The Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra in B-flat is a work by the Austrian composer

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

, freely composed after the Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 7 by

George Frideric Handel George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (; baptised , ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque music, Baroque composer well known for his opera#Baroque era, operas, oratorios, anthems, concerto grosso, concerti grossi, ...

. The work is divided into four movements: # Largo –

Allegro Allegro may refer to: Common meanings * Allegro (music), a tempo marking indicate to play fast, quickly and bright * Allegro (ballet), brisk and lively movement Artistic works * L'Allegro (1645), a poem by John Milton * ''Allegro'' (Satie), an ...

# Largo # Allegretto grazioso # Hornpipe

Circumstances

The Concerto was written in the summer of 1933. In May of that year Schoenberg had been forced to flee Berlin after the accession of the Nazi Party. He first went to Paris (where he reconverted from Lutheranism to the Judaism of his childhood). He spent the summer of 1933 with his wife and infant daughter in the French town of Arcachon, a seaside resort near Bordeaux, completing the Concerto there before leaving for permanent residence in America in October. The work was first performed on September 26, 1934 in Prague with the

Kolisch Quartet The Kolisch Quartet was a string quartet musical ensemble founded in Vienna, originally (early 1920s) as the New Vienna String Quartet for the performance of Schoenberg's works, and (by 1927) settling to the form in which it was later known. It had ...

as soloists.

The music

Schoenberg wrote of the work: "I was mainly intent on removing the defects of the Handelian style. Just as

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...

did with Handel's '' Messiah'', I have had to get rid of whole handfuls of rosalias and sequences, replacing them with real substance. I also did my best to deal with the other main defect of the Handelian style, which is that the theme is always best when it first appears and grows steadily more insignificant and trivial in the course of the piece".

Similar works

Other works for string quartet and orchestra have been written by John Adams, Morton Feldman,

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,Tehran Times
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Benjamin Lees Benjamin Lees (January 8, 1924 – May 31, 2010) was an American composer of classical music. Early life Lees was born Benjamin George Lisniansky in Harbin, Manchuria, of Russian-Jewish descent. Lees was still an infant when his family emigra ...

Bohuslav Martinů Bohuslav Jan Martinů (; December 8, 1890 – August 28, 1959) was a Czech composer of modern classical music. He wrote 6 symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. He bec ...

Emmanuel Nunes Emmanuel Nunes (31 August 1941 – 2 September 2012) was a Portuguese composer who lived and worked in Paris from 1964. Biography Nunes was born in Lisbon, where he studied composition, first from 1959 to 1963 at the Academia de Amadores de Mús ...

, Julián Orbón, Gunther Schuller, Louis Spohr, and

Julia Wolfe Julia Wolfe (born December 18, 1958) is an American composer and professor of music at New York University. According to ''The Wall Street Journal'', Wolfe's music has "long inhabited a terrain of its own, a place where classical forms are rech ...

, while concertos for string quartet and wind orchestra have been written by

Walter Piston Walter Hamor Piston, Jr. (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976), was an American composer of classical music, music theorist, and professor of music at Harvard University. Life Piston was born in Rockland, Maine at 15 Ocean Street to Walter Ha ...

, Joel Puckett, and Erwin Schulhoff.

Sources

* Program notes by Robert Craft for the recording (

Naxos Records Naxos comprises numerous companies, divisions, imprints, and labels specializing in classical music but also audiobooks and other genres. The premier label is Naxos Records which focuses on classical music. Naxos Musical Group encompasses about 1 ...

8.557520) of Schoenberg's ''Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra in B-flat major'' performed by the Fred Sherry Quartet with the Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble under the baton of Robert Craft.
Center in Vienna
devoted to Arnold Schoenberg

References

{{Authority control Compositions by Arnold Schoenberg 1933 compositions Compositions in B-flat major

Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...