The Fourth

String Quartet The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

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 composed in 1985–86 in

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and

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, and completed in June 1986. It was premiered on September 17, 1986, at Festival Miami,

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

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by the

Composers String Quartet The Composers String Quartet was a string quartet best known for performances of new works by contemporary composers, including quartets by Elliott Carter and Ruth Crawford Seeger. Carter's Fourth Quartet was dedicated to the Composers Quartet, who ...

Form and content

In contrast to the

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

forms employed by Carter in the 1970s, the Fourth Quartet (similar to the nearly contemporaneous ''Triple Duo'' and ''Penthode'') begins with an opposition of instrumental forces and then moves toward a rhapsodically accelerating finale that draws these opposed instruments into a continuous melodic line. The quartet can be heard as "an intensifying dispute, accompanied by a rising sense of intoxication". Each instrument has its own repertory of pitch intervals and its own structural speed. A

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-rhyth ...

of 12:126:175:98 governs the structure of the entire composition, usually resulting in rhythmic relations of 8:6:5:7 (the

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

plays

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s nearly all the time).Schiff 1998, 88.

Movements

# Appassionato # Scherzando (stesso tempo) # Lento (stesso tempo) # Presto Typical running time - 24'

Discography

*Carter, Elliott. ''The Works for String Quartet'' vol. 1 uartets Nos. 1 & 4

Arditti String Quartet The Arditti Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1974 and led by the British violinist Irvine Arditti. The quartet is a globally recognized promoter of contemporary classical music and has a reputation for having a very wide repertoire. Th ...

. CD audio, Etcetera KTC 1065. Amsterdam and Diepholz (West Germany): Etcetera, 1988. *Carter, Elliott. ''String Quartet no. 1 (1951); String Quartet No. 2 (1959); String Quartet No. 3 (1971) ; String quartet No. 4 (1986); Duo for Violin and Piano (1974)''. Juilliard String Quartet; Christopher Oldfather, piano. 2 CD audio discs. Sony S2K 47229 (47256 and 47257). New York: Sony Classical, 1990. *Carter, Elliott. ''The Complete String Quartets 1–5''.

Pacifica Quartet The Pacifica Quartet is a professional string quartet based in Bloomington, Indiana. Its members are: Simin Ganatra, first violin; Austin Hartman, second violin; Mark Holloway, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello. Formed in 1994 by Ganatra and Vamos wi ...

. 3 CD audio discs. Naxos 8.503226 (18559362; 8559363; 8559614). Franklin, Tenn.: Naxos of America, 2010. * Composers String Quartet. ''Three Contemporary American String Quartets'' el Powell, String Quartet; Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 4; Milton Babbitt, String Quartet No. 5 CD audio, Music & Arts CD 606. Berkeley: Music & Arts, 1988.

References

*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'', second edition, edited by

Stanley Sadie Stanley John Sadie (; 30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was an influential and prolific British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1980), which was publ ...

and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.

Form and content

Movements

Discography

References

Further reading