Shostakovich: String Quartet No.3 in F major, Op.73 (1946)
Allegretto
Moderato con moto
Allegro non troppo
Adagio –
Moderato – Adagio
Life is beautiful.
All that is dark and ignominious will disappear.
All that is beautiful will triumph.
Thus wrote Shostakovich in connection with his eighth symphony – together with the piano trio, the most profound and moving exposition of his wartime feelings and experiences, and one of the finest of all his symphonies. Three years later he was able to capture recollections of that symphony through his now fully acquired mastery of the string quartet form – almost like a delayed reaction in private. With one notable exception, the third quartet follows much the same outlines: it was, in fact, the last of a group of works (which included the aforementioned Symphony No.8) where Shostakovich had favoured a five movement layout; and although it could never match the sheer size of the Eighth its scale, translated into chamber music terms, is equally formidable. Originally the composer gave descriptive titles to each of the movements, and clearly the first, “Calm unawareness of the future cataclysm”, makes no attempt to parallel the great tragic Adagio at the head of the symphony. In fact, Shostakovich could hardly have chosen a less similar starting point: maybe this ridiculous tune, with its so-obvious accompaniment, is a meaningful portrayal of the foolhardy and suicidal apathy with which whole populations can blithely ignore the most fearsome portents of imminent disaster. Yet with such pointedly trivial material Shostakovich builds, in the best tradition, a sonata movement of real technical excellence, at the centre of which is a terse double-fugue where any degree of harmonic caution is flagrantly dismissed.
The Moderato con moto (“’Rumblings of unrest and anticipation”) begins with the viola mobilising a tight lipped, uncompromising ostinato in a parody of waltz rhythm whose pattern, outlining a triad of E minor, closely resembles the opening of the third movement of the sister symphony. The contrasting middle section creates an atmosphere so still one dare not breathe – yet the air of foreboding and disquiet lingers threateningly . . . All the fear and dread is justified forthwith, and the worst expectations confirmed, with the thick, percussive chords which introduce and punctuate the second of the two scherzi (“The forces of war unleashed”). These movements are not so nightmarishly brassy as their symphonic counterparts, although there is much military style pounding and trumpeting in this Allegro. It is a truly angry piece, scathing in its condemnation of the games people play with each others’ lives; utterly intolerant of all the brazen jingo and razzmatazz.
The outrageous fun and games at the end of the first movement had truly turned sour during its successors; and through all this grim and sardonic music the composer gave full vent to his bitterness, which now breaks into sorrow and despair as the lower three instruments in unison solemnly intone the ground theme of the Adagio (“’Homage to the Dead”’) – just as the brass choir had done at the same juncture in the symphony. Shostakovich here treats the passacaglia form with unusual freedom, all the more eloquent for its simplicity. Soon the tension mounts, becomes almost desperate, and finally collapses as if exhausted; memories linger, and out of them the rondo finale emerges from the depths of the cello C string: dark and questioning at first, then gradually gaining in confidence. But a crisis gathers; when it breaks the sound picture is of panting woodwind and full throated trombones, the latter braying out the ground theme of the passacaglia in canon – one of the few passages in the quartets where Shostakovich seems to be straining for more sound than four stringed instruments are capable of. At the end the music comes to rest on a softly held F major chord, over which the first violin sounds the main subject once more, like a last post: “The eternal question – Why? And for what?”. But this is not really a programmatic work; and however apt those titles may have been, the music’s message is surely direct enough without them.
© Alan George
