Stravinsky's 3 Pieces for String Quartet: Behind the Music

The Juilliard Quartet is performing these seemingly insignificant little pieces (I mean, 3 very different pieces in about 7 or 8 minutes of music) which are very difficult to program and sometimes difficult to understand, they're so short.

But there really is a complex context around them, in terms of the music itself, what was going on in the composer's life at the time and the history of the time they were composed, not to mention the significance they play in the development of Stravinsky's style following his most famous work, premiered the previous year, his ballet The Rite of Spring, generally regarded as the work that began what we think of as 20th Century Music.

That's what I explore in this post, "Stravinsky's 3 Pieces: Building Bridges" over at the Market Square Concerts' Blog.

And this just added: a post about the Mozart Quartet, K.464, one of the "Haydn" Quartets, on the program - Mozart & Haydn: The Birth of a Musical Legacy.

- Dick Strawser