Vincent d'Indy - String Quartet No.1, 2 ,3번

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(Paul-Marie-Théodore-)Vincent d'Indy

1851. 3. 27 프랑스 파리~ 1931. 12. 1 파리.
프랑스의 작곡가·교사.

String Quartet No. 1 in D major 

 

- Composer: Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (27 March 1851 -- 2 December 1931)
- Performers: Quatuor Joachim
- Year of recording: 2001

String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 35, written in 1890.

00:00 - I. Lent et soutenu. Modérément animé
12:11 - II. Lent et Calme
20:47 - III. Assez modéré et dans le sentiment d'un chant populaire. Assez vite
27:36 - IV. Assez lent et librement déclamé. Vif et joyeusement animé

D'Indy fulfilled his apprenticeship through the 1870s. With the 1880s came those amazing works in which inspiration and technique strike an uninhibited balance blending charm and power, youthful élan and just proportion, beginning with the operatically ambitious cantata Le Chant de la Cloche (1879-1883), and continuing with the piano Poème des Montagnes (1881), Symphonie Cévenole (1886), and the Trio in B flat for clarinet, cello, and piano (1887) -- the latter two enjoying continuing popularity to keep his name alive outside France. With the 1890s the genuine afflatus animating earlier works thins as a preoccupation with architecture comes to the fore. Bach's counterpoint, the "cellular" technique employed occasionally in Beethoven's last quartets (dovetailing with Wagnerian leitmotive, which ultimately find their origin the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony), "cyclic" thematic recall adapted by Liszt and Franck from the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony -- and other oddments of the stupendous erudition amassed by a superbly analytical mind -- are marshaled against an inability to generate immediately compelling material. Even in the earlier work's quotation (e.g., the allusion to Weber in Poème des Montagnes) and folk song -- the Symphonie Cévenole, or Symphonie sur un chant montagnard française, is based on a shepherd's tune D'Indy heard on a hike in his beloved Cévennes -- are pressed into service. Later works (e.g., Fervaal and L'Étranger) would call upon Gregorian chant.

The manner of disguising the essentially cerebral nature of his compositional thought in glowingly

effective string writing -- a salient feature of his String Quartet No. 1, composed over 1890-1891 -- would be perfected in the sensuous shimmer of his orchestral poem Istar (1896). But in the quartets his strengths and weaknesses are, sometimes cruelly, exposed. on hearing the First Quartet, his friend Fauré put the matter succinctly -- "The Andante is extremely successful. I also like the piece in the form of a folk song. But the first movement and the finale please me less: they are dry, and more interesting for their technical writing than for their ideas. The Andante, on the other hand, is full of feeling, very human." Chabrier, D'Indy's mentor and something of an older brother to him, was more appreciative -- "It is admirable! I cannot put it too strongly. I know no one, anywhere, who is capable of setting up a quartet like that! It is a delight to your friends -- not only that, but it is also an honor to your country." The Quatuor Ysaÿe gave the premiere chez Cercle XX, Brussels, on 24 February 1891.

The string quartet is dedicated: "à Eugène Ysaÿe, au quatuor Ysaÿe, Crickboom, Van Hout, Joseph Jacob".

String Quartet No. 2 in E major

String Quartet No. 2 in E major, Op. 45, written in 1897.

00:00 - I. Lentement - Animé
12:24 - II. Très animé
16:59 - III. Très lent
27:40 - IV. Lentement - Très vif

The String Quartet is dedicated: "À J. Guy Ropartz".

String Quartet No. 3 in D flat Major          

Performers: Quatuor Joachim
- Year of recording: 2001

String Quartet No. 3 in D flat major, Op. 96, written in 1928-1929.

00:00 - I. Entrée en Sonate (Lentement)
09:59 - II. Intermède (Assez joyeux)
14:34 - III. Thême varié (Assez lent)
24:32 - IV. Finale en rondeau (Lentement)

More than 30 years separate d'Indy's 2nd String Quartet from 1897 [uploaded on this channel] from his 3rd, composed over 1928-1929 as he passed his 78th birthday. Between the Violin Sonata (1903-1904) and the Piano Quintet (1924), apart from a few small pieces and arrangements, d'Indy composed no chamber music, being preoccupied with administrative duties at his music school, the Schola Cantorum -- funded with his fortune and for which he wrote the course -- and composition of his musical testament, La Légende de Saint Christophe (1908-1915), into which he crammed his medievalism, his Catholicism, his enormous erudition, his bigotry and anti-Semitism, and his loathing for the rising tide of Modernism.

The preceding quartets, challenged by the prestige the form commanded owing to Beethoven's spate of masterpieces, evinced a preoccupation with form, compensating for a habitual absence of melodic afflatus (especially the 2nd), constricting the unusual lyricism of the First and generating a curious aridity in the monothematic Second. With the death of his wife in 1905, d'Indy's already highly organized approach to composition took on a systematic rigidity and chef d'école self-consciousness as his general outlook soured. The attendant heaviness began to dissipate only toward the end of the Great War when a chance encounter with a sympathetic young woman, Caroline Janson, took a romantic turn leading to marriage in 1920 and that amazing series of late masterpieces attesting a puissant rejuvenation -- the scintillant Poème des ravages, its companion Diptyque méditerranéen for orchestra, and a half-dozen chamber works rife with joy, the Third Quartet among them. It is not that d'Indy has become a fetching melodist in his old age -- his themes are serviceable rather than memorable -- but supreme technique is animated by potent feeling, the return of his considerable charm, and a generally relaxed geniality. It was no longer necessary for every new work to be an audacious coup de maître, though the Third Quartet qualifies.

From the opening bars there is lift, cordiality -- ecstasy, even -- managed by a master hand. The welcoming mien is confirmed by a two-page notice explicative prefacing the score [included at the beginning of the video] in which the work's formal design is spelled out -- after a brief introduction a compact sonata first movement, passionate yet smiling; a candid Intermède set off by a trio of ravishing tendresse; a slender theme becoming ever more persuasive through seven brief but elaborate variations; and a rondo finale with five refrains leading through nostalgia-laced joy to a triumphant peroration.

The Quatuor Calvet gave the premiere at a Société Nationale concert on 12 April 1930; the quartet is also dedicated to them: "au Quatuor CALVET: Joseph Calvet, Daniel Guilevitch, Léon Pascal et Paul Mas."