Michael Finnissy

Second & Third String Quartets

Kreutzer Quartet

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Second String Quartet 19’19Third String Quartet 44’13

Total timing 63’32

Michael Finnissy

Kreutzer QuartetPeter Sheppard Skærved violin

Mihailo Trandafilovski violinMorgan Goff viola

Neil Heyde cello

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The string quartet holds a unique placein western European art music. No otherinstrumental ensemble has such a longand, more importantly, continuoushistory, a history reaching back into themiddle of the 18th century. But it’s ahistory with ambiguity at its heartbecause the string quartet is both amedium – two violins, viola and cello –and a form. The form is represented bythe works which we now regard as theensemble’s core repertoire, from Haydnto Mozart to Beethoven, Brahms, Bartokand Shostakovich, and it’s that formwith which most composers choose toengage when they write for the stringquartet.

In 1998 the Kreutzer Quartet releasedtheir first Michael Finnissy CD (MetierMSV92011) and, as a number of criticsnoticed at the time, the CD was entitled

‘Works for String Quartet’. Not ‘StringQuartets’, because although all themusic on the CD used the fourinstruments of the ensemble only oneof the six pieces was called ‘StringQuartet’. Of the others, Plain Harmony

(1993) was a work for ensemble whichon this occasion just happened to be astring quartet and Multiple forms of

constraint (1997) was conceived as awork setting a soloist (the first violin)against a trio (the rest of the group).

This new recording is different.Finnissy’s Second & Third StringQuartets are string quartets whichengage with the form and its history,albeit in strange and radical ways. ThisCD is also different in what it tells usabout Michael Finnissy. The Kreutzers’previous CD presented a series ofworks which rather neatly captured the

Michael Finnissy’s Second & Third String QuartetsChristopher Fox

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changes in Finnissy’s compositionalpreoccupations over a period of nearly20 years, whereas the two works herehave a much more convoluted andinterconnected genesis, as thecomposer explained to me: ‘I hadintended to write the third quartet alittle earlier than I did – and, becauseof time constraints and knowing that itwas going to be a much more extendedpiece, I wrote the second quartetinstead.’ Why is this interesting?Because it establishes that theconception of the Third Quartet, writtenbetween 2007 and 2009, precededthat of the Second Quartet (2006-7)and it also establishes that, thoughvery different in scale, the two worksshare the same concerns.

The question of scale is especiallyimportant. Many Finnissy works derive

both material and structural principlesfrom older music by other composersand for the Third Quartet he haddecided to model the large-scalestructure on Bruckner, stretching out, asit were, beyond the string quartettradition to its larger symphonic brother.Finnissy says that he has ‘lovedBruckner’s music since the first time Iheard his Ninth Symphony at the Proms(probably about 1963). I just love theharmony and how he builds upstructural shapes,’ and in the opening ofthe Third Quartet the Brucknerian modelis very clear. ‘The piece is in blocks,proportionally organised according to anumerical cipher based on thededicatee’s name:A.M.A.N.D.A.B.A.Y.L.E.Y. (the recurringletters also signal recurring material, soall the ‘A’ sections are variants of theopening – which combines atonal and

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tonal material).’ More specifically, thecomposer also says that ‘the grandlytragic bits with key signatures’ in theThird Quartet ‘are allusions to Bruckner’sfirst and second symphonies’. Listenerswill quickly realise, however, that in theirtranscription from Bruckner to Finnissythese ‘bits’ have been seriouslycomplicated: the Third Quartet beginswith a dense adagio juxtaposing manydifferent melodic lines, each following itsown chromatically-inflected path througha different key; the grand-ness isevident, the key signatures less so.

But Bruckner symphonies were not theonly point of departure for Finnissy ashe began to plan this music. As he toldme, ‘I had started planning a quartetbased on a problematically neo-classical model (Schoenberg’s SecondQuartet which, voice notwithstanding, ismore conventional in layout than hisFirst)’. Schoenberg’s Second Quartetwas premiered in 1909 and provokeduproar, not only because it added a

singer to the existing foursome but alsobecause its four movements make agradual journey into atonality. ‘Ich fühleLuft von anderen Planeten’, the singerannounces, and the ‘air from anotherplanet’ which she feels is no longerbound by key-signatures. Finnissydecided that he too wanted to ‘getinvolved in exploring the idea of the ‘airfrom another planet’, and what thismight, or could mean’. He says that, in‘trying for an unforced sort of equivalent,and - trying to keep it more low-key - ofsomehow embracing ‘natural’ elements(OUR planet, but the OTHER so-calledmusical voices of our planet)’, he foundhimself looking for something which‘would contrast with the abstractdesign’, the proportional structuralscheme he had imposed on the music.

Eventually Finnissy realised that this‘natural element’ in the Third Quartetshould be birdsong; he startedtranscribing it, as he puts it, ‘from life’and birdsong became for him ‘a

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reflection on the vocal conclusion toSchoenberg’s Second Quartet’. As herather wrily observed, ‘had it been mysecond quartet too, this might havebeen clearer!’ Like Schoenberg,Finnissy reserves his additional voicesfor the latter stages of his quartet, butthere the similarity ends because,although the voice in Schoenberg’squartet extends the ensemble, it doesso within the aesthetic space ofconcert music. The remarkableextension in Finnissy’s Third Quartet isthe inclusion not just of transcriptionsof birdsong but of recordings ofbirdsong too, not just ‘other’ voices butvoices which take us into a spacebeyond the concert hall, beyond musicitself. It’s an extraordinary inclusionwhich has an extraordinary effect onthe listener; at first the recordingsseem like an intrusion, interrupting theflow of Finnissy’s invention, but as thepiece moves towards its conclusion it isthe instruments of the quartet whichcome to seem intrusive, even though

what those instruments are playing isbased on transcriptions of birdsong.

Finnissy’s birdsong transcriptionmethod is simple – ‘just pencil andpaper + ears’, he says. ‘Or sometimesrecord, especially if there’s a crowd,and then pencil and paper + ears. Therecordings are from my garden, and thenearby Downs, very early in themorning (usually before 6 o’clock) – it’sthe best time, I think.’ But the passagefrom bird to ear to paper to instrument,however objectively done, involveshuman agency, and the juxtapositionof transcriptions and field recordingsmakes clear that agency. As the ThirdQuartet plays itself out – there is noreal conclusion – we are left to museon the elaborate artifice of what wehumans do and its comparison withthe unknowable, but obviouslyessential, purpose of this other ‘song’.

‘Why birdsong?’, I asked the composer.‘Because I like to listen to it very

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much’, he said, ‘and I recall a verypoignant story of the dying Ethel Smythlistening to the song of the nightingale(she was slightly deaf, but fortunatelynightingales sing VERY loudly), andwhen one leaves this world I fancy itwould be terrific to do so accompaniedby some of Nature’s most sophisticatedmusicians!’ It’s a telling remark. Thereis something valedictory about the endof the Third Quartet and one wondersat the significance of the work’strajectory, from its grandly symphonicopening to this final, strange, privatedialogue between composer and birds.

The Second Quartet has a morestraightforward relationship to the stringquartet tradition. As Finnissy explainedearlier, time constraints deflected himfrom the extended plans he had beendeveloping for a new quartet and sowhat would have been his SecondQuartet became the Third Quartet.Instead of Bruckner, Finnissy says thatthe work which now became his

Second Quartet is ‘based on a compactHaydn model’. In part this also relatesto the birdsong in the Third Quartetbecause at one stage he had intendedto use Haydn’s Quartet, Op.64, No.5,‘The Lark’, as an ‘abstract template’ forthe inclusion of birdsong. But asFinnissy explains, once he realised hewas running out of time in which tocomplete a new quartet, ‘I settled formodelling the piece morestraightforwardly on Haydn, and left thereal birdsong out.’

Finnissy says that the main referencesin his Second Quartet ‘are to the firstthree movements of Op.64 No.5, mostclearly the Minuet and the Adagio’, anddiscerning listeners will hear Haydn-likemelodic and rhythmic contours emergeat various points. Around 5’21, forexample, a distorted version of theFinale of Haydn’s quartet comes intofocus, its allegretto triple-time rhythmpreserved, complete with appoggiatura-decorated upbeat, but its melodic

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shape transformed. It’s as if we arelistening to the aural equivalent of aseries of photographic multipleexposures, some exposures more infocus than others, not all of them quitefitting the frame.

Part of the reason for this blurring isthat the Second Quartet has no score,just a series of parts, each prefaced bythe instruction that ‘it is intended thatthe parts should drift slightly apart, anddefinitely not seem calculatedly orrigidly aligned’. This aspect of themusic links the Second Quartet withFinnissy’s earliest work for the medium,Nobody’s Jig (1981), memorablydescribed by Paul Driver as ‘a daunting19-minute essay in asynchronizedabstraction’, but it also connects theSecond Quartet with much earlierexamples of polyphonic ensemblemusic from the days when individualpart-books had not yet beensupplanted by a unifying score. One ofthe delights of the Second Quartet is

this dialogue between the quartettradition and even older forms ofconsort music, the ascendancy of thequartet tradition asserting itself at eachof the ‘gathering moments’ whichregularly pull the music back together.But in the end, the composer says, ‘themusic should just stop, almost in mid-breath’.

How to sum up these two quartets,whose shared origins have producedsuch different music? I asked MichaelFinnissy how he would characterisethem. ‘Rich and chewy’, was his answer.

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Michael FinnissyMichael Finnissy was born inLondon in 1946 and studied atthe Royal College of Music andin Italy with Roman Vlad. Hewent on to the musicdepartment of the London Schoolof Contemporary Dance, and hasbeen associated as composerwith many British dancecompanies. Finnissy has taughtat Dartington Summer School,Winchester College, the juniordepartment of the Royal Collegeof Music, Chelsea College of Art,and is guest lecturer at manycolleges and universities. He hasalso been musician in residenceto the Victorian College of theArts, the City of Caulfield inAustralia, and the East LondonLate Starters Orchestra. In 1999he was made Professor ofComposition at the University ofSouthampton.

Finnissy’s music is widelyperformed in the UK andinternationally. He has writtenworks for the BBC SymphonyOrchestra, New London Chamber

Choir, Endymion, SchubertEnsemble, and LondonSinfonietta, amongst others, andbeen featured composer at theBath, Huddersfield, Almeida,Borealis, and Viitasaari festivals.In June 2009 Finnissy’s eveninglength setting of the Passion ofthe Christ, The TransgressiveGospel, was premiered atWilton’s Music Hall, London aspart of the Spitalfields Festival,and in 2011 Finnissy made anexciting new completion ofMozart’s Requiem.

Recordings of many of Finnissy’sworks are available on variouslabels, notably NMC and Metier.

Kreutzer QuartetPeter Sheppard SkærvedMihailo TrandafilovskiMorgan GoffNeil Heyde

The Kreutzer Quartet is thededicatee of hundreds of newworks, both collectively and assoloists. Composers that havecomposed for them includeJudith Weir, Hans Werner Henze,

George Rochberg, Jörg Widmann,Gloria Coates, David Matthews,Haflidi Hallgrimsson, ElliottSchwartz, Michael Finnissy,Nicola LeFanu, Peter Dickinson,Luca Mosca, Evis Sammoutis,Thomas Simaku, Nigel Clarke,David Gorton, Richard Beaudoin,Paul Pellay, Judith Bingham,Poul Ruders, Jeremy DaleRoberts, Michael Alec Rose, JimAitchison, Roger Steptoe,Howard Skempton, DmitriSmirnov and Robert Saxton.

They are quartet in residence atWilton’s Music Hall in London.

Neil Heyde

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The Second String Quartet was recorded live at St Bartholomew the Great,Smithfield, London, on 8 March 2007. The Third String Quartet wasrecorded at St John the Baptist, Aldbury, London on 29 November 2010.

Recording Engineer JONATHAN HASKELL (Astounding Sounds)Musical Supervision MICHAEL FINNISSYProducer PETER SHEPPARD SKÆRVEDDigital Editing & Mastering JONATHAN HASKELL

Executive Producer COLIN MATTHEWS

Cover Image & booklet design by FRANCOIS HALLCover image Incorporating 'Sutter Street up from Grant Avenue afterthe San Francisco earthquake, 1906', Detroit Publishing Co., courtesy ofthe Library of Congress.

The works on this disc are published by Oxford University Press.

NMC Recordings is a charitable company (reg. no. 328052) establishedfor the recording of contemporary music by the Holst Foundation; it isgrateful for funding from Arts Council England.

HANNAH VLC̆EK Label ManagerELEANOR WILSON Sales and Marketing ManagerANNE RUSHTON Executive DirectorHELEN HUGHES Head of Development

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Mihailo Trandafilovski

Morgan Goff

Peter Sheppard Skærved