Awesome Women Composers Part 2: String Quartet Edition

As part of our discussion on string quartets, let’s take a look at some by women composers ranging from the Romantic era to contemporary music.

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

Not only was Beach an extremely talented composer and pianist, but she was also one of the first female composers to successfully compose large-scale forms. Her Gaelic Symphony was, in fact, the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. Her Quartet for Strings, Op. 89, (1929) is a one-movement work that sadly remained unpublished during her lifetime.

The quartet begins with a slow, dissonant introduction that leads into the body of the work, which is based on three Inuit (a Native Canadian/Alaskan people) melodies. It is dissonant yet lyrical, harmonically sound yet ambiguous. The work is a masterful combination of art, folk, and American characteristics.

Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994)

Maconchy wrote an astonishing amount of chamber and orchestral works during her life, and her 13 string quartets are considered to be the highlight of her musical achievements. She composed String Quartet No. 3 in 1938, and it’s beautiful and haunting and dissonant and lyrical all at the same time. The work is one continuous movement (or the movements all flow together; I haven’t been able to find much information on that) that drastically and continuously changes. The opening is almost chorale-like before jumping into the energetic and contrapuntal section. An emotional song accompanied by harsh pizzicato chords finishes the work.

Maconchy’s daughter Nicola Lefanu also composed string quartets; check out her 2nd one here. You can also click here to learn more about Maconchy’s other string quartets.

Gloria Coates (b. 1938)

Coates is known for her experimentation with harsh sounds to create a new space of thought and beauty. Author Trevor Hunter captured the essence of her style in an interview with the composer:

For Gloria Coates, artistic expression is a spiritual necessity. She has great interest and significant participation in painting, architecture, theater, poetry, and singing—but it is through composing that she taps into a wellspring of abstracted emotionality that the others cannot reach. Whatever the veiled expressions of her work may be, there is an undoubted emotional richness present, which if not concretely knowable is at least viscerally felt by the audience. Canons constructed of quartertones and glissandos evoke gloomy instability, but also unearthly beauty.

Coates has composed 10 string quartets – Among the Astroids being the last in the early 1960s. Through glissandos, tremolos, intense dynamics, and other extended techniques (any unconventional method of playing a musical instrument), Coates has captured the feeling of a terrifyingly vast and beautiful space.

Check out that interview here.

Shulamit Ran (b. 1949)

Ran‘s third string quartet, entitled Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory, was composed in 2012-13 for the Pacifica Quartet. The whole work is four movements, and they each have unique titles: That which happened, Menace, If I perish – do not let my paintings die, and Shards, Memory.

Ran based the first movement on that phrase – “That which happened” – used by poet Paul Celan to describe the Holocaust. In the music, you will hear how “life, with its flow and its sweet normalcy, was shockingly, inhumanely, inexplicably shattered” through abrupt mood changes.

*Listen to the entire quartet here.

The short second movement imitates a machine-like waltz that, according to Ran, alludes to the guillotine. The movement gathers energy and momentum that is dark and unstoppable.

“If I perish – do not let my paintings die”, the third movement, embodies the quote by the German-Jewish surrealist painter Felix Nussbaum who, until he died in Auschwitz in 1944, continued painting. Ran said of this movement:

If the heart of the first movement is the shuddering interruption of life as we know it, the third movement tries to capture something of what I can only imagine to be the conflicting states of mind that would have made it possible, and essential, to continue to live and practice one’s art – bearing witness to the events. Creating must have been, for Nussbaum and for so many others, a way of maintaining sanity, both a struggle and a catharsis – an act of defiance and salvation all at the same time.

The quartet ends with a movement that directly references the remains and memory of the music.

Egidija Medekšaitė (b. 1979)

Medekšaitė has a unique compositional process that involves textiles. Each aspect of the weave and the yarn in the textile represents various melodic lines and harmonies. She combines these ideas with serialism (where each of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale is used as a basis for harmony and melody), minimalism, extended techniques, and Indian music techniques to create a new sound world in her compositions. Her string quartet, Megh Malhar, demonstrates these ideas. She said of this piece:

Megh Malhar is a Hindustani classical raga (a pattern of notes having characteristic intervals, rhythms, and embellishments, used as a basis for improvisation). The name derives from the Sanskrit word Megh, meaning cloud. This raga is associated with the time of oncoming rainy season and thunderstroms; legends say that it has the power of bringing on the rain clouds to the areas of drought where it is played. My intent for using this raga was to create a sight of myriad raindrops, where each drop is a microscopic reflection of the whole rain. Each performer plays various trills at a very slow tempo, to maintain this fragile sonic experience.

Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)

Composed in 2011, Entr’acte was Shaw‘s reaction to hearing the second movement of Haydn’s String Quartet in F major, Op. 77 No. 2. Her work is structured like a minuet and trio (a Classical era musical form based on a dance), but it’s full of subtle twists and turns that don’t mimic Haydn at all.

Full of musical sighs and a descending bass ostinato, it’s as though music from the Baroque and Classical eras has been unexpectedly transported to the 21st century. Listen to the section beginning at 6:19 for an example of this.

Jessie Montgomery

Originally written in 2006 (with revisions over the next 6 years), Strum is an exciting work full of what Montgomery calls texture motives: “layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinati that string together to form a bed of sound for melodies to weave in and out.” The main texture motive is, of course, the strumming pizzicato that opens the quartet. American folk idioms combine with energetic dance styling to create a celebratory piece.

Also, check her out on the 2nd violin in this video!