Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Performed by the Beaux Arts String Quartet.
I - Lento (đť…ž = 72): 0:00
II - Allegro (đť…ž = 88) - Meno mosso (đť…ź = 75) - Tempo I - Meno mosso - Tempo I - Meno mosso - Tempo I: 2:16
III - Andante (đť…ź = 96) - PiĂą mosso (đť…ž = 84) - Tempo I - PiĂą mosso: 6:13
IV - Presto (đť…ź = 126 or more) - Meno mosso - Tempo I: 9:20
V - Largo (đť…ž = 92) - Allegro marcato (đť…ž = 108) - Tempo I - Allegro - Tempo I - Allegro: 13:48
Cowell's String Quartet was composed between the Spring and Summer of 1956, being commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation of the Library of Congress for the foundation's Twelfth Festival of Chamber Music. It was premiered by the Juilliard String Quartet on October 5 of 1956 at the Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. It was revised and published in 1962.
The Quartet is a comparatively elaborate development from the styles of eighteenth-century American hymnody that Cowell began about 1941 to build into the series of neo-Baroque hymns, paired with fuguing tunes, which are now widely associated with his name. This rural religious tradition carried the three-part modal hymns and the fuguing tunes of the earliest English and Scottish Reformation churches first to New England, from where it spread into the South and West. Until the radio radically changed U.S. music in the early 1930's, this tradition, perpetuating musical styles whose history can be traced back more than 300 years in Europe, was loved and actively practised by more tens of thousands of Americans than any other a fact of which sophisticated musicians in American cities were entirely unaware.
Cowell wondered what this fine old music might have become in the hands of American composers if nineteenth-century musical conventions had not taught them to consider it crude and strange. So, by way of answering the question, each of his hymns and fuguing tunes is a different experiment in carrying forward, into twentieth-century music, elements drawn from this early music. By 1962, Cowell had written fourteen of these two-movement pieces, for different instrumental or vocal combinations, and he has also used the forms in larger works, as independent movements or parts of movements for instance, in the Violin Sonata (1945), in seven of his fifteen symphonies, and in a number of full-length chamber works, of which this is one.
The diatonic modal materials (but no actual tunes) are developed by means of a variety of related techniques that were acquired by Western music subsequent to the tradition's arrival in this country, and the treatment has proven to be increasingly dissonant and even chromatic in Cowell's hands. But the music is never atonal, since Cowell believes that the possibilities inherent in the immense variety of tonal systems in the world are far from having come to an end. The present quartet is diatonic, but there is free interchange among modes and keys, and constantly flowing modulation in certain parts of the work. The counterpoint is harmonic, quartal or tertial in some places, secundal in others; it is sometimes dissonant and other times consonant. There is no extramusical connotation. The composer says of the work: "It is just some music I felt I wanted to write."
The opening Lento is a much-modified hymn, in which the voices start together, low in the bass and high in the treble, moving toward each other as they approach the ends of phrases, and descend-ing together into unison at the end of the movement. The second movement, Allegro, is a rapid stretto, vigorous and definite in mood; it makes energetic use of secundal counterpoint. The third movement, Andante, is gentle by contrast: a soft diatonic melody is colored by still softer chords in seconds.
The Presto is a rapid scherzo in asymmetrical rhythm, whose typical four-measure phrase contains two bars of 6/8, one of 9/8 and one of 6/8 again. That is to say, the typical phrase consists of a pattern of 2 plus 2 plus 3 plus 2 beats. This movement opens in E minor, but within the first fourteen measures the music overflows, in a series of rapid modulations, into G Mixolydian, E Dorian, B Dorian, A major, F# minor, A Mixoly-dian, F# minor again, and F# Phrygian. The harmonic basis may be tertial, or secundal as in the rapid chromatic runs.
The last movement is in the manner of a hymn-and-fuguing tune. Its Largo is a development of the opening movement, whose tertial harmony unexpectedly borrows forbidden behaviour from modal harmony, in the form of consecutive fifths and modal passing tones. The faster fuguing tune reverts twice to the slower pace of a hymn phrase before it acquires the momentum that carries its development of themes from earlier movements forcefully ahead to the work's conclusion.
Picture: "Homestead" (1934) by U.S. painter Thomas Hart Benton.
Sources: tinyurl.com/29pwk47z
To check the score: tinyurl.com/29pwk47z
Performed by the Beaux Arts String Quartet.
I - Lento (đť…ž = 72): 0:00
II - Allegro (đť…ž = 88) - Meno mosso (đť…ź = 75) - Tempo I - Meno mosso - Tempo I - Meno mosso - Tempo I: 2:16
III - Andante (đť…ź = 96) - PiĂą mosso (đť…ž = 84) - Tempo I - PiĂą mosso: 6:13
IV - Presto (đť…ź = 126 or more) - Meno mosso - Tempo I: 9:20
V - Largo (đť…ž = 92) - Allegro marcato (đť…ž = 108) - Tempo I - Allegro - Tempo I - Allegro: 13:48
Cowell's String Quartet was composed between the Spring and Summer of 1956, being commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation of the Library of Congress for the foundation's Twelfth Festival of Chamber Music. It was premiered by the Juilliard String Quartet on October 5 of 1956 at the Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. It was revised and published in 1962.
The Quartet is a comparatively elaborate development from the styles of eighteenth-century American hymnody that Cowell began about 1941 to build into the series of neo-Baroque hymns, paired with fuguing tunes, which are now widely associated with his name. This rural religious tradition carried the three-part modal hymns and the fuguing tunes of the earliest English and Scottish Reformation churches first to New England, from where it spread into the South and West. Until the radio radically changed U.S. music in the early 1930's, this tradition, perpetuating musical styles whose history can be traced back more than 300 years in Europe, was loved and actively practised by more tens of thousands of Americans than any other a fact of which sophisticated musicians in American cities were entirely unaware.
Cowell wondered what this fine old music might have become in the hands of American composers if nineteenth-century musical conventions had not taught them to consider it crude and strange. So, by way of answering the question, each of his hymns and fuguing tunes is a different experiment in carrying forward, into twentieth-century music, elements drawn from this early music. By 1962, Cowell had written fourteen of these two-movement pieces, for different instrumental or vocal combinations, and he has also used the forms in larger works, as independent movements or parts of movements for instance, in the Violin Sonata (1945), in seven of his fifteen symphonies, and in a number of full-length chamber works, of which this is one.
The diatonic modal materials (but no actual tunes) are developed by means of a variety of related techniques that were acquired by Western music subsequent to the tradition's arrival in this country, and the treatment has proven to be increasingly dissonant and even chromatic in Cowell's hands. But the music is never atonal, since Cowell believes that the possibilities inherent in the immense variety of tonal systems in the world are far from having come to an end. The present quartet is diatonic, but there is free interchange among modes and keys, and constantly flowing modulation in certain parts of the work. The counterpoint is harmonic, quartal or tertial in some places, secundal in others; it is sometimes dissonant and other times consonant. There is no extramusical connotation. The composer says of the work: "It is just some music I felt I wanted to write."
The opening Lento is a much-modified hymn, in which the voices start together, low in the bass and high in the treble, moving toward each other as they approach the ends of phrases, and descend-ing together into unison at the end of the movement. The second movement, Allegro, is a rapid stretto, vigorous and definite in mood; it makes energetic use of secundal counterpoint. The third movement, Andante, is gentle by contrast: a soft diatonic melody is colored by still softer chords in seconds.
The Presto is a rapid scherzo in asymmetrical rhythm, whose typical four-measure phrase contains two bars of 6/8, one of 9/8 and one of 6/8 again. That is to say, the typical phrase consists of a pattern of 2 plus 2 plus 3 plus 2 beats. This movement opens in E minor, but within the first fourteen measures the music overflows, in a series of rapid modulations, into G Mixolydian, E Dorian, B Dorian, A major, F# minor, A Mixoly-dian, F# minor again, and F# Phrygian. The harmonic basis may be tertial, or secundal as in the rapid chromatic runs.
The last movement is in the manner of a hymn-and-fuguing tune. Its Largo is a development of the opening movement, whose tertial harmony unexpectedly borrows forbidden behaviour from modal harmony, in the form of consecutive fifths and modal passing tones. The faster fuguing tune reverts twice to the slower pace of a hymn phrase before it acquires the momentum that carries its development of themes from earlier movements forcefully ahead to the work's conclusion.
Picture: "Homestead" (1934) by U.S. painter Thomas Hart Benton.
Sources: tinyurl.com/29pwk47z
To check the score: tinyurl.com/29pwk47z
