DESCRIPTION:
Schoenberg diverged from the serial row-form in this String Quartet to the extent that, when questioned about a particular passage by a violinist from Kolisch's quartet he angrily responded: ''If I hear an F-sharp I will write an F-sharp . . . Just because of your stupid theory you are telling me what to write?'' This is an indication of his
revulsion towards conceptual responses to composition
as an actual expression of feeling in sound. He was telling the theorist What it Is.

How did Kolisch look at it? The tone rows are used as motifs and not as schematic solutions to tonic dilemmas. The series form a dense contrapuntal texture which, apparently untrue to form, return to classical compositional procedure. For example, in the First Movement there is the
suggestion of sonata form and what seems to be a relaxation of 12-tone technique as the same pitches occur for 12 measures, in apparent defiance of his principled compositional stance. There is a recurrence of varied shapes which function as connective rather than motivic tissue and the movement ends with a leaping and falling theme in an increasingly higher voice.

In the Second Movement there is a series of variations which violate stylistic expectation and appear to repudiate notions of format and theme. The Intermezzo Movement with prominent viola presents a fluid thematic section, suggesting a motif with a narrow range and repeated notes
culminating in a violent trio fading to a lyrical conclusion.

The Fourth Movement is dense and complex with a contrast of internal musical logic and its leaps within a narrow melodic range breathing inconclusiveness and a frenzy to recapitulate sonic material.

This is what we hear and perhaps how we might respond, but does it get to the essence of it? Strictly speaking, a composition refers to nothing but itself and in that respect Hanslick is right. But let us look more closely. I listen to the Kolisch String Quartet's interpretation of Schoenberg's
Third Quartet because I have the desire to hear it, a desire which is born of need or curiosity. This is also because of the unfulfilled expectation that the composition will present itself in the way in which Schoenberg wanted, without any concealment or betrayal by a theorist who might imagine that a composition is the end-result of a musicological
schema. I desire to experience the composition as a collaborative event in which an affective apprehension
will change me. This is an urge to transformation, not a confirmation of a sedimented emotional life which I might have. It is not a plea for the reassurance of a concretely determined pathology. It is an imaginative way out, a
reawakening. It possesses the logic of a dream
which will alter me. The Quartet is, therefore, not so much an object with quantifiable sonic or musicological
characteristics, but an event. This event takes place in time and it was written on a particular historical occasion. But when I listen to it I do not perceive it as an event in that sense. It is an occasion with a consuming fascination in which the everyday world has evaporated and only
essential meaning remains. This is the meaning of imaginative and affective apprehension. Quantifiable and calculable external circumstances have disappeared as I give myself over to the event. My apprehension of the
composition is not chronological but successive, the meaning of which unfolds as I attend to it. This is areal time, not the time of the clock, and its presenting itself is my composition, Schoenberg being the expressive inventor of the circumstance, the one who gives shape and logic to sound. The composition is not analogous to anything but itself and his Third Quartet invokes a meaning of
which, temporally and affectively,

I am the secret sharer.

We listen here for: What it Is.

Michael Lawrence Woods, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, 2010

[This recording is by the Kohon String Quartet]