String Quartet No. 13 is one of a series of seventeen works in the medium by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was written in 1951. A performance of it lasts approximately twenty minutes.
String Quartet No. 13 is one of a series of seventeen works in the medium by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was written in 1951. A performance of it lasts approximately twenty minutes.
According to the catalog published by the Museu Villa-Lobos, the Thirteenth Quartet was composed in New York, but details of the occasion of the first performance are unknown[1] Another source says it was composed in Rio de Janeiro and first performed in 1953.[2] Both sources agree the year of composition was 1951 and that the score is dedicated to the Quarteto Municipal de São Paulo.
Like most of Villa-Lobos's works in the medium, the quartet consists of four movements:
All four movements of this quartet are in ternary, ABA form.[3] In the first movement, the return of the A section is restricted to its first half, the remainder being replaced with a ten-bar coda.[4]
The second movement is a scherzo, concluding with a coda made from material taken from the central, B section.[5]
The third, slow movement exhibits subtle features of modinha rhythms in 6/4 time.[6] The main theme of this movement has been criticised as "exceptionally shapeless".(Tarasti 1995, p. 317)
The finale is very similar to the opening movement, and uses as its main theme a subject connected by its intervallic structure to that of the fugato that opens the first movement.[7] Eero Tarasti finds this theme "surprisingly feeble".(Tarasti 1995, p. 317)
Chronological, in order of dates of recording.