Crawford Seeger String Quartet

 Day 194

Ruth Crawford Seeger String Quartet

Amati String Quartet

Ruth Crawford, who married Charles Seeger and was the mother of Peggy Seeger the folk music specialist, was one of the most important modernist female composers in the USA in the early part of the 20th century (1901-1953). She underwent a rigorous training and was in contact with many of the leading musical figures of her time. I've never heard any of her music before so this quartet, which dates from 1931 and is acknowledged as one of her most important pieces, seemed a good place to start.

My initial impression was not that positive. I thought that the first movement was fairly anonymous in a broadly Schoenberg/Berg idiom which seemed rather to meander along. It to me had no rhythmic impetus - a feature which I certainly feel was a problem of a lot of the 2nd Viennese School's music. But the second movement had much more of interest. It sprung to life rhythmically and had an energy about it - indeed at times it almost seemed to be looking forward to the sort of rhythmic vitality that Tippett was to explore a few years later. The slow third movement was fascinating. Essentially it was a study in resonance, almost entirely consisting of long notes but with lots of small crescendos and diminuendos but at time times in different instruments - it created a really haunting effect. Seeger suggested that it could be performed by a string orchestra as an alternative to a quartet and I can imagine it making a real impression done that way.  The last movement was also distinctive. This involved quite harsh recitative-like passages in the first violin contacted with arpeggio figures in unison quavers played by the three other players with mutes on. The very end was a little abrupt.

So this was a work which grew in interest as it went on - only tailing off a little towards the end. There was nothing particularly American in the piece as far as I could hear but Crawford clearly had a distinctive voice. From the mid 1930s she seems to have devoted most of her energies to folk song collecting, editing and dissemination. One wonders what she might have written had she written further string quartets into the 1940s and 1950s.