pelodelperro | Erhard Karkoschka - quattrologe @pelodelperro | Uploaded 8 years ago | Updated 2 days ago
quattrologe, for string quartet (1966)
I. evolution and metamorphosis I
II. dispute
III. metamorphosis II
IV. serenade pathétique
V. metamorphosis III and destruction
Westphal-Quartett
The first, third and fifth movements form a unified whole punctuated by the second and fourth movements, which form, so to speak, extraterritorial episodes. The duration of the movements shows that this relation is conscious and deliberate: the 88 seconds of the third movements and the 100 seconds of the fifth exactly equal the 188 seconds of the first. Even their content follows this subdivision. The third and fifth movements draw respectively on the two main processes found in the first (though ignoring the number and length of the sections): namely, the third reverses the process of developmental variation which Karkoschka calls "metamorphosis", and the fifth confronts the "evolution" of the first movement with "destruction".
Evolution and destruction are the opposing poles at the beginning and end of the piece. They turn the work into a unified whole, providing a framework, as it were, for an organic, cyclical process. Equally cyclical are the "metamorphoses" in the first and third movements, which by standing in a mirror relation to each other impart unity to these movements too. In the first movement the opening thematic "block" is extended and stretched, and then restored to its original form: in several sections this is followed by a temporal compression of the opening block, producing a broad intensification of the tonal motion which only at the end returns to the block in its original form. The third movement moves in precisely the opposite direction: opening block - compression - opening block - stagnation - return to opening block. The difference from variation form is unmistakable: it is not the variation of a theme which is at issue here, but rather the filling in of an overriding formal design, the organisation of a process in time.
Karkoschka has entitled this string quartet "quattrologe", i.e. "quadro-logues" or "conversations with four participants". The canon presents him with one optional means of realizing the many oossibilities inherent in a conversational situation -- simultaneity and succession, agreement and divergence, separation and unification. Thus, the title of the work finds its most apt, but certainly not its sole correspondence, in the second movement, the "dispute" -- which, significantly, ends in a canon. --Christian Martin Schmidt
Art by Serban Savu
quattrologe, for string quartet (1966)
I. evolution and metamorphosis I
II. dispute
III. metamorphosis II
IV. serenade pathétique
V. metamorphosis III and destruction
Westphal-Quartett
The first, third and fifth movements form a unified whole punctuated by the second and fourth movements, which form, so to speak, extraterritorial episodes. The duration of the movements shows that this relation is conscious and deliberate: the 88 seconds of the third movements and the 100 seconds of the fifth exactly equal the 188 seconds of the first. Even their content follows this subdivision. The third and fifth movements draw respectively on the two main processes found in the first (though ignoring the number and length of the sections): namely, the third reverses the process of developmental variation which Karkoschka calls "metamorphosis", and the fifth confronts the "evolution" of the first movement with "destruction".
Evolution and destruction are the opposing poles at the beginning and end of the piece. They turn the work into a unified whole, providing a framework, as it were, for an organic, cyclical process. Equally cyclical are the "metamorphoses" in the first and third movements, which by standing in a mirror relation to each other impart unity to these movements too. In the first movement the opening thematic "block" is extended and stretched, and then restored to its original form: in several sections this is followed by a temporal compression of the opening block, producing a broad intensification of the tonal motion which only at the end returns to the block in its original form. The third movement moves in precisely the opposite direction: opening block - compression - opening block - stagnation - return to opening block. The difference from variation form is unmistakable: it is not the variation of a theme which is at issue here, but rather the filling in of an overriding formal design, the organisation of a process in time.
Karkoschka has entitled this string quartet "quattrologe", i.e. "quadro-logues" or "conversations with four participants". The canon presents him with one optional means of realizing the many oossibilities inherent in a conversational situation -- simultaneity and succession, agreement and divergence, separation and unification. Thus, the title of the work finds its most apt, but certainly not its sole correspondence, in the second movement, the "dispute" -- which, significantly, ends in a canon. --Christian Martin Schmidt
Art by Serban Savu
