Core Wider Listening: Ravel, String Quartet.

Question 1

Style?

Answer 1

Impressionism.

Question 2

Structure?

Answer 2

• Ternary but with several unusual features.
• B section is much slower than the A section.
• Contrasting in terms of key (hovering around Eb which is a long way from Aeolian beginning), and textures.
• Many motivic links to the opening material, and,
• Extensive links back to the reprise in A, where materials from both sections are reworked and combined.

Question 3

Harmony and tonality?

Answer 3

• Music is broadly tonal but has many modal inflections.
• Begins and ends in the aeolian mode.
• Second idea is modally inflected, being centred around C# dorian.
• At the first A section’s end, the Violin I descend chromatically.
• There are a series of rich added note chords: Edom7, followed by G# then C.
• The end of the movement is chromatic as it ensd with an augmented 6, resolving unexpectedly to I rather than V.

Question 4

Melody and rhythm?

Answer 4

• Fairly regular phrases (four and two bars).
• Melodic lines are relatively conventional in terms of shape.
• Melody moves mostly by steps and small leaps.
• Repetition of melodic and rhythmic motifs.
• Melody is initially diatonic, but gets much more chromatic toward the end (which is more impressionist).
• More motivic connections between sections with larger and the melody is combined and developed.

Question 5

Texture and sonority?

Answer 5

• Focus on colour and effect as expected by impressionism.
• Rapid pizzicato at the beginning.
• Tremolos and rapid repeated figures.
• Strings have tremolos and rapid arpeggio figures and mutes.
• B section = Cellos take the melody, VII take bass part, violas in the middle (changes the colour as they are not playing their usual range or tone).

Question 6

Full title?

Answer 6

String Quartet, Second movement (1903).