Verdi: String Quartet in E minor (1873)

Allegro – Andantino
Prestissimo
Scherzo Fuga:-  Allegro assai mosso

It should be said straight away that this work is no mere novelty, in the way that an opera by Chopin or an organ concerto by Webern might have been! – or indeed, a string quartet by Verdi, which on the surface seems almost as unlikely an enterprise.  In fact, Verdi adapted himself to the constraints of this medium with a good deal more success than many other nineteenth century composers, with the result that we have here a work fit to stand alongside the finest quartets of any era. It is not, contrary to what one might have expected, a predominantly lyrical work, and the outer movements display a toughness which arises out of strict adherence to sonata form and fugue respectively. And although the trio section of the third movement could have come straight out of  . . . . well, you name it! . . . there are surprisingly few allusions to the theatre. Certain gestures can certainly be seen to be potentially operatic (dramatic?), but it is for the performers to decide to what extent these should be allowed to colour the music. The quartet was written in March 1873, while the composer was in Naples for a production of his most recent opera, Aida. But the performances had to be delayed, due to the illness of the principal soprano (Teresa Stolz), and so to ease the frustration of his enforced idleness Verdi directed his mind to the discipline of composing a string quartet. It was performed privately soon afterwards, but he did not encourage further performances, and was positively opposed to its being published. It was not until many years later that Ricordi succeeded in persuading him to change his mind.

The quartet opens straight onto the principal theme of the first movement: the music is dark and restless, its suppressed intensity suggesting that the course of the work will be all passion and high drama. But the semiquaver rhythm which soon appears in the cello eventually takes a complete hold on proceedings, being silenced only by the lyrical sweetness of the second subject. The movement is indeed dramatic, but such things are kept on a very tight rein, in a manner that would have been somewhat out of place in the Italian opera houses of that time. The Andantino is of a type which Mendelssohn excelled in: neither a genuine slow movement nor a fully fledged minuet/scherzo, yet retaining characteristics of each. Here the gentle melancholy is very much of Latin rather than Germanic origin, but the semiquaver motif which propels the central section could easily have been thought up by Mendelssohn himself. The third movement is over in a flash – a masterpiece of brilliance and delicacy. Yet it bears no title: unusually, the heading of scherzo is reserved for the fully developed fugue which constitutes the finale. This fantastic movement, with its prophetic glimpses of Falstaff, is surely the most original part of what is altogether a unique composition.

Although Verdi’s output consists almost entirely of operas his solitary piece of chamber music was succeeded, not by another opera, but by the Requiem Mass. Thereafter he spent the next ten years farming at his beloved Sant’ Agata, and (apart from revisions to earlier works) it was not until the mid 1880s that he took up his pen again: Otello, Falstaff, and the Four Sacred Pieces represent one of the most remarkable Indian Summers in the history of music; and more than a few of their most distinctive stylistic features can be traced back to the string quartet of 1873. Although the work has slipped in and out of fashion his bicentenary year (2013) proved the obvious opportunity for the FSQ to herald its rightful place in the repertoire.

© Alan George
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