UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY CHILINGIRIAN STRING QUARTET Levon Chilingirian, Violinist Louise Williams, Violist Mark Butler, Violinist Philip De Groote, Cellist Tuesday Evening, October 16, 1990, at 8:00 Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan PROGRAM Armenian Suite ....... Aslamazian Hoy, Nazan (Dear Nazan) Al ayloughes (My red scarf) Kele-kele (Walk-walk) Yergink ambel a (It is cloudy) Shogher tchan (Dear Shogher) String Quartet No. 4 in C major Bartok Allegro Prestissimo, con sordino Non troppo lento Allegretto pizzicato Allegro molto INTERMISSION String Quartet No. 15 in G major, D. 887 Schubert Allegro molto moderate Andante un poco moto Scherzo: allegro vivace Allegro assai The University Musical Society expresses thanks to the Edward Mardigian Foundation for partial underwriting of this concert by the Chilingirian String Quartet. This concert is presented as part Armenian Odyssey II, a festival celebrating Armenian culture at The University of Michigan. The Chilingirian String Quartet appears by arrangement with Herbert Barrett Management, Inc., New York City. Third Concert of the 112th Season Twenty-eighth Annual Chamber Arts Series Program Notes Armenian Suite Quartet No. 4 in C major SERGEI ASLAMAZIAN (1897-1978) BELA BARTER (1881-1945) ergei Aslamazian was the founding artok's six string quartets are cellist of the Komitas Quartet, among the highest achievements which was established in 1925 and in twentieth-century music and named after the Armenian com­ like the sixteen quartets of poser Sogomon Komitas. Komitas, Beethoven and the fifteen of whoS lived from 1869 to 1935, was a pioneer SchubertB cover the whole span of the of national folk music and studiously collected composer's creative output. In addition to the folk materials from the Armenian people surviving six quartets, Bartok composed (and around the turn of the century. Komitas later suppressed) a quartet as early as 1899, published numerous papers dealing with the and shortly before his death was known to be subject and also composed original music planning and sketching a seventh quartet. For based on Armenian motives. Regarded as the Bartok, the string quartet remained the vehi- founder of scientific Armenian musicology, cle for his deepest and most personal thoughts the works of Komitas were published in a and feelings. Each of the six published quar­ collected edition on the centennial of his tets epitomizes, to some extent, a phase in birth. the composer's development, and there is Aslamazian remained a cellist with the little in the whole body of his music that Komitas Quartet for 50 years, during which cannot be found microcosmically in the six he wrote for the ensemble a number of short quartets. pieces based on folk materials collected by Bartok was an ardent student of folk­ Komitas. These pieces were played mostly as ways; indeed, he regarded his analytical stud­ encores during the many concerts the Quartet ies of popular melodies as his most important gave both in the Soviet Union and abroad. contribution of music. From researchers in In these short pieces, Aslamazian pre­ Hungarian and near-Eastern folk music came served the Middle Eastern flavor and main­ his broadened concepts of instrumental color tained the character of the original Armenian and tonality and the kind of melodic and melodies by relying mostly on extended drone rhythmic patterns that he used. Yet, in fash­ tones and limiting his harmonic language to ioning his creations, Bartok strove for formal occasional lingering chordal movements and symmetry and thematic unity, and a good simple imitative counterpoint, rather than many of his quartet movements are cast in exploiting the polyphonic possibilities offered the classical sonata form (A-B-A). by four independent voices. Bartok wrote his Fourth Quartet in Published in 1934 and 1950 as the 1928, dedicated to the Pro Arte Quartet and Armenian Suite, Aslamazian's arrangements first performed at the Festival of Liege and depict a variety of moods; each is limited with Brussels in 1930. Of the Quartet No. 4, James textural characteristics, timbral idiosyncra­ Goodfriend writes: sies, and unique scoring. The melodic mate­ The single year that passed between the rial is generally divided between the first composition of the Third Quartet and the violin and the cello, while the remaining two Fourth was the briefest interval separating any instruments supply an inventive backdrop, pair of Bartok's six. Only three compositions occasionally imitating native instruments intervened: a set of rondos on folk tunes for such as the crisp beat of the dap (circular piano, and the two rhapsodies for violin. frame drum), the whistling intonation of the Coming so close upon one another, there is shvi (duct flute), and the grainy tones of the an expected similarity of style in the two kamancha (spiked fiddle). These miniatures quartets, but there are some striking differ­ were composed by a master in full control of ences as well. One finds a certain overcoming his metier. of the harshness and austerity of the earlier work, a certain relaxation in the handling of materials, a greater variety of emotional five, exhibits two moods that have become pitch, and the first signs of the dry humor known as virtually Bartokian trademarks. The that was to find its way into many of Bartok's outer sections, under alternately non-vibrato later works. Instrumentally, the Fourth Quar­ sustained chords, feature long-lined rhap­ tet exhibits new ways of writing for the sodic, florid and almost oriental melodies in strings. Formally, it is cast in a new shape. the cello, the so-called "tarogato melodies," The "arch form," which Bartok named after an ancient Hungarian woodwind evolved for the Fourth and Fifth Quartets, instrument. The central section is a "night was a novel answer to the architectonic music," an evocation of natural evening problems that fascinated the mature com­ sounds, in this case almost unquestionably poser. The Quartet No. 4 contains five move­ birdlike twitterings. The brief coda of the ments, of which the first and the fifth are movement superimposes the latter idea over related; the second and the fourth are related; the cello "tarogato melody." and the third stands alone as a central unit, the "keystone" of the arch. The relationships are both of theme and of mood but one String Quartet No. 15 must keep in mind that they are relationships, in G major, D. 887 not identities. As if to further intensify the FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828) arch, the central movement is itself in A-B-A form. The Quartet opens with a sonata-form I he boy knows everything al­ movement, and the initial rising half-tone of ready; he has been taught by the first violin acts as both a seed for future God." The boy was Franz Schu­ growth and as the semaphore that signals the bert, just entering his teens, and start of the development section and the start the speaker was the piano mas­ of the recapitulation. A strong rhythmic Ti ter of the Imperial Seminary in Vienna, figure in the cello is also marked for develop­ where Schubert was a pupil from the age of ment, and an enumeration of the variants 11 to 16. that Bartok successively draws from this figure God had help. Schubert's father had would stagger the imagination. The related put a violin into his hands at age eight, and fifth movement, in A-B-A form with a coda, his brother Ignaz had begun to teach him focuses on several of these variants, not piano at about the same time. Family quartet immediately perceivable for what they are sessions became a twice-weekly affair Ignaz until about the middle of the movement, and brother Ferdinand playing violins, Franz when the original germ motive suddenly ap­ viola, and Schubert pere cello. Small wonder, pears and dominates the music until the close. given Franz Schubert's extraordinary gifts, The second and fourth movements are that quartets entered into his bloodstream. both scherzos, though neither is designated He began writing them for home consump­ as such by the composer. Both are in scherzo- tion at about age 13, and continued with plus-trio form, and both share an opening a couple of four-year intermissions to write theme: a simple rising and decending pattern, them to the end of his life. While several of chromatic in the second movement, diatonic the earliest are lost, the published oeuvre in the fourth; and a trio idea. The second consists of 15, encompassing the years 1812 movement is played throughout with mutes to 1826. and, marked prestissimo, it rushes past like an Perenially broke, Schubert made two unearthly whirlwind. The fourth movement attempts in 1826 to get regular employment. is written entirely in pizzicato, including not He was turned down for both, but appears to merely the expected plucking, but also arpeg­ have been undaunted. Early in the summer, gios, chords, guitarlike strumming, and a hard he went to Wahring, on the outskirts of snapping sound for which Bartok had to Vienna, for a change of scene, and in a brief invent a new musical sign produced by ten days, June 10-20, set down on paper the making the string rebound off the finger­ G-major String Quartet. There is some ques­ board. tion as to whether even a composer of The third movement, the core of the Schubert's facility could have composed such work and the only slow movement out of the a score in so short a time; it is probable that preliminary work had been done, though no the cello opens with a long, flowing theme. sketches exist. But the calm is shattered by the harsh intru­ The G-major is the composer's most sion of much more threatening and unsettled concentrated and highly organized quartet, events startlingly reminiscent of the first and the fact that it stands, chronologically, movement (even the tremolos return).