# What do you think of Carter's String Quartet #3?



## Guest (Aug 15, 2018)

This is the piece that came in third place in Portamento's 1970s game.






Of Carter's five string quartets this is the one I actually find to be the most enjoyable. I love how the simultaneous characters are distinct when playing at the same time, and overall I prefer the greater contrasts between textures in this piece than in his other string quartets. It is definitely a lot more conventional than many other works for string quartet being written, especially in the years to follow, but I think there is a real quaintness to Carter's music (as well as many other American 'modernists') that make them appealing to me. Old hat, but new at the same time.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I like all the quartets but, yes, this one is perhaps the most .... enjoyable and perhaps the most "profound". I don't know about quaint but conventional, certainly, a small step on from Bartok. That's how a work from the early 70s should sound now, nearly 50 years later. But many within our modern audiences are all about instant gratification and have allowed their aesthetic apparatus to become fossilised - a condition that is not so easy to reverse and leads ultimately to aesthetic coma and death. Just joking, of course. :lol:


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

After listening to Carter's 3rd String Quartet it seems very "democratic" in nature. No voice appears to be of greater or lesser importance than the others. Sometimes the voices agree, and sometimes they don't, or they will talk at cross-purposes (ala Charles Ives) like a group of friends who might be sitting around the dinner table and having an animated conversation about something or nothing in particular, including the occasional change of subject natural to such a gathering. 

I enjoy the 3rd because the music is essentially uncluttered and there are restful spaces in some of the voices from time to time, the occasional silences and pauses, where he's unafraid to wait or say nothing. The silences are also a way of relaxing the listener and avoiding that sense of clutter or busyness. I hear a lightness to the texture and not a density.

It's amazing that the agreeable spontaneity of the voices doesn't seem to clash (perhaps an amazing artistic accomplishment in itself), and I consider it a plus that they sound friendly to each other rather than angry or hostile. He also uses a wide variety of vocal combinations, with each voice seeming to have its own point of view and noticeably individual in their personality and independence. Coming full circle there's again something very `American' about this animated and informal kind of interactive conversation. 

Adding additional interest is that, as the voices rise and fall, individually or together, the listener can hear changing attitudes or suggestions of mood that Carter varies from place to place, with every voice sounding natural to itself and having its democratic chance to have its say - very skillfully done, unforced and engaging. I would have enjoyed being at such a friendly gathering. The 3rd is the only work of his that I ever enjoyed. Lark ♬


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2018)

Larkenfield said:


> After listening to Carter's 3rd String Quartet it seems very "democratic" in nature.
> (longish post)
> Lark ♬


This is a very insightful post; thanks so much for spending the time to write it. 

About your last paragraph, I think this is where Carter is most conventional really. His melodies often have similar contours, but many variations of the same kinds of contours through how he plays around with durations, intervals and registers. The combinations of them, especially heard in this work, probably accounts for what I heard as 'dense' (at least for Carter's standards) as opposed to the relative textural simplicity of his later works. I certainly agree that Carter has an incredible sense of vertical space to create amazing clarity between all the voices and 'duos' within the quartet.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)




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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Kurtz was crazy, of course.


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> I like all the quartets but, yes, this one is perhaps the most .... enjoyable and perhaps the most "profound". I don't know about quaint but conventional, certainly, a small step on from Bartok. That's how a work from the early 70s should sound now, nearly 50 years later. But many within our modern audiences are all about instant gratification and have allowed their aesthetic apparatus to become fossilised - a condition that is not so easy to reverse and leads ultimately to aesthetic coma and death. Just joking, of course. :lol:


Hm yeah, in terms of 'conventional' I do mean that it really isn't too far removed from music written half a century earlier, Bartók especially comes to mind.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I don't understand Carter's 3rd SQ, its all too garbled to me, as are quartets 2 to 5. 

However, after a little persistence I have come to appreciate his 1st SQ and I agree with those who say its one of the most significant quartets of the period. Carter said he read all the quartet literature going back to Haydn when he composed it, but I hear a connection with Berg's SQ Op. 3 the most. That one has three themes presented at the start. Carter's 1st is more fragmented but also has a thematic unity of sorts which is not a huge step from the Berg.

Carter subsequently departed in more radical directions in the quartet genre, but I find the late chamber pieces on Naxos 100th Anniversary disc (eg. Mosaic, Dialogues) to be relatively palatable. These are highly fragmented compared to SQ 1 but have a light quality to them, more air in between the barbed wire if you like.


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