During the extraordinarily long musical career of Florent Schmitt — which spanned 70 years from the late 1880s to the late 1950s — the composer created works for many combinations of instruments.
Early on, there were vast swaths of piano music. Then came the sumptuous orchestral creations between 1900 and the onset of World War II. Vocal music was a constant throughout Schmitt’s creative life as well.
But beginning around 1940 when he turned 70 years old, Schmitt embarked on a series of chamber compositions featuring various families of instruments.
From this late period of creativity there is a quartet for flutes and one for saxophones, a quartet for three trombones and tuba, and a sextet for clarinets, among other works.
The 1940s also produced two of Schmitt’s most important chamber works for strings: the String Trio, Opus 105 from 1946 and the String Quartet in G-sharp, Opus 112. These were the first large-scale chamber works featuring stringed instruments to come from the composer’s pen since the Piano Quintet, created back in 1908.
The Calvet Quartet
The String Quartet is a big four-movement work, 40 minutes in duration. Composed just after World War II, it was premiered by the Calvet Quartet in June 1948 at the Strasbourg Music Festival. The score, which Schmitt dedicated to the Calvet Quartet, was published by Durand in 1949.
Marc Pincherle (1888-1974)
Writing at the time of the piece’s premiere, the musicologist, critic and violinist Marc Pincherle had these words of praise for Schmitt’s new composition:
“The star of the program was the first performance of Florent Schmitt’s Quartet for Strings, a monument not unlike the Quintet of his youth — by its intensity, its vast proportions, and the richness of its writing which is prone to ‘break the gates’ of chamber music to make the stringed instruments sound like an orchestra.”
Pincherle’s characterization is spot-on.
Without question, the String Quartet is one of Schmitt’s most substantive compositions. It is also a very demanding work — both for performers to play and for audiences to encounter. Personally, I have found it one of the most challenging of Schmitt’s works to get to know — and to understand completely. Simply stated, this is no ordinary composition!
The Quartet is in four movements — each of them around 10 minutes in duration:
- I. Rêve (Dream)
- II. Jeu (Game)
- III. In memoriam
- IV. Élan
Perhaps the most “accessible” upon initial hearing is the second movement, with its playful phrases and ever-changing rhythms. But over time, the inventiveness and rich musical rewards of the other movements become clearly evident as well.
Like many of Schmitt’s compositions from this period, the harmonies, although rooted in traditional tonality, are chromatic much of the time, with many accidentals. There is an abundance of counterpoint as well — and as always with Schmitt, frequently changing time signatures.
In the third movement, titled In memoriam, Schmitt’s biographer Yves Hucher, sensed an homage to the composer’s teacher and mentor, Gabriel Fauré, writing, “It seems that the deep loss felt at the death of Gabriel Fauré is prevailing, and setting the tone.”
Even though Florent Schmitt’s String Quartet ranks up there with Debussy’s and Ravel’s (as well as Fauré’s late-career essay in the genre), his composition is barely known compared to these other creations by the great French composers of the era. Indeed, Schmitt’s composition has been commercially recorded just once — in December 1956 by the Champeil Quartet at the Maison de la Mutualité in Paris.
The original EMI release of Florent Schmitt’s String Quartet, recorded by the Champeil Quartet (1956).
It’s an important document. The artists making up this ensemble represented some of the most important string players of the time in Paris: Jean Champeil and Georges Belbon (violins), Maurice Husson (viola) and Manuel Recasens (cello). Moreover, the recording was made in the presence of the composer — by then in his mid-80s.
Originally released by Pathé-Marconi (EMI’s French subsidiary), the Champeil recording is considered a definitive interpretation. Such is its stellar reputation that the recording remains available today, more than 60 years later, as part of an EMI-Japan collection of French string quartet repertoire.
The Forgotten Records reissue (2010).
The recording is also available from Forgotten Records, coupled with the Champeil Quartet’s equally definitive account of the Ravel String Quartet. Unlike the EMI-Japan issue which is a bit difficult to track down, the Forgotten Records release is easily accessible worldwide and can be ordered online.
For those wish to follow along with the score while listening, the Champeil Quartet recording has also been uploaded to YouTube, accompanied by the printed music.
Just a cursory glance at the score is all it takes to recognize music’s challenges for performers and interpreters. But for anyone brave enough to do a “deep dive” into the music, I can’t think of a better way than watching the YouTube recording while viewing the score.
Speaking as someone who has “lived with” this piece for several decades now, I consider Florent Schmitt’s String Quartet to be a work of musical genius. For lovers of chamber music — or any compositions in the early modern idiom for that matter — it is a masterpiece well-worth getting to know.
