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String Quartet No. 1 ("Already It Is Dusk"), Op. 62
It took Polish composer Henryk Górecki thirty-five years to get around to his first string quartet; but, when he finally set about it he created a work of great energy and originality. The music draws on the folk traditions of the region in the south of Poland where Górecki spent a good deal of time.
The title, "Already It Is Dusk," comes from a sixteenth-century church song by Polish composer Waclaw z Szamotul, the melody of which Górecki had already used in his orchestral work, Old Polish Music, from 1969. In this piece, he uses it as a sort of refrain, played very quietly, but harmonized in a chromatic, quasi-serial fashion. The piece proceeds in a single movement that divides perceptibly into discreet sections.
The opening "chorale" is played three times, each time interrupted by fierce, dissonant chordal gestures, derived in part from the harmonization of the chorale, and in part from the open-string fifths characteristic of folk music (though here superposed chromatically to create a harsh sonority). After the third interruption of the church-song material, the dense open-fifth chords open into a circular progression, retaining the tension of the stacked dissonance but introducing a melodic element.
After a brief return to the quiet chorale, the quartet breaks quite suddenly into a rollicking dance, with the group split into two -- one pair carrying on an ostinato and the other a harmonized modal melody. The dissonances contained in both elements contribute a certain "roughness" to the music that conveys well the "village-dance" character of the material. The pairs trade off and then gradually die away on a series of exposed open fifths that are finally shorn of their chromatic context. The piece returns to the quiet church-song chorale of the first section before closing with an extraordinary statement of sonorous triads, quite Beethovenian in character. With a final twist, though, Górecki allows the sound to die away with a dissonant note sounding above. Perhaps, given the suffering and oppression the composer witnessed through his lifetime, along with his own struggles with debilitating illness, it wasn't quite possible to end the piece with a full resolution. Without knowing it, perhaps, Górecki was also looking to his next string quartet, which carries on where this one leaves off. ~ James Harley, All Music Guide
The title, "Already It Is Dusk," comes from a sixteenth-century church song by Polish composer Waclaw z Szamotul, the melody of which Górecki had already used in his orchestral work, Old Polish Music, from 1969. In this piece, he uses it as a sort of refrain, played very quietly, but harmonized in a chromatic, quasi-serial fashion. The piece proceeds in a single movement that divides perceptibly into discreet sections.
The opening "chorale" is played three times, each time interrupted by fierce, dissonant chordal gestures, derived in part from the harmonization of the chorale, and in part from the open-string fifths characteristic of folk music (though here superposed chromatically to create a harsh sonority). After the third interruption of the church-song material, the dense open-fifth chords open into a circular progression, retaining the tension of the stacked dissonance but introducing a melodic element.
After a brief return to the quiet chorale, the quartet breaks quite suddenly into a rollicking dance, with the group split into two -- one pair carrying on an ostinato and the other a harmonized modal melody. The dissonances contained in both elements contribute a certain "roughness" to the music that conveys well the "village-dance" character of the material. The pairs trade off and then gradually die away on a series of exposed open fifths that are finally shorn of their chromatic context. The piece returns to the quiet church-song chorale of the first section before closing with an extraordinary statement of sonorous triads, quite Beethovenian in character. With a final twist, though, Górecki allows the sound to die away with a dissonant note sounding above. Perhaps, given the suffering and oppression the composer witnessed through his lifetime, along with his own struggles with debilitating illness, it wasn't quite possible to end the piece with a full resolution. Without knowing it, perhaps, Górecki was also looking to his next string quartet, which carries on where this one leaves off. ~ James Harley, All Music Guide
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