String Quartet No. 1 "Carillon"

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The string quartet No. 1 "Carillon" is a chamber music work by Karl Amadeus Hartmann . It premiered in Geneva in 1936. Hartmann dedicated the composition to his friend and mentor Hermann Scherchen .

Origin, structure and style

Hartmann composed his first string quartet as early as 1933. The then 28-year-old composer withdrew from the public after the National Socialists seized power in the same year. The work was the beginning of a whole series of compositions that Hartmann either withheld completely during the Nazi era or had performed abroad. The work is conceived in three movements. Hartmann left the last sentence unmarked.

The work begins with a slow fugato , which is repeatedly followed by fleeting ostinate motifs. The main part of the sentence is expressive and shrill accusation. In the ghostly-looking second movement, muted, plaintive singing, drawing on motifs from Jewish music, unfolds on a monotonous, dissonant chord foundation. The third movement is again very lively, angry, almost aggressive, but is repeatedly interrupted by contrasting, hesitant passages. Hartmann's first string quartet is formally and tonally reminiscent of the style-defining string quartets of Béla Bartók , especially his 4th string quartet, composed four years earlier, right up to the mute instruction in the second movement. Nevertheless, it is a musically independent and surprisingly mature early work by the composer.

Hartmann commented on this and other compositions from this period as follows: “If my basic mood seems depressed, I ask how a person of my generation can reflect on his epoch in a different way than with a certain melancholy dubiousness. An artist is not allowed to live the day without having spoken. "

Performances and reception

Presumably through the mediation of Hermann Scherchen, who emigrated in 1933 and started a new life in Switzerland, Hartmann submitted the string quartet in 1936 as a contribution to a competition of the Geneva Society for Contemporary Chamber Music . The first performance of the difficult to master piece was given to a Hungarian quartet around the young violinist Sándor Végh , who later became a world-famous chamber musician. Hartmann's composition won the gold medal. The later added nickname of the work goes back to the name of this competition.

In the years that followed, the “Carillon” quartet became well known among chamber music fans through various performances in Europe, around 1938 at a festival of the International Society for New Music in London. However, it was only published in 1953 by Schott-Verlag . Hartmann, whose compositional work shifted mainly to the symphonic field in the following years, composed only one further string quartet (1946). Both, but especially the “Carillon” quartet, have found their way into the canon of works of the chamber music genre and are still performed and recorded today.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ quoted from: Klaus Stübler, Christine Wolf Annette Retinski (Ed.): The 100 great string quartets , Dortmund 1998, p. 98
  2. ↑ Friedhelm Krummacher : History of the String Quartet , Volume 3, Laaber-Verlag, Regensburg 2005, p. 322