Shostakovich: String Quartet No.11 in F minor, Op.122 (1966)
Introduction – Andantino
Scherzo – Allegretto
Recitative – Adagio
Etude – Allegro
Humoresque – Allegro
Elegy – Adagio
Finale:- Moderato
The eleventh quartet was dedicated to the memory of Vassily Petrovich Shirinsky, who had died the previous summer and who, as second violinist of the Moscow Beethoven Quartet, had taken part in premières (Leningrad and/or Moscow) of all its predecessors. Following a re-appraisal of the composer’s middle period quartet style in Nos.9 and 10, it returns to the more introspective mood of the two 1960 quartets (7 and 8). There is an impression of great spareness, even when the full ensemble is used, which can be attributed in the main to the almost complete absence of any real polyphony: the texture is generally no more than straightforward melody-with-accompaniment. In fact, much of the musical argument in this work is carried by one player at a time, with the other three in simple homophonic support. Plentiful use of parallel part-writing, either in octaves, fifths, or triads, lends further lean-ness to the distinctive sound of the eleventh quartet, inhabiting as it does a strangely withdrawn region which in the end is deeply touching. In this way it strongly resembles the seventh, which arose out of similar circumstances (the death of his first wife) and for which the composer had a special affection. Those who know Shostakovich only through his large scale symphonies will find here an aspect of his musical personality which might mildly surprise them.
The casting of the quartet into seven highly contrasted movements, rather like a suite of character pieces, might seem to have run an inherent risk of diffuseness; but at this stage in his career Shostakovich was firmly committed to musical continuity and cogency. Not only does he dispense with movement breaks once again, but he also achieves a disarmingly simple unity through stringent economy of means: there are no more than two principal motifs on which the entire work is constructed; and these are subjected to a kind of Lisztian thematic metamorphosis, together with Shostakovich’s own highly developed technique for exploiting the latent possibilities of a given set of melodic intervals. So all the characters are in reality the same one: the same clown with different faces, be it tender, whimsical, severe, mercurial, droll, elegiac, or the simple yurodivy (the traditional Russian “Holy Fool”).
Up to the end of the fourth movement all the violin solos in this piece, from expressive cantilena to dazzling pyrotechnics, have been taken (naturally enough) by the first violin – a great irony, of course, given the quartet’s dedicatee…. At last – immediately in the wake of the leader’s virtuosic Etude! – his No.2 moves upstage, completely on his own. But he can only play two notes, and he manages to keep them up throughout the entire Humoresque – which doesn’t even get its own tempo, there being no change of pulse from the preceding movement. All this clearly represents a wry comment on the traditional rôle of the second violin (not that Shostakovich normally perpetrated such a tradition in his quartets!); it would also appear to reflect Vassily Shirinsky’s droll sense of humour, as described to the writer by Maxim Dmitrievich Shostakovich. Eventually we come to the real purpose of this piece: an Elegy which begins with great seriousness and intensity; its dominant rhythm, perhaps recalling the Eroica for the BEETHOVEN Quartet, is grimly prophetic of the Funeral March in No.15 – this composed eight years later, following the death of Shirinsky’s brother (the cellist in the group).
Soon after completing this quartet, on the night of May 28/9 1966 – indeed, immediately following the occasion of the Leningrad première itself – Shostakovich suffered a major heart attack. He had had to face ill health on and off for most of his life, often spending weeks at a time in hospital. But now a lurking fear was turning into a reality: human mortality – his own mortality – was staring him in the face, and it inevitably coloured the remainder of his life and work. The last four quartets stand apart from the rest for a number of reasons; but that fateful night might well have represented a dividing line over which he could never return. One cannot help sensing a premonition of this in the music of the eleventh quartet.
© Alan George
