Ruth Crawford Seeger's String Quartet (1931) is "regarded as one of the finest modernist works of the genre". It was funded by the Guggenheim Foundation and written in the spring of 1931, during Crawford's time in Berlin. It was first published in the New Music Edition in January 1941.
Overview
The composition is in four untitled movements:String Quartet 1931 is Crawford's most frequently performed, recorded, and analyzed work. It has been regarded as a collection of experimental procedures she developed during the previous two years, including dissonant counterpoint, early serial techniques, formal symmetries, and number centricity. By some criteria, it is considered a more conservative work, with its traditional instrumentation and four-movement formal scheme.
Each of its four movements is built upon its own structural concept, while the motives and focal elements unify them as one piece. The first movement is the only movement of the quarter for which a major draft survives. Crawford's manuscript from 1931 can be found at the Library of Congress.
The first movement features a polyphonic framework using linear formations that are subjected to various contrapuntal operations: contrary (for inversion), crab (for retrograde), and basic transposition. The goal of Crawford's contrapuntal style was to produce independence among the different parts to produce "heterophony." In this movement, she uses principles of verse form for the opening and closing sections, such as rhyme and repetition. Crawford's uses a "poem" to frame the movement, but regularly introduces new beat groups so that it is unpredictable and energetic. The movement could be described as "ametric." Her methods suggest serial procedures, but she not see her themes as rows with fixed pitch contents. In the draft score, she marked sections where she reshaped the material.
The fourth is the most widely discussed movement out of the whole piece. It is organized according to a pre-composed numerical plan, where the theme is subjected to a series of transformations.
The "wedging motion" is another prominent feature of the second movement. In this context, the wedging motion is the motion from an initiating dyad toward a central destination dyad by steps or skips. This concept highlights the process of reaching a point of convergence. Its role within the overall structure of the movement is to articulate contours that contrast the contour of the two-octave scales and sequences. The repeated use of wedging motions that remain constant throughout the movement unify the movement.
III. Andante
This movement provides an example of total organization of many musical features: pitch rests, rhythm, dynamics, tempo, instrumentation, and form. The pitch content remains free throughout, but the dynamics and rhythm are controlled. Crawford structures this movement around a dynamic design that Seeger called "dynamic counterpoint." Each instrument has its own pattern that constantly changes, in which every pitch swells in the middle of the tone. The combination of these tones, with its rhythmic and dynamic patterns, create a pulsing sound effect that fade away. This "almost impressionist" has been described as sounding Bartókian.
IV. Allegro possibile
Crawford never provided a program for the fourth movement, but it appears that she intended for it to resemble a dialogue. In her own analysis of the movement, she designates opposing parts—Voice 1 for the first violin and Voice 2 for the second violin, viola, and cello. In her personal copy, she replaced the "Allegro possibile" with "'Allegro quasi recitative", recitative begin a vocal style that imitates speech. She had wanted to write one in the spring of 1930, but Seeger had discouraged her at the time.
In a letter to Seeger in February 1931, she wrote,<blockquote>"I went to the piano and began a one-voiced something in metric form and was rather pleased with it...The next day I took the little monody, which is lyric, and gave it a leggiero pal with a bass voice, and it insisted on becoming a string quartet. I have been wanting to write one for months—you tried to dissuade me last Spring, but the desire has come again many times this fall, so I might as well get it out. And the music came more easily, and after these six months of almost complete silence, it is such a relief. You did it. You pulled me up. You freed me."
Performance and Reception
Henry Cowell was no doubt Crawford's biggest advocate. In 1934, Cowell recorded the third movement of Crawford's string quartet, the only recording of her music that was released during her lifetime. In 1941, he published all four movements of the string quartet.
After its first performance by the New World String Quartet on November 13, 1933, the work was proclaimed "original and arresting", and the third movement was singled out as "remarkable."
String Quartet 1931 received a lot of attention in the 1960s, when George Perle published the first analysis of the third and fourth movements.</blockquote>After hearing news about the String Quartet being recorded, Perle and many others anticipated its release. The first complete recording on the Columbia Masterworks label appeared in 1961. The composer Eric Salzman wrote an enthusiastic review of the Amati Quartet's recording, titled "Distaff Disk. Ruth Seeger's Work Ahead of Its Era"
By default, Seeger played a significant role in sustaining her reputation as a composer. In 1960, he collaborated with CBS Records to produce the first complete recording of the String Quartet 1931. When doing so, he deliberately kept his influence on her work out of it.
String Quartet 1931 continued to bolster Crawford's reputation as a composer. In 1975, the third movement was performed by the New York Philharmonic at a highly publicized concert. The concert showcased female composers and was sponsored by a feminist publishing collective for Ms. (magazine).
The late 1900s witnessed important developments for female composers. The coverage shifted somewhat, so that String Quartet 1931 was no longer the only piece on which Crawford's historical position was based.
Prior to the 1980s, there had been no mention of Charles Seeger's contributions to Crawford's development. Seeger had been acknowledged for his article on "dissonant counterpoint", and while it was known that he had been her mentor, there had been no connections between his article and her compositional style. In 1986, Mark Nelson analyzed Crawford's String Quartet with regards to Seeger's theories, as did David Nicholls in his book about American experimental music in 1990.
Joseph Straus links the piece to a renewed appreciation of modernism in general, specifically in relation to integral serialism. He said that Crawford had "understood the potential isomorphism of pitch and rhythm and in that sense, had 'serialized the rhythm' of the piece", but the rhythms were not actually serialized in any consistent or systematic way.