The Meaning of Four

by Arnold Steinhardt
Joseph Haydn, more or less the father of the string quartet form, began writing quartets
almost 300 years ago. Since then, literally hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of
string quartets have been written by countless composers. And of these, a great many are
considered by almost any standard certifiable masterpieces. Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van
Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert
Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dvorak, Bedrich Smetana, Claude Debussy,
Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartk, and Dmitri Shostakovichthese are just a few composers off
the top of my head who all wrote quartets of dazzling beauty and great depth of feeling.
Ive often had the sense, admittedly prejudiced as I am as a professional string quartet
player, that composers poured some of their most creative juices into the quartet form. Very
few composers wrote absolutely no quartets, and for many, it must have been considered a
rite of passage to write at least one. Debussy wrote only one, the only work of his he
deemed worthy of an opus number, opus 10. Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Faur wrote only
one, as did Giuseppe Verdithe only composition of his without voice. For other
composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Bartk,
and Shostakovich, the writing of string quartets was a life-long occupation.
What is it about the string quartettwo violins, a viola, and a cellothat has drawn
composers to it? Or to ask another question, what is it about other chamber music
formationssay the string trio, quintet, sextet, or even octetthat has not inspired them to
the same extent? After all, you can count the number of exceptional string trios, quintets
and sextets each pretty much on two handseven on one hand for octets.
In musical harmony, however, the number four has great value. A single note unadorned
may please, but its a naked and lonesome thing. Add to it, three notes up, the interval of a
third, and youve got a major or minor tonality. Then combine this with the fifth degree of the
scale, and voil, youve formed a triad, the basic building block of tonal harmony, and a
chord with a certain fullness to it. And by adding a fourth note to the triadlets say the
octave above that first note, the chords rootyouve put a roof on the house. The four
notes together have a satisfying completeness to them. They foster an almost physical
sense of well-being. Whats more, the four-voiced chord is ready to travel. It can go on any
number of harmonic journeys with its four passengers on board
There is something in four different voices played together that is rock-bottom basic. A
Bach chorale is in four-voice harmony. So is a barbershop quartet or even an old-fashioned
rock-n-roll group. The expression in perfect four-part harmony appears to exist as an
outcome of something appealing, natural, and inevitableperhaps drawn from the
overtone series in nature itself. Albert Einstein, himself a passionate string-quartet player,

once observed, Everything should be made as simple as possible. But no simpler. He

could have been talking about four-part writing and its great example, the string quartet.
At its most basic and most frequent, a quartet operates in that exalted perfect four-part
harmony mode and not all that differently from the voices in a choirbass, tenor, alto, and
soprano. The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described the string quartet as
four rational people conversing. Rational, yes, but also intensely intimate and personal
about the way those four voices can speak directly to each other and to each of us. These
are some of the moments we cherish and remember about a string quartet performance.
But there are others quite different.
Have you heard that sweet story about the lady who congratulated a string quartet on its
performance and then said, I hope your little orchestra will just grow and grow? The string
quartet is like a trick wallet that can turn into a suitcase. Each instrument has four strings,
leading to the extreme possibility of hearing a maximum of 16 notes coming out of the
group at the same time. In the very beginning of the last movement of Bartks Fourth
String Quartet, for example, the three upper instruments play eleven notes at the same
time, joined in the third bar by the cello, which adds another three. Close your eyes and you
might think it impossible that such a huge and imposing sound comes out of a group
consisting of only two violins, viola, and a cello.
Id say that when needed, this little orchestra is capable of growing a great deal