a long arduous gestation period some 20 years, separates the evocative, relatively gentle Second Quartet of brevity and classic shape to the more intensely extreme dimensions of the Third Quartet of 1971, I cannot help but think that the uncertainty of world events had been an integral formative part of this period,and fines its way into the strings herein/  the deeply stated penumbral "Piano Concerto" was behind Carter's creativity now,I always like to think that pieces, a composer's oeuvre influences the burden of future works, that things, the working out of the music becomes more arduous, and filled with irresolution as time passes, what will come, and in this light this Third Quartet has that dimension. Of course you can also say that this work is an intense celebration, a fullfillment of strong brutal ideas for their own sake, not for anyone,unadorned,unencumbered by any narrative,relishing in deeply virtuosic timbres, revealing a content of extroversion,one not afraid(within the aesthetic) of anything anymore. This Quartets dimensions it seems knows no boundary markers with its duel forces pitted against each other, like a palace rebellion strictly of aristocrats had occurred without the outside populace knowing about it. So here the DUO I is Violin and Cello,cloistered together where pitches and tone configuration seem to be boundless,more rhapsodic in playing (as Carter advises in his notes "quasi rubato") to the more imprisoned DUO II, Violin and Viola,(stricter rhythm(s) throughout) taking on here more an accompanimental role,equally with Carter's affinity for the sustained string sound, this un-freedom functions nonetheless and makes the music stop,halts the flow of itself and/or create a magnificent tension so the work wants to proceed,but cannot, wants to fulfill itself it does so with a large array of durational indication, expanding and contracted in surface in register,very liberal utilizations of double stops as well, as if one single voice along never quite fits the emotive agenda here there is also a :dialectic:( a bad word) of emotive content at work with often times contradictory indications between the two DUO, as the opening exhibits simultaneously "Maestoso" in DUO II, and "Furioso" (quasi rubato,)in DUO I,this suggested hostility continues quite to the end.The modern British painter Francis Bacon had said that longevity within this language, (meaning expressionisms of sorts,equal to Carter's musical substance)that tension remains forever in art where it may exist,as even the private pastoral tensions in the continuous tonal movements of trees and mountain surfaces in Poussin's massive landscapes,geometrically pure,but unknown at dirst So to Carter I beleive in some array of poly-rhythmic durational scheme takes this work's strength from under its rhythmic surface passive perhaps on the surface, but look closer for the tension. Here passive acceptance in Carter is by degrees,and within his affinity for establishing characters within the genres,resolution simply goes away forgotten as unimportant.In Carter's introductory notes, he advises that the :sustained sound:, and the fast tones will tend to get "covered by notes of medium speed", so an interpretive problem exists in the clarity of this duel of virtuosity, of dodecaphonic remorse. The work has a dryness to me, never seductive, or in a way suggestive of Lucien Freud's work, equally dry yet not devoid of emotion, below the surface. Here the surface brutality usually foments, throws our listening into the work, deeply engaging without an agenda.The work has no resolution,or it implodes upon itself really and as it progresses it deeply exposes its content, what it has been about,that the violence sought after in the beginning becomes tamer to a degree in its totality beaming,projecting itself in fragements,like incomplete thoughts, "fugitives"(as Pierre Aimard might say) where it becomes like a flame-furioso, given less oxygen for its existence snuffed out, stepped on for a time.

String Quartet No. 3 (1971): Study Score PDF

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