As a piece of
construction alone, the D-minor Quartet is immensely significant. The
polyphony is bold and free, the voices exhibiting an independence
perhaps unknown since the days of the madrigalists. The work is unified
not only by the consolidation of the four movements into one, but as
well by a central movement, a "durchfuehrung" which, introduced between
the scherzo and the adagio, reveals the inner coherence of all the
themes. There is no sacrifice of logic to the rules of harmony. Indeed,
the work is characterized by a certain uncompromisingness and sharpness
in its harmonies. The instrumental coloring is prismatic, all the
registers of the strings being utilized with great deftness. Exclusive
of the theme of the scherzo, which recalls a little overmuch the
Teutonic banalities of Mahler's symphonies, the quality of the music is,
on the whole, grave and poignant and uplifted. It has a scholarly
dignity, a magistral richness, a chiaroscuro that at moments recalls
Brahms, though Schoenberg has a sensuous melancholy, a delicacy and an
Hebraic bitterness that the other has not. Like so much of Brahms, this
music comes out of the silence of the study, though the study in this
case is the chamber of a Jewish scholar more than that of a German.
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