Can I read Saint-Saëns's First String Quartet, Cyclic Form and the Aesthetics of Charm on EtoBox?

Saint-Saëns's First String Quartet, Cyclic Form and the Aesthetics of Charm by Andrew Deruchie is a Arts and Humanities article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Saint-Saëns's First String Quartet, Cyclic Form and the Aesthetics of Charm about?

From the 1850s, Saint-Saëns regularly employed cyclic form: the practice of establishing large-scale relationships (especially in symphonies, chamber works, etc.) by reintroducing materials from earlier movements in later ones. Nonetheless, he became weary of such procedures following the Third Symphony (1886) for cultural-political reasons: Franck's most important cyclic works date from the 1880s, d'Indy declared__la forme cyclique__a historically determined canon, and period writers considered cyclic form a__franckiste__hallmark – all while Saint-Saëns's relationship with Franck's followers deteriorated. In this essay, I argue that Saint-Saëns's First String Quartet (1899) ‘misreads’ his rivals’ approaches to cyclic form as exemplified by d'Indy's Second Quartet of 1897 (in which a four-note cell suffuses most themes) and Franck's Quartet (in which themes from previous movements climactically accumulate in the final coda). Saint-Saëns's themes abound with miniscule motivic connections, which catch listeners’ ears but seem too fleeting and insubstantial to register as binding elements comparable to d'Indy's pellucid cell. Such relationships straddle the threshold of apprehensibili

Who reads Saint-Saëns's First String Quartet, Cyclic Form and the Aesthetics of Charm?

Author

Andrew Deruchie

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing; Cambridge University Press; Cambridge University Press (CUP) (ISSN 1479-4098)

Published

2019

Language

EN

Field

Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)