The Evolution of Loeffler's Music for Four Stringed Instruments

Abstract

Charles Martin Loeffler once confided, upon supplying his publisher with briefest of programs to one of his compositions, that he had the cook's aversion of having people inspect kitchen.' While admitting programmatic inspiration, Loeffler, as is not unusual, sought to minimize role of program in his music. He exhibited reserve about his work in other ways as well. After first heat of creation was over, his friend Clara Rogers noted, fit of depreciation of his own work was quite apt to set in.2 Many compositions, after receiving a few early performances, were then withheld by composer. The bulk of his work went unpublished. A severe self-critic, Loeffler would put a composition through a number of revisions before it could see publication. If completed or published, early drafts and sketches were not generally preserved. Thus, it is not usually possible to trace evolution of a Loeffler composition. Loeffler's Music for Four Stringed Instruments is very much an exception. It saw both performance and publication, and there exist not only published score and parts and holograph engraver's score, but also three manuscript draft scores, a set of sketches, program notes written by composer for first performance, and correspondence to and from Loeffler concerning music, its intent, performance, and publication. From these a history of quartet can be traced. The title page of published score states simply that quartet is Dedicated to Memory of Victor Chapman. It was, in fact, inspired by a posthumously published volume of letters by Victor Chapman which Loeffler received and read while convalescing in a hospital. It was a time, as Loeffler wrote, for meditation and a time in which he developed ideas for a memorial string quartet. Loeffler had not known Victor Chapman, but was rather a friend of his father, John Jay Chapman (1862-1933), critic and essayist. When Loeffler-contracted by