(Fr.).
A title used in the late 18th century, especially in France, for a kind of composition for four solo instruments, usually two violins, viola and cello (occasionally a flute, oboe or clarinet replaced the first violin). In this context ‘concertant’ referred to a piece in which all four instruments were essential to the musical discourse, not primarily, as is sometimes thought, to one which was ‘brilliant’ and ‘showy’. As a title, ‘Quatuor concertant’ was assigned rather loosely – perhaps by the composer, more likely by the publisher – to distinguish this genre from quartets in which the first violin dominated the main melodic action and from quartets in which several instruments might play a single part, perhaps with continuo, in the manner of a chamber sinfonia. The quatuor concertant appears to have had one of the first explicitly prescribed scorings in the history of instrumental ensemble music.
Several thousand quatuors concertants, by no fewer than 200 composers, appeared on the Parisian musical market (in sets of printed parts) between c1770 and 1800; fewer works were so titled in the first decades of the 19th century. Although Paris was the publication capital and also a centre for their composition and performance, many of the same works were published elsewhere, but not always with the designation ‘concertant’ on their title-pages. Composers of these quartets included E.-B.-J. Barrière, G.M. Cambini, N.-M. Dalayrac, J.-B. Davaux, Federigo Fiorillo, L.E. Jadin, I. Pleyel, Pierre Vachon and G.B. Viotti.
Quatuors concertants, which appealed to amateurs, were normally in two or three movements, the first usually in sonata form. Changes of texture were decisive for formal structure and, particularly in sonata forms, assumed a syntax of their own. The most characteristic texture was that of dialogue in which players exchanged roles, each with his solo moment. Contemporary critics praised such works for being ‘bien dialogués’. Conventional treatment of familiar forms accommodated an almost theatrical succession of rapidly contrasting affective gestures – clichés from opera, concerto and other popular sources. A varied palette of sound and a brilliance and elegance of individual moments created structures which at times seem episodic or even narrative.
La LaurencieEF
MGG2 (‘Streichquartett’, L. Finscher)
D.L. Trimpert: Die Quatuors concertants von Giuseppe Cambini (Tutzing, 1967)
D. Klein: Le quatuor à cordes français au 18e siècle (diss., U. of Paris, 1970)
J.M. Levy: The Quatuor Concertant in Paris in the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century (diss., Stanford U., 1971)
R. Hickman: ‘The Flowering of the Viennese String Quartet in the Late Eighteenth Century’, MR, l (1989), 157–80
JANET M. LEVY