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Ruth Crawford Seeger: String Quartet, third movement, “Andante” (1931)

From the album Chamber Works

One of the most important and neglected musical figures of the early 20th century, Ruth Crawford associated with the “ultramodernist” circle of American composers in the 1920s, including Dane Rudhyar, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, and Charles Seeger.  These composers championed a radical break with European musical traditions, and thus represented an alternative to the dominant neoclassical orientation of composers such as Aaron Copland and Walter Piston.

Crawford composed her String Quartet in 1931, while she was studying in Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship.  Upon returning from Europe, she married Seeger, and in 1936 the couple move to Washington, D.C., in order to work on New Deal projects for the preservation and dissemination of American folk music.

The remarkable third movement of this quartet is bereft of anything that could be called a melody. The music begins with gently surging tones in close proximity, weaving together to form a hypnotically dissonant sound-fabric.  As the piece progresses, the strings move slowly upward in pitch and the music gradually becomes louder and more discordant.  The tension built up by these grating sonorities finally explodes the texture: a violent, expressionistic outburst is followed by a sudden downward cascade of tones, as if a cord had snapped and the slow upward ratcheting were undone in an instant. The movement ends as it began, with ominous pulsations in the low strings.

Comparable only to the contemporary work of Varese, this music anticipates the later development of “sound mass” or Klangkomposition by Xenakis, Ligeti, and Penderecki in the 1950s and 60s.

February 16, 2010, 10:50am