Elliott Carter was already in his forties when he achieved renown with his First String Quartet. After its premiere in 1953, the work received a great deal of attention (primarily in Europe), and led to the assessment of its creator as one of the most gifted of the new American composers -- an assessment that has been supported by the four String Quartets which have followed in the ensuing four decades. The First String Quartet was Carter's first truly successful attempt at composing a large-scale piece employing the ideas of "metric modulation" he was then developing. (Metric modulation refers to the continual change of metric speeds, composed into the music at every level. In a piece employing metric modulation, the various melodic strands of the music rarely line up, for they are undergoing "modulation" at different rates--this leads to the impression that several different, independent musical layers are existing simultaneously.) At the time of its creation, the First String Quartet was a truly revolutionary work, and was considered nearly impossible to perform by existing quartets of the day.
While ostensibly in four movements, the motion of the First Quartet pauses only twice (in both cases in the middle of a movement, not in between movements). The first movement has been described by the composer as a kind of contrapuntal fantasy. There are four main linear ideas in the movement, supported by a number of secondary motives, all of with exist in different metrical worlds, at different speeds. These ideas are combined in various ways, rhythmically and harmonically, over the course of the movement, and eventually give way (without break of any kind) into the second movement, a rapid scherzo, marked allegro scorrevole (a favorite indication of the composer). After the trio section of the scherzo there is a pause in the activity. After continuing, the scherzo plunges almost immediately into a dramatic Adagio. Two separate musical ideas are developed in the Adagio. First there is a recitative-like thing involving the viola and cello. This is commented on by a duet between the two violins, now being played with mutes. As the movement progresses the two ideas are heard simultaneously. The final movement is a set of variations, though not of the kind one would expect of, say, Beethoven. The movement is built on a number of ideas which increase in speed upon each repetition. Some of the music becomes so fast that the players are forced to present the ideas in the form of rapid tremolo, while other ideas evaporate as the movement progresses, allowing new music to force its way into the texture.
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