Ben Johnston – String Quartet No. 8 (1986)
23Composer: Benjamin Burwell Johnston Jr. (1926 – 2019)
Performer: Kepler Quartet, recorded in 2011 – 2013
The Eighth Quartet (1986)—the beginning of the neoclassic phase in Johnston’s output for the medium—is far more accessible at first hearing. Tim Johnson reports that the succession from the Seventh to the easier Eighth Quartet was parallel, in Johnston’s mind, to a similar move from the austere Third to the Fourth, based on “Amazing Grace”: an overcoming of depression and a renunciation of abstraction, the personal and aesthetic “crossing from the darkness of mental illness into the light of lucidity.” The first movement, in a not-too-obvious 7/4 meter, is the first of three textbook sonata forms that will dot the later quartets, including the final movement of No. 9 and the first of No. 10. In the key of C, its exposition and development/recapitulation are both repeated; its first theme emphasizes a harmonic-series scale on C, and the second theme in G comes back at the end transposed to the home key. The languid and beautiful slow movement in 3/4 is an ABA form, the A sections characterized by a gentle repeating pattern in the viola and cello. The chords for these lower instruments, dropping comfortingly to subdominants and lowered sevenths, don’t range beyond the kind of twelve-pitch tonality we’re all used to. The microtonal interest is in the violins, whose pitches sometimes form seventh or eleventh harmonics against the bass, and the resulting voice-leading has a highly nuanced and slightly exotic quality. The piece is a wonderful example of how conventional tonality could be expanded to include the higher harmonics for an increase in tone color. The third movement is in an equally traditional minuet form, though it is more of a mischievous waltz. In the A section the melody moves in increments so tiny that by the time the first thirteen pitches have been heard, the tune has not yet moved outside of a minor third, A-flat to C-flat. One could liken it to the tiny motions of bees constrained by a hive, and the cello maintains a drone note on D-flat to make the microtones all the more measurable by ear. The B section seems expansive by comparison, with melodies based on the harmonic series (8th to 15th harmonics) on each root note, and with a bass note in the cello shifting by minor thirds in the first half and major thirds in the second. The rondo-like finale, a joyous celebration of the harmonic series, is almost minimalist with its emphasis on repetition, though it uses a classic postminimalist trick. The first violin repeats a figure every three eighth-notes, and the second another figure every nine eighth-notes; the viola repeats an inner line every seven eighth-notes, and the cello plucks an ostinato of ten eighth- notes. Thus it would take some 93 measures of the 6/8 meter for the texture to repeat itself exactly, but Johnston doesn’t wait for that. At measure 20 the harmony switches to the eleventh harmonic, and repeated figures recur at a different set of durations: respectively, four eighth- notes, five eighth-notes, six eighth-notes, and seven 16th-notes in the cello. The opening configuration then repeats itself at the dominant, and so on, each new harmony bringing a new stasis of out-of-phase rhythmic patterns. Unlike Quartets Nos. 6 and 7, the average classical music listener will have no trouble recognizing the formal gestures of this friendly work, and will hopefully find the microtonal buzz on the surface scintillating as well.
-From the liner notes of the Kepler Quartet’s recording.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Vigorous, Aggressive
05:23 - Lazy, Rocking
11:30 - Fast, Skimming - Light
14:58 - Extremely Light and Rhythmic
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