Chamber Music

Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time: Visions of Eternity

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One of the 20th century’s most mystical and transcendent works was created in a frigid, overcrowded German prisoner-of-war camp during the gloomy second winter of World War II. It was not his captivity, nor premonitions of a coming fiery apocalypse that inspired Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) to compose the provocatively titled Quartet for the End of Time (“Quatuor pour la fin du temps”), but serene spiritual visions of the “eternity of space and …

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Michael Torke’s “Bloom 2, Morning”: Music for Percussion Ensemble

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Bloom, the newest album by American composer Michael Torke (b. 1961),  will be released on August 30. The eleven movement work was written for, and recorded by, Sandbox Percussion. With an exuberant, infectious rhythmic groove, Bloom develops over three musical “days,” with movements titled “morning, noon, night.” With repeating patterns, it rides the visceral pulse of the contemporary dance floor. In his program note, the composer writes, BLOOM uses interlocking rhythms which, when …

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Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major: A Poignant Musical Diary

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Musicologist Kai Christensen describes Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets as “a personal diary of poignant reactions, reflection, and dark visions.” Nowhere is this more apparent than in the middle quartets. Shostakovich dedicated his Seventh Quartet to the memory of his first wife, Nina, who died in December of 1954 at the age of 46. Outwardly, the iconic and emotionally raw Eighth String Quartet was “dedicated to victims of war and fascism.” Privately, …

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Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4: Fearful Symmetry

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The greatest music requires deep, active listening. You can’t just put it on in the background and allow it to waft over you as you go about other tasks. It demands undivided attention. Initially, it may seem wildly incomprehensible. Its meaningfulness may be revealed gradually over the course of repeated listenings. Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4, composed in Budapest during the summer of 1928, is one of those mysterious and monumental …

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Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 12 in F Major: The “American”

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During the summer of 1893, Antonín Dvořák took his habitual morning walks, not through the meadows of his native Bohemia, but into the vast, rolling prairie of northeastern Iowa. It was here, in the small Czech immigrant enclave of Spillville, that Dvořák completed the “New World” Symphony, and then, in just over two weeks, wrote his String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96. Having relocated from Prague the previous September …

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Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nacht-Musik”: A Cheerful Nocturnal Serenade

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Mozart’s G major string Serenade No. 13, commonly known as Eine kleine Nachtmusik (“A Little Night Music”), is among the most enduring popular music ever written. Responding to an unknown commission, Mozart dashed it off on August 10, 1787 in Vienna as he worked on the second act of the opera, Don Giovanni. Originally scored for string quartet and double bass, the piece is frequently performed by a string orchestra. German commentator Wolfgang Hildesheimer wrote, “even …

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Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 4, “Amazing Grace”: The Kronos Quartet

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American composer Ben Johnston (1926-2019) was a pioneer of just intonation (pure intervals tuned as whole number ratios) and microtonality (the use of intervals smaller than a half step). At the age of 17, following a concert of his music, Johnston gave an interview in which he predicted, “with the clarification of the scale which physics has given to music there will be new instruments with new tones and overtones.” He went …

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