Sikorski
‘The piece was written in 1966 and has since been performed several times by the Borodin Quartet. I worked on it (with interruptions) for a year and a half. During that time, the original concept changed completely. I had to write an athematic first movement (a glissando chaos with briefly appearing micro-motifs), a canon (with variable micro-motifs) and an equally athematic aleatoric fugue. But when the second movement was finished first (which was performed as planned), I realised that this way of writing does not allow for such contrasts. The improvisation of the canon would then fall out of the frame and mean a break in form. But the canon was already there. And everything still to be written had to be orientated towards it.
There were three movements (Sonata, Canon, Cadenza), which are much freer than the forms given. The sonata has no recapitulation. The beginning of the second movement, which is a version of the main theme, could also be regarded as its recapitulation. Or the culmination of the third movement, where an attempt at a recapitulation is made, but which fails due to the subsequent quasi aleatoric breakthrough. Or finally the coda of the finale, where a third variation of the main theme of the first movement can be heard.
The second movement, the canon, is not really a canon. Thematic quasi-improvisations are performed by all the instruments one after the other, accompanied by freely varying echoes. As the movement progresses, these ‘shadowy’ imitations become increasingly free, leading to the culmination of a completely polyphonic independence of the voices. The third movement is a collective cadenza in which the quartet is treated as a single homogeneous instrument. In the course of a dynamic intensification, it splits again into an ensemble of four independent performers, which immediately leads to a culmination crisis: here the dynamic energy that has built up in the course of the intensifications is discharged, so to speak, in an episode of ostinato. Although everything is precisely notated, the impression is of an aleatoric disruption of communication, as if everyone is playing without paying attention to the others. I regarded this as the climax of the piece.’ (Alfred Schnittke)