David Diamond’s String Quartet No. 3: From Adventure to Elegy

Rooted in diatonic and modal harmony, much of the music of American composer David Diamond (1915-2005) unfolds as a dynamic weave of contrapuntal voices. It flows in a seemingly continuous stream, in which one phrase opens into the next without resolution. Listening to this music, we are forced to celebrate the magic of each fleeting moment.

Diamond composed his String Quartet No. 3 in 1946, shortly after the end of the Second World War. Launched into motion by an almost jazzy pizzicato rhythmic groove, the first movement (Moderato, con semplicità) is warm and amiable. The second movement (Allegro vivo) is filled with a sense of Wild West adventure, with echoes of a fiddler’s hoedown. The third movement (Allegretto) is serene, childlike, and playful.

The Third String Quartet was written shortly after the suicide of Diamond’s friend, the New York portrait artist, Allela Cornell. Perhaps in remembrance of Cornell, the final movement takes the form of an elegiac Adagio. Beginning with cries of anguish, the music becomes increasingly meditative. At one point, we are left with the solitary voice of the viola. The shimmering, celestial final bars float upward.

David Diamond claimed to have felt Cornell’s presence as he worked:

It was a year after she died, and I was sitting at my Steinway and the light became very peculiar outside; it was as though a storm were brewing. The clouds were all dark and swept right by making the room very dark, so I put on just the left-side lamp so that I could continue working…As I was working on the last movement, the sudden change into the Adagio, which ends the work was being dictated by Allela who, I sensed, was very close to me. I could feel her near me, and so I began to write.

I. Moderato, con semplicità:

II. Allegro vivo:

III. Allegretto:

IV. Adagio:

Recordings

• Diamond: String Quartet No. 3, Potomac String Quartet Chandos

Featured Image: “The Tetons and the Snake River” (1942), Ansel Adams