Bacewicz String Quartet No. 3 - Program Notes

Note by Vibha Janakiraman

Date of Composition: 1947

It is certainly no coincidence that many of history’s greatest geometers were poets, and many of our revered poets and orators fans of Euclid. French mathematician Henry Poincaré speaks poetically of symmetry, writing, “the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details.” Bacewicz’ third string quartet, both in its small motivic seeds and its overarching scope, operates like a beautifully self-contained system, governed by sparkling symmetry at every level. Bacewicz shows us that there lies a unique expressive power in elegant craftsmanship—one can feel enlivened by her contrapuntal excellence as they can by a particularly artful geometric proof. Mathematical beauty is not the antithesis of human subjectivity, but a reflection of how we poeticize the world by making sense of it. Bacewicz’s brilliant construction, in creating order amidst disorder, is rich with life. 

As a highly successful violinist, Bacewicz made several trips to concertize in France. Her 3rd string quartet was born from one such visit to Paris, a city to which she found a particular artistic affinity, writing, “There’s something about Paris, something difficult to express in words but conducive to creative work.”  Situated in a forever altered global order in the aftermath of the Second World War, Bacewicz’s third quartet seems to paint the picture of the individual transformed by the movement of the changing world around them. Unaltered ideas, perhaps a single static note or recurring motivic fragments, are given new color and meaning by the altered sonorities provided by the other members of the quartet. She presents several sonic polarizations that mirror those of her world: the machine vs the human, explosive vs contained expression, and unity vs division. There is an unmistakable optimism in this music, as the quartet always seems to find its way back to rhythmic unity and unrestrained expression. 

The work begins in the realm of automation, staunchly mechanical, electrical in its energy accumulation. The music snaps out of silence into a four note figure, each voice jumping onto the already moving train,  unwavering in its acceleration. Like an engine that refuses to start, but inches closer to high-powered release in each successive attempt to do so, the quartet repeatedly climbs up to a series of explosions, unsuccessful in its first few arrivals. Attempts become shorter, faster, infused with increasing vigor and life, until the top voice breaks into soaring human song, riding atop the gravity-driven motion of the engine that carries it unflinchingly. Much of the movement explores this mechanical hyperactivity under a human theme, at times as unbridled kinetic energy, and at times as brimming potential energy tempting to rupture the surface. Ambiguity abounds in the slow second theme, as the ear searches for one voice that is primary, the voice that carries the song. The violins join hands in flowing affirmation as the unrelenting engine of the first theme settles into a softer pulsation in the viola. The cello shimmers above on a single note—what initially appears to be a high-octane hum of the background is revealed to be the primary song. He is the unmoving individual transformed by his changing world, the violinists’ harmonic commentary recontextualizing his identity. 

Bacewicz’s formal symmetry glints with allure on the large scale. The second movement is in a symmetrical arch form (ABCBA), in which the themes appear in reverse order after having reached the climactic middle of the movement (also the middle of the work as a whole, as the second movement is the centerpiece of the 3-movement quartet). The first violin enters alone with the theme, consisting of a minor second followed by a major second, striking in its simplicity. The remaining voices join in succession, each with a poignant reply, so as to assert their emotional stake in the conversation at hand. For Bacewicz, harmony is not the driving identity of the music, but the result of these overlapping lines of conversation—the geometric point of intersection of sounds in time. Much of the second and third movements’ material is derived from motivic fragments from the first movement, and like a true geometer, Bacewicz establishes strong internal relations between the movements. The first violin’s theme here alludes to the slow, static theme presented by the cello in the first movement—the recontextualized individuality amidst shifting surroundings. Familiar rhythms reappear, and brilliant scalar passages continue their established role as sources of active energy. The movement’s close contains one of the clearest displays of Bacewicz’ vertical symmetry: while the first violin repeats the unostentatious theme, the cello plays an inverted form of the theme underneath. Intervallic symmetry here (the voices being pulled closer together and further apart), gives us the expressive sensation of compression and contraction. 

The final movement is a dazzling rondo, with the theme slightly reimagined in each of its guises. A perpetual motion of sorts, each of the four parts weaves in and out of the texture with an exactness that creates a layered totality, not unlike the experience of watching groundhogs pop in and out of their burrows. The first movement’s main soaring, leaping theme returns in new masks, once again riding the wave of underlying rhythmic hyperactivity—but the hyperactivity has lost its mechanical edge, now scurrying on like a living being, and the theme is thus once again transformed by its surroundings. In a final display of the governing symmetry, the work collapses back into the four note figure from which it emerged, this time with the four voices in festive unity (and hurrah, unity prevails!). The ending of the work explodes with human vitality, and yet, we never truly escape the omnipresence of the mechanical, forever embedded into the rhythmic fabric of our world.