Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
String Quartet No. 6 in e minor, Op. 35 (1946)
In April of 1939, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), with close friend and musical colleague Peter Pears, sailed from England to North America. Their reasons were manifold. Both were pacifists and as the inevitability of England declaring war became clear, they chose to leave. Britten was also intrigued by the possibility of commissions, working with American composers, and cultivating his career abroad. Finally, Britten was encouraged by close friends, the writers and partners W.H. Auden and Christoper Isherwood, who left for New York months prior. Britten’s American sojourn was full of discovery. Living with Auden and Isherwood in a Bohemian enclave enabled Britten and Pears to “come out” as lovers. It was also by chance that, while in America, Britten read the English writer George Crabbe and discovered his poem about a fisherman named Peter Grimes that would eventually lead to Britten’s post-war opera.
Britten composed several “American” works ending with the String Quartet, No. 1 on commission from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, composed in California in 1941. The first movement starts with a Tempo primo, an ethereal, sonic revelation. The top strings play softly, with vibrato, with notes so high and close together that the harmonies shimmer like an apparition. Way down below, a solo cello contemplatively wanders with pizzicato and arpeggiated chords. The contrasting Tempo secundo is full of vitality, bristling with syncopated accents as it confidently strides a robust theme. In somewhat of a surprise, the Tempo primo returns becoming a main thematic element alternating with the husky Tempo secundo twice more until the final bars resolve the dichotomy with an ingenious series of cadences.
The second movement is a Britten signature, a scherzo-march featuring steadily driving beats sporadically interrupted by loud, impetuous triplets that zap from player to player like synaptic charges. This humorous, brusque rhythmic play, is the first of multiple features that commentators have likened to Beethoven.
The Andante calmo invites a second comparison with Beethoven, especially the late quartets. This exquisite, ineffable slow movement prompted one reviewer to call it “a requiem for a lost world.” As in the first (and the last) movement, the expansive range of the quartet places the strings in the stratosphere, and the cello (and viola) far below, with a tendency to rise upward. Many have pointed out that the texture and mood of the first two movements foreshadow the Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes.
The finale is a tour-de-force, short, swift, and dazzling. Starting with a wisp of a gesture, the music grows into a web of counterpoint and a forceful pesante theme forming a scintillating composite. Throughout the quartet, Britten pits the cello against the three upper strings and here they take turns exchanging the theme and its fast-moving accompaniment. The theme finally returns to the upper strings a full two octaves higher than before reiterating the spacious tessitura, a consistent upward motion, and the powerful sense of transcendent euphoria that pervades the entire quartet.
