String Quartet No. 3 (1963)
Composer: Giacinto Scelsi (1905 - 1988)
Performers: Arditti String Quartet: Irvine Arditti, violin; David Alberman, violin; Levine Andrade, viola; Rohan de Saram, cello.
0:00 I. avec une grande tendresse (dolicissimo)
4:13 II. l'appel de l'esprit: dualisme, ambivalence, conflit (drammatico)
7:36 III. l'âme se réveille... (con transparenza)
11:18 IV. ...et tombe de nouveau dans le pathos mais maintenant avec un pressentiment de la libération (con tristezza)
15:38 V. libération, catharsis
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"Written in 1963, the Third Quartet largely differs from the Second, although so close in time, and also in five movements. It is much more peaceful, lofty and static than its lively and dramatic predecessor, and completely avoids the low register. The only one of Scelsi's works to give a «programme», it reveals the stages of a mystical journey, which find their exact counterpart in the music. The stages are the following:
First movement: "With great tenderness" (dolcissimo). Second movement: "The spirit calls: dualism, ambivalence, conflict" (drammatico). Third movement: "The soul awakens..." (con transparenza). Fourth movement: "... and falls once more into pathos, but now with a sense of imminent release." (con tristezza). Fifth movement: "Liberation, Catharsis."
At the start of the first movement, the "tonal pole" B-flat leans on the lower fifth E-flat, which disappears almost immediately. The first half of the piece wavers within the narrowest space between medium B-flat and B-natural. But at bars 38 to 42, the first violin's high harmonic sound draws the barely perceptible horizon line of the "dominant" F as the still unknown goal of the whole work. Bars 49 to 59 open the sound space up to the tritone E, then close it again. From bar 69 the widening now happens on the harmonic level, wavering between G-flat major (B flat, D-flat, G-flat) and B-flat major (F, D, B-flat). Already six bars later, G-flat and F disappear, then D-flat and D next fade away. Just before the final unison on B-flat, the fourth E-flat fleetingly recalls the beginning of the piece.
A genuine miniature drama occurs in the second movement (on E). In the middle of the ultra high tones, still streched [sic] upwards, of E, F and F -sharp , the second violin brutally enters at bar 20 with its raucous col legno two and a half octaves lower. Soon the viola intervenes yet another octave lower, touching its bottom C: these are the deepest sounds of the whole Quartet. At bar 35, the first violin comes in with E-flat (a half-tone below the "tonal pole" ), opening the darker, more perturbed middle section. The viola's dramatic recitativo unfolds from bar 39 to 50, and its great arpeggiated leaps clearly define the harmonic field of f-sharp minor/g-flat minor. The E-flat's force of attraction continues however almost until the end of the piece, and only the minor third E-flat G-flat eventually reduced to the second E-flat F, allows the "resolution" towards the top, towards E, in the rediscovered peace of the beginning.
The third movement, the most unified and least contrasting of the five, almost constantly keeps up the extreme tension between the highest G and A-flat (lots of harmonic sounds, vehement dynamics). The dazzling blaze of this awesome mystical revelation is almost unbearable. One notes, just before the end, the double-stopped harmonics, almost at the limit of audibility, of the first violin playing between the bridge and the tailpiece.
The "relapse" announced in the work's "programme" accounts for the fourth movement's return to E-flat and for the fact it consists of an almost exact palindrome of the first one, save for a few bars, added in two places, on the chords we already know. The Quartet ends with an epilogue on the "tonal pole" F, immediately supported by the lower third D-flat. Here, the harmony wavers between D-flat major, F -major, and (when the F rises to G-flat) e-flat minor. Thus, the work's basic cadential gesture asserts itself once again. It is linked to the function of sub-dominant, with the variants Vlb-I and IV (minor) -I (Neapolitan sixth and plagal minor), and "represents", according to the above-mentioned «programme», the subjectivity to be overcome (Scelsi calls it "pathos"). From bar 35 the high E (harmonic) reappears as a reminder of the third movement's mystical revelation. It asserts itself almost until the end, but the very close gains yet another half-tone and escapes up to F: thus the goal barely glimpsed at for the first time in the first movement's bars 38 to 42 is at last accomplished!"
~Harry Halbreich
Source: CD booklet
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