The Third String Quartet by American composer

Elliott Carter Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernist composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra- ...

was completed in 1971. It is dedicated to the

Juilliard String Quartet The Juilliard String Quartet is a classical music string quartet founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York by William Schuman. Since its inception, it has been the quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School. It has received numerous ...

, and it was premiered in 1973. This quartet earned Carter his second

Pulitzer Prize in Music The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted i ...

in 1973.

Construction

The string quartet is divided into a pair of duos, Duo I made up of the first

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

and the

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G ...

, and Duo II made up of the second violin and

viola ; german: Bratsche , alt=Viola shown from the front and the side , image=Bratsche.jpg , caption= , background=string , hornbostel_sachs=321.322-71 , hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded by a bow , range= , related= *Violin family ...

. The two duos play in their own overlapping movements: distinct tempos, articulation, and material, neither coinciding with the other. The first duo is instructed to play

rubato Tempo rubato (, , ; 'free in the presentation', literally ) is a musical term referring to expressive and rhythmic freedom by a slight speeding up and then slowing down of the tempo of a piece at the discretion of the soloist or the conductor. Ru ...

throughout its four movements, while the second plays in strict time in six movements. In addition, each movement is assigned a characteristic interval. The ten movements are not played continuously, but rather are fragmented and recombined, producing a total of 24 possible pairings of movements between the duos, as well as a solo statement of each movement. An additional coda brings the total number of sections to 35. The duos rarely synchronize and frequently clash in complex

polyrhythm Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic layers may be the basis of an entire piece of music ( cross-rhyt ...

s and dissonances. Each duo uses a distinct

interval class In musical set theory, an interval class (often abbreviated: ic), also known as unordered pitch-class interval, interval distance, undirected interval, or "(even completely incorrectly) as 'interval mod 6'" (; ), is the shortest distance in pitch ...

, dynamic range, phrasing, and bowing techniques per movement. The movements are: Duo I: Duo II: #Maestoso ( perfect fifth) #Grazioso (

minor seventh In music theory, a minor seventh is one of two musical intervals that span seven staff positions. It is ''minor'' because it is the smaller of the two sevenths, spanning ten semitones. The major seventh spans eleven. For example, the interval fr ...

) #Pizzicato giusto, mechanico (

tritone In music theory, the tritone is defined as a musical interval composed of three adjacent whole tones (six semitones). For instance, the interval from F up to the B above it (in short, F–B) is a tritone as it can be decomposed into the three adj ...

) #Scorrevole (

minor second A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. It is defined as the interval between two adjacent no ...

) #Largo tranquillo (

major third In classical music, a third is a Interval (music), musical interval encompassing three staff positions (see Interval (music)#Number, Interval number for more details), and the major third () is a third spanning four semitones.Allen Forte, ...

) #Appassionato (

major sixth In music from Western culture, a sixth is a musical interval encompassing six note letter names or staff positions (see Interval number for more details), and the major sixth is one of two commonly occurring sixths. It is qualified as ''major ...

) Carter intended to achieve the effect of two distinct ensemble groups playing two pieces at once, clashing in sound. However, he stressed the importance of observing the combinations of sound between the two sound sources.

References

Sources *

'' 2, no. 1 (March): 5–34. * Godfrey, Daniel. 1987. "A Unique Vision of Musical Time: Carter's String Quartet no. 3". '' Sonus: A Journal of Investigations into Global Musical Possibilities'' 8, no. 1 (Fall): 40–59. * Mead, Andrew W. 1995. "Twelve-Tone Composition and the Music of Elliott Carter". In ''Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz Since 1945: Essays and Analytical Studies'', edited by Elizabeth West Marvin and Richard Hermann, 67–102. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. . * Schiff, David. 1998. ''The Music of Elliott Carter'', second edition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. . * Schiff, David. 2001. "Carter, Elliott (Cook)". ''

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.

External links

The String Quartets of Elliott Carter
by David Harvey {{Authority control 3 1971 compositions Pulitzer Prize for Music-winning works

Construction

References

Further reading

External links