it's going to be to drink oolong tea, listen to Bartok and type about it

All about the Vegh Quartet for me. 5th reminds me a lot of late Talk Talk/solo Hollis in parts (the only music to do so).

5th: 2nd movement

I dunno about you, but this movement is the not-so-missing link between Romantic developmental forms (Beethoven) and a lot of super-popular post-atonal retrogressive stuff. Holst, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, hundreds of film scores and cartoon soundtracks. Maybe this theme was featured somewhere? Some movie or something? Anyway, this, along with 2:ii, is the Big Pop Hit of the first three quartets.

Pretty much the best argument for Young Composers Rule, this movement is fun and cinematic and there's not a moment po-facedness, it's silly the whole way through.

1:30 is this classic early Bartok thing, anybody who's played his piano stuff will be like "oh". I think this is what they mean when they say "inspired by Hungarian folk music" but I don't fully get it? His actual folk-music stuff is really folky. More lyrical. I think this is another thing which I'd call as "implied amateurism", a repeated drone note with an out-of-key melody. This Is What We Talk About When We Talk About Bartok.

5:30 lol I think he's making fun of somebody? Debussy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozSlF8HKhGk

Slipping out of order for a second but listen to 1:iii and then skip on over to 2:ii and you'll hear that these two movements contain a lot of the same compositional devices but 2:ii no longer features Romantic development, no little fugatos and inventions, you're listening to the quartet function as a living breathing modern organism. (There is one little fugato in the middle but otherwise 2:ii follows its own rulebook).

This thread is amazing. I usually focus on quartets 4-5 so I like the idea of listening closely from #1. I'm listening to the Vermeer recording on Naxos (just put it on again). I never really knew why they put all the odd-numbered quartets on one disc and all the even-numbered ones on another.

I dunno about you, but this movement is the not-so-missing link between Romantic developmental forms (Beethoven) and a lot of super-popular post-atonal retrogressive stuff.

I suspect that the deep romantic connection I hear in Bartok is actually how I manage to feel such an affinity to him, tbqf. This is the guy who chose Bluebeard as the theme for his opera. He is the perfect unison between harsh goth (modern) and flowery goth (romantic).

1/ii: since you likened this to the collective veer of a starling flock , I should mention that we have a pet starling. His name is Merlin and he is awesome. He can't flock all by himself, but he's pretty good at learning snippets of tunes so maybe I should play him this movement a couple dozen times.

I have to confess that part of me wishes the whole movement would just wallow in the aching beauty sketched out by its first 40 or so seconds (the sighs of which give me a kind of mahler's 9th first mvmt feeling). But it will never be Bartoks thing to wallow, and I hear how the strenuous discourse that follows derives from that beautiful opening.

1/iii: yes indeed, a pop modernist romp in the tradition of classical finales and like the one he'll give us to finish the 2nd piano concerto. Love the head-nod neoclassical thing that starts around 4 minutes in, makes me think of a bit from Stravinsky's Pulcinella which won't come along till much later. In 1909 neoclassicism was yet to be a ~thing~ iirc. This is an early sighting along with Sibelius' 3rd sym.

Jon I wonder about your neo-classicist idea; don't you think Debussy applies? I always thought that neo-classical moment was meant to be a sly dig at the guy. Thanks for referring to the 2nd piano concerto, haven't listened in many years and I'm on it tonight.

It's worth noting, for any pianists lying around, that the famous Bartok Bagatelle we all learned (op.6 no.2) was written the same year as this 1st quartet, which is why parts of 1:iii might sound familiar to you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta8nN97Eu0k&t=1m15s

^ jump ahead to 1:15 (not a great performance, oh well)

Jon I wonder about your neo-classicist idea; don't you think Debussy applies? I always thought that neo-classical moment was meant to be a sly dig at the guy. Thanks for referring to the 2nd piano concerto, haven't listened in many years and I'm on it tonight.

― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, February 13, 2013 8:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, Debussy definitely did a lot to start that particular quiet storm, it's true. but his manifestation of neoclassicism is so different from what the moniker came to denote. He kind of took Wagner's orchestra and Liszt's piano and somehow rendered them homeopathic and apollonian. Maybe you could say he created two different neoclassicisms, first with the homeopathic romanticism of his 1890s and 1900s stuff and then again in his amazing end of life outburst of piano and chamber music, the latter being beyond my power to characterize verbally.

I wonder if we are talking abt the same incident in 1/ii? Where all of a sudden that poker-faced repeated note Mozart/Rossini sounding rhythm comes in?

Yep

Rossini is right, actually; it's the contrast of his main musical material with that Italian accompaniment that's like "hey remember there was a time when music sounded like this? lol"

totally!

I just made the 1:iii Youtube my Safari homepage
*GET READY FOR THE INTERNET*

I have next to nothing to say about this fuck-the-world movement.
Don't listen to this unless you've got room for some tears (that means you, aero).
All my thoughts are super technical, I gotta get my score of this and look at some of these clusters, Bartok discovered ways of expanding and contracting augmented chords into simmering walls of sadness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMwtLY_30SQ

The main theme is easy to follow in its development, it's pretty distinctive. Note the second "folk" theme at 3:15, returning with insistance at 8:30 and then disintegrating so gorgeously? I would bet there are some papers about "dilution of Hungarian identity / WW1 / this mvt"

Are you studying these pieces, out of curiosity?

(because if you're listening casually, I'm impressed by how analytically you're listening!)

ok I'm gonna get to this thread today at some point I think it is so awesome!

I want to post 2:ii and write a bunch about it, but it's such a classic that I'm going to read a little bit about it first
+ I can't do it today
Instead here is a link to these free and charmingly shaky performances of Chopin Etudes on a historically accurate piano that I listened to last night with my father:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pandora/mp3/historical_instruments/Chopin_etudes/Book1/index.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/pandora/mp3/historical_instruments/Chopin_etudes/Book2/index.html

@ Sund4r

No, I'm not studying these quartets. I'm listening to and commenting on them with little or no re-reading of my past notes. I'm interested in my own unrevised reactions, and reports of others' listening/relistening. I could explain the "whys" for this-- chiefly I need an outlet to this binge of computer work I'm on, but also, briefly: I feel alienated by other posters' discussions of authenticity and realness because in my experience music is something you make, not live-- you can describe this spaetzle as "typical for the region" all you want but it's still boiled dough-- Bartok is a living breathing composer afaic, I listen to my own music and new compositions/records/singles by other people alongside his works-- composers and talking heads having a Romantic vs. Modernist witch-hunt is very alienating to me-- and so on, but here's xyzzz__ who said it better on this post in the Alex Ross thread:

...last night's music, while incredible and great (exhilarating to finally hear Webern in the concert hall) came with an agenda -- via this bloody festival -- that I can't get on with AT ALL. This music is too good to gain acceptance with these fucking caveats being placed on it.

i listened to these for about a week before i went away and consequently missed this thread starting. my initial observation is that the 4th is extra-fucking-terrestrial. been listening to the 1950 Juilliard Quartet verzh mostly.

it's weird, i'd known the reputation for years but it took me until now to get deep in there.

sorry jumping in out of order, i'll read back thru properly.

I mentioned upthread about how idiomatically sound Bartok's quartets are, for the players they just "fall off the bone". This is important, cause string quartets are as much for the players as they are for the listener. Look how much fun these kids are having.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3eiHs3iaLo

So much to love about this movement. Bartok instructs the players to play their pizzicato as loud as possible so as to snap against the fingerboard, and unwittingly grandfathers slap bass. I love the way Bartok uses rit. and accel. to invoke whiplash. I love the hocketing pizzicato. It's like Bartok wrote up a laundry list of "fun activities with a string quartet" and dumped them all into one movement.

I love Bartok's way of being both major and minor. Interchangeable. It's major and it's minor. Why don't people do this any more? I am thinking of pop songs that do major + minor and I can't think of any except "River Man".

Triple forte: fff. There is some of it in this piece. This piece is in D, as evidenced by the part where they play D at triple-forte for several consecutive minutes.

What's your favourite part? Is it the cute dovetailing melodies, punctuated with a pizzicato? The hilarious guitar strumming? What about the massive gliss. inward? The chromatic clusters that sound like banging on a piano? The part that inspired everything Herrmann ever wrote? Or that woolly unison part with mutes where little figures disintegrate outward like dust bunnies? That's my favourite part.

No, actually my real favourite part is around 5:20 where he takes a moment to remind you that the real point of music listening to Bartok is to experience the sensation of staring directly into the sun.

Incidentally, that "staring into the sun" moment is achieved by having chords based on minor-seconds resolve into a chord based on major-seconds-- a whole tone scale-- it's the same thing they do to get the transporter sound on Star Trek. It wasn't enough that Bartok invented slap bass and the theme to "Psycho", he also invented rematerialization

Having all this enthusiasm in print is amazing - sometimes it takes something like this to really get me into something (again, in this case). Right now, 1 & 2 (Takacs not Vegh for once) are coming to life like never before.

I think I figured out who fgti is. Anyway, SQ2 is where Bartok's string writing starts to sound like the Bartok string writing I know and love. I'll try to get back with comments soon enough.

Bartok and folk music

Incidentally, that "staring into the sun" moment is achieved by having chords based on minor-seconds resolve into a chord based on major-seconds-- a whole tone scale-- it's the same thing they do to get the transporter sound on Star Trek.

this is so fucking great

I've been diving into classical again lately after not having listened to any for a long time, and I picked up the Emerson set of these quartets. Holy crap, man. I briefly studied a few movements here in there back in my very intro-level coursework in college (almost 15 years ago now), but never really soaked them in like this. They're downright exhilarating, a freaking thrill-ride. So glad to have these in my life again.

Sorry I stopped posting on this thread, it wasn't out of lack of interest, I just got super busy

Get it goin' 'gain, guy.

the new david cooper biography is excellent, perhaps a little procedural in places but thorough without being needlessly arcane, and lots of technical stuff for those who wish for it

the arditti and takacs performances of quartet #4 are a good comparison

Oh, I used to be so free and easy in the world. Reviving this thread though because I'm curious (pursuant to the 1900s thread) as to which is everyone's favourite Bartok 4tet.

Favourite movement is 6:iv (but much of the rest of that quartet is annoying), heart belongs to 2 because I like that period of comedy-Bartok but the real answer for me is 5

Love the Bartók String Quartets. Surprised I didn’t know about this thread.

4 because king crimson but i seriously need to do some deep diving on these fuckers, i don't know them nearly as well as say the 2nd violin concerto

i just got the old emerson recording because that was the preferred recording when i was a kid, i'm sure there's better now

i started listening to v but i forgot to turn off random so i'm now listening to the final movement of "out of doors", sort of got distracted so just now was like "man, i didn't remember bartok's string quartets having so much piano"

it's been a long week

oh my god read the top comment wow lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJLb7-m-pAY

Hell yes that is amazing

It's a toss-up between nos. 3 & 4 for me (Takács Quartet II, accept no substitutes).

listening to this edition when I'm in the car this week -- their read on the third is dynamite, those unisons!!

will check that out, feel like I have a classical phase coming on

I no longer have the Takacs Quartet CDs, but am listening now on Spotify while I do some editing of a truly horrible manuscript, and it's making it a little less painful.

The Keller Quartett, another Hungarian ensemble, also does an excellent job with these works, although Takács II remains the gold standard.

I dunno man the Julliard Quartet mono set from the 50s does it for me.

As a general rule, I prefer Hungarian ensembles in this repertoire – I don't much care for Europeans who sing the blues either. But those are very good international modernist readings, no doubt about it.