Alberto Ginastera, 1916-1983
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 26, 1958 (revised in 1968)
The Argentine composer Alberto Evaristo Ginastera is widely regarded as a significant 20th century composer particularly as an artist of the Americas, a fresh and vivid voice from the new world. He was born in Buenos Aires to parents of Catalan and Italian decent and revealed his musical talents as a young boy. Pursuing his musical studies at the Conservatorio Williams and the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, Ginastera completed his formal training by the time he was 22 years old in 1938. A premiere of his orchestral suite from the ballet Panambí in 1937 while he was still a student immediately established his reputation as a new composer of great promise. Ginastera proved quite prolific with an oeuvre comprising operas, orchestral works, concertos, choral and solo vocal pieces, a diversity chamber works, film scores, and incidental music for several dramas. Particularly noteworthy is the ceaseless artistic exploration he pursued which, according to the composer himself, can be divided into three phases. Grove Music offers a useful, concise summary:
Ginastera associated his first artistic phase, 'objective nationalism' (1934–47), with the Argentine landscape (especially the pampas or plains region) and with his direct appropriation of national elements within a predominately tonal means. In his second creative stage, termed 'subjective nationalism' (1947–57), he continued to employ an Argentine musical language within a tonal or polytonal setting, but alluded to vernacular elements in a sublimated form. During his third musical period, 'Neo-Expressionism' (1958–83), he affiliated with experimental aesthetics (including dodecaphony, serialism, and magic surrealism) and accorded nationalism a limited role.
Ginastera completed his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 26 in 1958 on a commission by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation. It was premiered by the Juilliard String Quartet at the first Inter-American Music Festival in Washington D.C. the same year and it was regarded a major success. Ginastera revised the quartet a decade later 1968. This quartet represents his third phase of Neo-Expressionism where fiercely modern techniques predominate along with a rhythmic verve that still finds its essential roots in Argentine dance. Ginastera greatly admired the six string quartets of Bartók and his influence is strong in this quartet that has sometimes been called "Bartók's Seventh." As with Bartók's fourth and fifth quartets, Ginastera uses a five-movement "arch" form with symmetries of tempo and mood between the first and last, the second and forth, and a central keystone scherzo packed with advanced performance techniques that he significantly titles "Presto magico." The other movement markings suggest a quartet of powerful expression and character including "rustico", "angoscioso" (anquished), "Libero e rapsodico" and, for the bristling finale, "furioso." Complex, immensely difficult to perform and vividly affective, this is an unmistakable modern masterwork for string quartet, the product of a truly original artistic mind.