String Quartet

1957

19 minutes

2 violins, viola, and cello

November 21, 1957, Skinner Recital Hall, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, Claremont String Quartet: Marc Goetlieb and Vladimir Weisman, violins, William Schoen, viola, and Irving Klein, cello

Available on demo CD

Allegro appassionato
Allegro di bravura
Lento
Allegretto a la danza

With A Guide to the Life Expectancy of a Rose and the String Quartet Fine seems to have advanced to a more mature level of composition. The angular lines of her early music are replaced by longer and more graceful curves. She is comfortable with large-scale designs, and although the Quartet has no text, the music has a dramatic quality that was such an important aspect of A Guide. Its humor is replaced with a seriousness and intensity that changes from movement to movement while maintaining an overall expressiveness.

–Heidi Von Gunden, The Music of Vivian Fine, Scarecrow Press, 1999

“The Claremont Quartet…gave a splendid reading of Miss Fine’s lyrical and spontaneous String Quartet.”

–The New York Times, February 9, 1959

String Quartet