Grażyna Bacewicz

Born: February 5, 1909, Łódź, Poland
Died: January 17, 1969, Warsaw, Poland

Quartet for Four Violins

• Composed: 1949
  
• Premiere: September 21, 1951, Liège, Belgium
  
• Duration: approx. 11 minutes

Known as the First Lady of Polish Music, Grażyna Bacewicz was a major force in the cultural life of 20th-century Poland. She was one of the most prominent violinists and composers of her generation and an inspiration to countless artists who followed in her path. In Bacewicz’s short life — she died of a heart attack weeks before her 60th birthday — she witnessed two World Wars and navigated a creative career within the restrictive confines of a Soviet regime. She is immortalized in Poland today with streets and schools named in her honor, and she is celebrated in her home country and abroad as an innovative composer who always stayed true to her voice. 

Bacewicz was born in 1909 to a musical family in the industrial town of Łódź in central Poland. Her father played violin and worked as a music teacher in local schools. As a child, Bacewicz took up the violin and played chamber music at home with her two older brothers. After high school, she attended the Warsaw Conservatory, studying violin, piano, composition and philosophy. At the urging of Karol Szymanowski, an influential Polish composer, Bacewicz traveled to Paris to broaden her horizons and study with the famed teacher Nadia Boulanger. In the years before World War II, Bacewicz’s career as a violinist took off as she won awards at international competitions and toured Europe as a soloist. 

In 1936, Bacewicz settled back in her home country and accepted a position as concertmaster with the Polish Radio Orchestra. During the two years she worked in the orchestra, she never stopped composing and wrote prolifically despite the busy touring schedule. In an interview later in life she spoke of her process, saying: “I’m capable of working on one composition for many hours daily. Usually I take a break in the middle of the day, but even during the break my brain keeps on working. I like to get very, very tired. It’s sometimes then that I suddenly get my best ideas.” 

Soon after starting work in the orchestra, Bacewicz married Andrzej Biernacki, a physician and amateur pianist; she later gave birth to a daughter in 1942. During the war years in Warsaw, she gave secret concerts in private homes and coffee shops before the family was displaced from their home and moved to the city of Lublin. When they returned to Warsaw in 1945, Bacewicz chose to focus more intently on composing. This coincided with the rise of nationalism and the onslaught of creative restrictions brought on by the Soviet doctrine of socialist realism. The ambiguous guidelines of the cultural doctrine allowed the government to discriminate against artists whose work was deemed too formal or avant-garde for the masses. The preferred style, imposed by the regime, was for music that was rooted in folk traditions with a form and tonality that would appeal to the working classes. Bacewicz’s compositional style and interest in folk music aligned with the state-sanctioned rules, and her reputation as a cherished performer helped protect her from any crackdowns on her work. 

The Quartet for Four Violins was composed in 1949 and embodies the idea of socialist realism by incorporating idioms of Polish folk music within a neoclassical framework. Although she objected to her music being categorized as neoclassic, the structure and tone of this quartet does lean on the principles of clarity and balance that define the style. Bacewicz wrote the work as a pedagogical piece and the score is inscribed with a dedication to her conservatory students.

The first movement, marked Allegretto, is made up of three themes. The first is a mournful yet warm melody that weaves chromatically over the drone of a rhythmic repeated figure. Three violins begin the melody in parallel motion, the inner voice providing harmony as they move in contour together. As the melody grows, the inner voices diverge to move in contrasting motion, creating small tensions that soon resolve in the peaceful quiet of the rhythmic pulsing. The second theme is a jaunty dance with offbeat accents that segues into the third theme, a lilting melody that is played in canon. Trills and pizzicato are featured prominently, adding an energetic element to the music. Each theme then repeats, with slight alterations and in condensed versions of the originals. The opening drone has moved up a whole step from D to E, bringing the melodic line up in register as well. The playful second tune is much the same, and the third melody has moved down a half-step in pitch. A short coda of pizzicatos and rushing figures conclude the movement. 

A poignant and somber second movement, the Andante tranquillo, makes up the center of the piece. Bacewicz brilliantly blends the four violins, trading the melody between them as though they were one organism breathing together. Within this unified whole, multiple textures of pizzicato, harmonics and trills appear, adding depth and intrigue to the sound. Twice the quartet rises above the mostly soft dynamic, with upward-reaching trills and an impassioned turn of phrase. The movement ends in hushed tones and sustained notes, all with the musical instruction perdendosi — a dying or fading away to nothing.

The final movement, a spirited Molto allegro, begins with off-beat chords that serve as a recurring motive throughout. The melody hints at Polish folk music with its sudden accents and brusque accompaniment. A second theme features a more legato lyrical melody in the first violin while the underlying parts maintain the lively bustle and surprising accents of a folk dance. The rousing coda features all four violins in thrilling rhythmic unison. In the last seconds of music, the fourth violin breaks away with a rapid-fire flourish of notes before the group delivers the last chords with resounding finality. 

© Catherine Case