Bela Bartók String Quartet #1, Op. 7

Program Notes by Beeri Moalem

I have a sad misgiving that I shall never find any consolation in life save in music.  For some time, I have been in a very strange mood, going from one extreme to the other.  One letter from you , a line, even a word—and I am in a transport of joy, the next brings me almost to tears, it hurts so.  What is to be the end of it all? And when? It is as if I am in a state of spiritual intoxication all the time.

-Bartók in a letter to Stefi Geyer, summer 1907[1]

Much has been made of Bela Bartók’s love affair with the Swiss violinist Stefi Geyer.  In this same letter to her, he explained that her “leitmotif” is C#-E-G#-B#.[2]  This sequence of notes, transposed and in inversion forms the basis of the first movement to his first string quartet.  (The motive also appears in his violin concert dedicated to Geyer.)  Many of the emotions Bartók describes in his poignant letter are evident in the music: endless searching, painful wandering, faints of rays hope, and finally resignation.  The second and third movements were composed later and are significantly more upbeat.

Bartók completed the quartet in January of 1909 when he was 28 years old.  This was the year following his famous trip with Kodaly to the Hungarian countryside in search of Magyar folk song; a couple of years after obtaining a teaching post at the Royal Academy in Budapest.  He was already respected in Hungary but had no where near the respect his name now conjures.  Likewise, his musical style is undoubtedly “Bartók” in its rhythmic feel, its counterpoint, harmonies, and textures-- yet at the same time it is still quite distant from the style of his later compositions for which he is famous. 

The quartet features late Romantic elements showing harmonic influence from Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht and the music of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.  The opening slow fugue is likely an homage to Beethoven’s late quartets.  French impressionist influence can also be felt in passages of whole tone scales and pianissimo parallel chords over modal melodies.  Bartók still tends construct his chords on triads, adding traditionally “dissonant” notes for a modern color.  By contrast, some of the speech-rhythm that Bartók notates would be unconceivable in the Romantic idiom, and he feels very comfortable with parallel fourths, fifths, and unresolved seconds.

The quartet was premiered by the Hungarian Quartet, known in Budapest as the Waldbauer-Kerpely String Quartet, which was instrumental in the development of a Hungrian music; they also advocated the chamber music of Dohnanyi and Kodaly.  Reportedly, they had 100 rehearsals before performing Bartók's first quartet.  As the musical language and structure is so radically different from any quartet that came before it, that is certainly understandable.  The ensemble eventually premiered Bartók's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quartets, and toured with them across Europe.[3]