String Quartet No. 3

Description

Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Violoncello — My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.xa0 Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements.xa0 I see this theme as Mary’s Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change. Ixa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals.xa0 Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal.xa0 The style of the painting doesn’t yet show Cassatt’s originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face.xa0 Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above.xa0 The music begins with Mary’s Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an “alla Spagnola”-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter.xa0 It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla. Midway through, there’s an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music.xa0 The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style.xa0 Cassatt’s painting, too, is rather conventional. IIxa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts] This painting is one of Cassatt’s most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.xa0 The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage.xa0 Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her – though it is not him that she’s looking at.xa0 It’s an intriguing picture. This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional.xa0 The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type “mini-overture” lasting less than a minute, based on Mary’s Theme.xa0 My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box.xa0 What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of “Soldier’s Chorus” from Gounod’s FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello.xa0 This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment.xa0 On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod.xa0 It’s as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it.xa0 Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first).xa0 This music isn’t at all Gounod-derived; it’s entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary’s Theme and its scale.xa0 The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin’s aria “Avant de quitter ce lieux” reappears in a kind of coda for all four players.xa0 It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however.xa0 The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream. IIIxa0xa0xa0xa0 Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts] The painting, one of Cassatt’s last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture.xa0 The colors are pastel and yet bold – and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure.xa0 It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody – three melodies, to be exact (“Young Woman”, “Green”, and Sunlight”).xa0 No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies.xa0 I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy’s song “Green”, from Ariettes Oubliees.xa0 1909 would have been Debussy’s heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this. Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined – something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss.xa0 My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a “pure” form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting.xa0 This makes an interesting “two ways” form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1. String Quartet No.3 (“Cassatt”) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.