Thoughts on a Modern Quartet

Abstract

George Rochberg's Third Quartet is a curious piece. To come to it with an absolutely Innocent Ear would be very disconcerting: that is, if your innocence extended to a complete ignorance of all the tortured twists and turns which musical thought (if you care to call it that) has been undergoing in the last dozen years. But the person so strong-minded that he can resist reading a sleeve-note before putting on a record has not yet been born. And after reading the prolonged, convincing and very well-written pièce justificative which Mr. Rochberg has provided for this record-cover, you will have learned a good deal of Mr. Rochberg's musical autobiography as well as his intentions for this piece. This raises the old problem of programme-note writing: should you be told what to think? But in this case, such a detailed exposé may well rebound on its author's head: for you eventually find yourself discussing the validity of the composer's intentions and the gap between them and their execution, rather than the music itself. No worthwhile composer would want this: and I am pretty certain that is not the way to listen to, or to think about, music.