By Steve Elman
Wadada Leo Smith is amongst probably the most prolific composers of string quartets in the fashionable era, the one Black composer to have written so many, and one of the vital adventurous writers of quartets by way of his notation system and the distinctiveness of his musical language.
In my review of the 2022 release of string quartets Nos 1 – 12 by Wadada Leo Smith, I noted their significance as a vital cycle in string quartet repertoire and as probably the most significant body of labor for string quartet ever written by a composer whose primary identity with the general public is as a jazz musician.
But there’s rather a lot more to the story, as I learned in my research over the past few months.
Like his contemporaries within the Chicago School of the jazz avant-garde — Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, and others who emerged from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music, Smith seeks to search out ways for his music — whether it’s heard as jazz or classical or as music without boundaries — to sound fresh and of the moment, at the same time as it evidences the profundity of considered thought. These qualities are amply manifested within the quartets.
On this post, I’d wish to delve into the Why and How of those pieces, since the context wherein Smith created them is interesting in itself, and since the Why and How illuminate the composer as an individual and as a creative artist.
A listener who has begun to explore the Smith quartets will probably ask: Where do they arrive from?
Smith has been direct about his inspirations as a author of string quartets. He says he began writing for the medium in 1965, after hearing Ornette Coleman’s “Dedication to Poets and Writers,” which was played at Coleman’s 1962 Town Hall concert in Recent York City and released on ESP-Disk’ in 1965.
This short work for string quartet is Coleman’s first classical piece, his only known work for string quartet, and the primary through-composed classical work by a composer whose primary association for the general public is as a jazz musician (all of Ellington’s hybrid pieces involved improvised solos for himself or members of his orchestra, and Mingus’s through-composed work was yet to return). “Dedication to Poets and Writers” is totally coherent inside the classical vernacular and deserves rediscovery by string quartets with a passion for brand spanking new music. The long lines of melody that thread through it seem to be they could possibly be transcriptions of Coleman’s own saxophone solos from the period. That is clearly Coleman’s music in Coleman’s voice, transferred to a different medium, and a worthy inspiration to a young performer-composer.
Smith says he was also inspired by Bartók’s six string quartets. These works are composed of temporary kernels of notes which can be transformed ingeniously into complex fabrics of sound that follow a number of the established types of classical music – but in a really personal way. Smith doesn’t construct his music as Bartók did (more about this below), but Smith’s language is probably closest to Bartók’s among the many top rank of classical composers, and people who love Bartók will find Smith’s language congenial.
Smith also cites the late Beethoven quartets, Debussy’s quartet, and the string quartet writing of John Lewis (whose “Sketch,” with the Beaux Arts String Quartet, was issued on Atlantic in 1960) as other influences.
These examples, from masters of the shape, are only works that Smith particularly admires. His quartets usually are not “within the kind of” every other composer. They’re a logical progression for an artist whose work throughout his profession has been an adventure in combining spontaneous and planned elements.
A lot of his other works feel and sound like jazz. But that is adventurous and ground-breaking jazz with profound ambition as I noted in a post about his 4 “Chicago Symphonies.” They usually are not written for orchestra, but for what looks, on its face, to be a typical jazz quartet — trumpet, saxophone, bass and drums. In contexts like these, Smith is a warm and supple soloist whose admiration for Miles Davis is apparent — but (just as in his string quartets), Smith is standing on the shoulders of his predecessors, not attempting to emulate them.
It might come as a surprise that Smith didn’t hear Shostakovich’s landmark cycle of fifteen quartets until 2013, almost 50 years after he began writing his quartets and when he had already accomplished eight. Smith’s language was fully formed by that point, but he has embraced the Shostakovich works with enthusiasm since hearing them. In a July 2016 interview he said, “In my studio straight away I actually have [the scores of] every considered one of the string quartets that Shostakovich composed. And the late Beethoven string quartets. And Béla Bartók’s six string quartets. And Villa-Lobos’s seventeen string quartets.”
Comparison between Shostakovich and Smith might be inevitable. It’s instructive, especially if Shostakovich’s works are your paradigms of the medium in the 20th century.
Shostakovich’s sound-world is just not like Smith’s. His quartets always seize a listener’s attention with their strong musical motifs and song-derived earworms. He stays concerned with traditional classical forms even when he comes near breaking their bonds. His quartets are also suffused with an intense personal drama; the composer is struggling to suggest feelings which can be imprisoned deep inside his own heart. Smith’s language is beyond tonality, more abstract and fewer tuneful than Shostakovich’s, and he expresses no such angst about his life or his world.
Shostakovich’s movements are more private than public, like diary entries which have come to light posthumously. Smith’s are more public than private, like readings of poems that express his reflections on his life and his hopes for a greater world.
Shostakovich’s cycle involves a dark end, as he stares into the abyss of eternity within the fifteenth quartet with a way that he’s about to enter a spot of nothingness. Smith’s greater quartets have all been written after the age that Shostakovich died. In his pieces there isn’t a sense of the darkening hours in his days; as a substitute, he’s glorying in a wealthy sunset.
If Shostakovich’s work may be heard as an organic product of the Soviet era in Russia, Smith’s may be heard as an organic product of late-twentieth-century American optimism. If Shostakovich is quietly celebrating the persistence of the creative spirit over a world of repression, Smith is exuberantly celebrating the vitality of a society where creative personal expression is moving forward, despite the obstacles in its way.
Shostakovich dedicated his Quartet No. 8 to “the victims of fascism and war” and 6 of the others (collectively and individually) to the members of the Beethoven Quartet, who premiered thirteen of the works. Otherwise, he allows his string quartet music to face as pure sound for the listener to interpret.
On the age Shostakovich died, he had written fifteen quartets. At the identical age, Smith had written only six, wherein he tested himself and the shape to see what he could accomplish. The quartets Smith has written after the primary six, up to now decade-plus — after his 70th birthday — are recent testaments in a more confident language, his more mature works within the idiom. He apparently has found the medium so rewarding that he continues so as to add to his cycle.
Smith’s titles show that his music is at the very least a partial expression of his reverence for his cultural heroes. It is evident from the people named in his first twelve quartets that Smith is well aware of the challenges that got here with widening the horizon of freedom in America. His works aren’t any less optimistic because they recognize that struggle. Quartet No. 5 is devoted to Haki Madhubuti, a poet who co-founded the Chicago-based Third World Press, an outlet for Black literature. Quartet No. 7 is inscribed “In Remembrance of Dorothy Ann Stone” – Stone was a flute virtuoso who founded a pioneering new-music group in Los Angeles, the California EAR Unit. And there are ten movements named for Smith’s predecessors in music, including five pioneering Black composers of classical music and five titans of jazz, blues, and gospel.
In my review, I noted that the titles Smith has given to a number of the quartets, including the people he names as honorees in individual movements, mustn’t be considered keys to understanding the compositions. A listener should engage directly with the music first, see the way it makes them feel, and only then reflect on what additional resonances the titles or names may suggest.
Listed below are just a few comparisons of Smith’s titles with the music because it is heard on the brand new set.
The title of quartet No. 6 (“Taif: Prayer within the Garden of the Hejaz”) evokes the Middle East and suggests a connection to Smith’s Muslim faith. Still, the music seems to exist somewhat independently of either. “Garden of the Hejaz” refers to Al Bahah, a town within the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia that has grown around a hilltop village with a 400-year history. The music of No. 6 is just not conspicuously Middle-Eastern, and its tone is just not particularly contemplative or prayerful. It has an unusual and distinctive color, due to a trio of instruments playing mostly in contrast with (but subordinate to) the string quartet — trumpet and piano each have outstanding roles here, with support from a percussionist. There may be a moment of particular eloquence from Smith himself, who plays the trumpet part, and this will be analogous to the prayer within the title. But a listener actually doesn’t need the title to listen to the eloquence within the playing.
No. 10, the one-movement quartet named for Angela Davis, is eloquent, poetic, meditative, and declamatory by turns. It even includes a bit folk-tune-like motif that’s rare for the cycle as a complete. I actually have the impression that the music is more of an homage to Davis than a portrait of her.
No. 11 could also be particularly notable due to the people Smith names in eight of its nine movements, starting from people in his own biological family to Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Black classical composer Alvin Singleton. It’s the longest of the quartets, taking greater than 90 minutes to perform. However the names, and the indisputable fact that so most of the persons are members of Smith’s circle of relatives, don’t make this his “Family Quartet.” There may be a particular motif that returns in each movement — long unison chords played by the entire 4 strings. Within the central movement, titled “On the Heart’s Core, Knowledge,” this motif blossoms into an extended passage of unison melody that’s striking and really distinctive — considered one of the highlights of your complete quartet cycle. But is Smith suggesting some sort of confluence amongst all of the people he names? I don’t think so.
Even in Quartet No. 1, wherein each of the 4 movements is called for a pioneering Black classical composer, the naming doesn’t repay in direct references to the 4 composers’ styles. Each of them wrote in modern classical idioms, and every had some personal connection to the jazz tradition — a trait Smith shares with them. However the connections may stop there.
- Ulysses Kay, for whom the primary movement of No. 1 is called, composed mostly in a neo-classical style that was tonally adventurous. He had a present for melody. Smith’s movement has some striking features, including a passage of heavily massed sound that means the entire quartet’s players playing as a lot of their strings as possible concurrently.
- T. J. Anderson, the composer named within the second movement, writes open-hearted modern music that’s eclectic and revolutionary, with some usage of non-traditional scoring and organizational techniques. This movement has a lot of fire and excitement, with sudden bursts and interjections.
- Hale Smith, named within the third movement, was a Midwesterner who wrote modern music with an open spaciousness that evokes the large skies of the heartland. This movement is long-breathed, but stuffed with tension.
- The music of George Walker, for whom the last movement is called, was harmonically modern, crafted with elegance and style. This movement is a series of passionate songs. The movement begins with a fantastic solo cello statement which evolves into lyrical lines played by each member of the quartet, sometimes in duet, sometimes as a gaggle, sometimes independently, sometimes in near-consonance, almost at all times songful.
Strictly speaking, only seven of those twelve pieces are string quartets in the normal sense — written for less than two violins, viola, and cello. 4 of the others herald additional instruments, and these augmented quartets are notable for the range of how wherein Smith integrates the opposite timbres. Nevertheless, even in each of those, the normal quartet stays the principal voice.
These “ringers” ought to be considered true string quartets, but quartets wherein the usual ensemble is decorated, juxtaposed, or integrated with other instrumental colours. (In reality, the concept of a “string quartet” having additional instruments or voice as coloring elements is just not recent with Smith. Arnold Schoenberg included voice in his second quartet, and Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe added didjeridu to 3 of his.)
Smith’s No. 4 is written for the normal quartet plus harp, which is played on this recording by Los Angeles-based harpist Alison Bjorkedal. The harp has an ornamental role on this piece aside from a brief solo interlude that serves because the fourth movement. Overall, the work has a powerful sense of forward motion and keenness. I particularly just like the third and fifth movements.
No. 6, “Taif: Prayer within the Garden of the Hejaz” is written for the normal quartet and a contrasting trio of trumpet, piano, and percussion (traps without snares [played with mallets], cymbals, marimba, and just a few little percussion instruments). The guest artists on this recording are Wadada Leo Smith himself playing trumpet, Anthony Davis (a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer in his own right) playing piano, and Lynn Vartan handling the percussion parts. Once more, the string quartet has the first role. Each of the 2 ensembles is given an independent statement in the primary two sections. Within the third, the strings begin, and the augmenting trio progressively takes over and gets the ultimate words. In the ultimate section, the strings have long opening and shutting statements, juxtaposed with a really short fanfare-like section from the augmenting trio a couple of minute and half before the tip of the movement.
The seventh and eighth quartets are named for species of desert succulents, and each include guest artists. It might be a coincidence that the work with a Los Angeles-based guest is called for a Western plant and the work with a Recent York-based guest is called for an Eastern one, however the symmetry is pleasant.
No. 7, “Ten Thousand Ceveus Peruvianus Amemevical (In Remembrance of Dorothy Ann Stone)” is written for the normal quartet with amplified acoustic guitar, played on this recording by Stuart Fox, a Los Angeles-based musician who has a really broad range of repertoire, from Renaissance lute to recent music. The composition sets up a continuing conversation among the many five instruments, with occasional solo spots for the guitar.
No. 8, “Opuntia Humifusa” is written for the normal quartet with trumpet (again on this recording played the composer) and wordless voice, sung here by baritone Thomas Buckner, a Recent York-based singer who has been a number one light of recent music for greater than 40 years. He can be a former member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM) in Chicago, where Smith began his composing and performing profession. Buckner’s voice is an interesting compromise between wind and string instrument — he favors long tones, and holds pitch well without vibrato. He draws on just a few prolonged techniques on this piece, but he uses mostly pure tones, produced without operatic show or jazz inflection. The music of No. 8 is kaleidoscopic, with the strings within the highlight more often than not, but there are solo interludes for the voice and the trumpet, and a brief duet for voice and trumpet without the strings.
Finally on this set, there’s Quartet No. 12, which is exclusive in Smith’ s work thus far, and strange for any composer — it’s a quartet for 4 violas, led by RedKoral’s violist Andrew McIntosh. This can be a rare turn within the highlight for a “subordinate” string instrument, which becomes an evocative celebration of all of the wealthy sonorities it might produce.
Quartet No. 13, which is as yet unrecorded, can be reportedly an augmented work, including soprano voice.
Smith described the challenges RedKoral and the opposite musicians faced in bringing his scores to life when he spoke in 2018 with violist Doyle Armbrust of the Spektral Quartet:
My scores are essentially non-metric, and a full page is a ‘bar’ with no down and up beats. A part of the horizontal flow of the music comes from the rating but inside [a performing] ensemble the leadership shifts from individual to individual as the choices for continuity keep changing from page to page. . . . Even in cases where there are clearly written lines, the artists . . . use their imagination to construct or shape the music lines, and subsequently its flow.
In July 2022, Seth Colter Partitions filled out this idea and its challenges in an article on the quartets within the Recent York Times: “Players use a ‘constructed key’ of Smith’s design when interpreting and creating their responses to the symbols and colours on each page. A few of his quartets require players to maneuver forwards and backwards between traditional notation and Ankhrasmation pages, inside a single movement. Navigating this takes practice and dedication.”
Partitions’s article also features a reproduction of a page from the ninth movement of Smith’s Quartet No. 11, the movement dedicated to his father – “Red Autumn’s Gold (For Lucius G. Smith).”
Anyone thinking about the How of Smith’s music must have a serious have a look at the image there, and on the Ankhrasmation pages of his website, where more pages are reproduced. Smith’s site also offers 4 pages of scores from his “Seasons” symphonies, together with descriptive notes that show what the visual images represent and supply specific directions to the performers.
(Note: The “Seasons” symphonies usually are not pieces for orchestra. In a 2016 performance at The Lab in San Francisco, the instrumentation was trumpet (played by Smith himself), piano (played by Anthony Davis), harp, percussion, and electronics. This link provides a 10-minute video excerpt of that performance.)
Despite all of the titles and the technical challenges to the players, the sound of the music and its impact are ultimately the one things that matter to the extraordinary listener. And this reality presents necessary challenges to the lasting influence and continued performance of Smith’s music. When the composer is gone, the strategy to interpret an Ankhrasmation rating may have to be transmitted to young musicians orally, by someone who knows Smith’s systems intimately — as I see it now, that torch can be most appropriately carried by considered one of the members of RedKoral. But for those at more distance from the music, those that realize it from recordings alone, performance will mean transcription of a recording as a guide to interpreting the rating — which may be a legitimate act from Smith’s standpoint, nevertheless it also would sacrifice the non-public interpretive element that might bring the music to life in the way in which the composer desires.
So hear the music in its time, now, vitally interpreted by living artists under the guidance of a living composer. And sit up for its next chapters.
MORE:
I’m profoundly grateful to my old friend and radio colleague Doug Briscoe for providing his invaluable musicological advice in the ultimate edit of this essay.
Quite a few sources illuminate how Smith has modified quartets 9 – 12, and supply a preview of No. 13.
Some insight into the unique inspiration of Quartet No. 9 comes from the Hartford Jazz Society newsletter in 2017 in a preview of a RedKoral performance in Wadada’s “CREATE Festival in Recent Haven, April 2017, when he was on the school at Yale.
“No. 9” features 4 movements dedicated to female African-American pioneers in music and the Civil Rights movement (Ma Rainey, Marian Anderson, Rosa Parks, and Angela Davis).
Two movements from the unique idea remain in the ultimate version of No. 9, they usually have a completeness that makes them ideal companions. The Angela Davis portion can have been expanded or transferred to independent status within the one-movement Quartet No. 10. The Rosa Parks music can have been transformed into or included inside his Pure Love: an Oratorio of Seven Songs (released on TUM, 2019) which incorporates RedKoral among the many performers — but there aren’t any pure string-quartet movements as such in it.
A 2017 article by Ted Panken features a reference to a bit called “Quartet No. 10”, with Anthony Davis on piano, performed on April 20, 2017 at The Stone in NYC – but that is clearly not the identical piece because the one given the ultimate title of No. 10. It is just not known whether that music was incorporated into the finished version of No. 10, which doesn’t include piano.
In 2022, recent subtitles were added for movements 4 and 6 of Quartet no. 11, the movements naming Smith’s daughters, as shown in a program for a performance by RedKoral at LAXART, May 2022:
- Kashala Kiom Smith (Two Stars in a Golden Sky and the Book)
- Sarhanna Kabell Smith (A Reddie Copper Sky)
Some insight into the unique inspiration of Quartet No. 12 comes from the Hartford Jazz Society newsletter in 2017 which incorporates this note: “Sunday’s concert begins with Smith’s 12th String Quartet, the “Pacifica,” which was premiered on the 2016 Vision Festival and was written for 4 violas with Smith’s trumpet and electronics.”
Avant Music News also includes an outline of a performance of the identical version of No. 12.
In the ultimate version of No. 12, the 4-viola concept and the “Pacifica” name stays — now attached only to the second movement — but Smith’s trumpet and the electronic effects are gone. As well as, there’s a now a movement named for Billie Holiday.
Some indication concerning the character of Quartet No. 13, which has not yet been recorded, comes from a LAXART program in May 2022, previewing the quartet’s West Coast premiere. The performers are shown as Karen Parks, soprano, with the RedKoral Quartet. The movement titles are also shown:
- The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (Text by Amiri Baraka)
II. Billie Holiday, 1915-1959: The Dark Lady of the Sonnets
III. Fred Hampton: I’m a Revolutionary for Freedom, Liberty and Justice
IV. Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party 1964 / Black Panther Party 1966 – Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Bob Moses, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Elbert Howard
Finally, some perspective on Wadada Leo Smith’s place in string quartet history:
Smith, who turned 81 in December 2022, begin writing his first quartet in 1965 (even though it took 17 years for that work to achieve its final form). He began his second quartet in 1969, and it reached its final form in 1980; this was the primary quartet that he declared “finished.” As of this date, his cycle of quartets now stands at 17.
With 1965 because the starting date, he has been writing for the medium for 58 years. With 1980 (the 12 months his second quartet was accomplished) because the starting date, he has been fully engaged in writing quartets for 43 years. He’s amongst probably the most prolific composers of string quartets in the fashionable era, the one Black composer to have written so many, and one of the vital adventurous writers of quartets by way of his notation system and the distinctiveness of his musical language.
The writing of ensemble pieces for early viols can have begun as early because the mid-1500s, although these early works wouldn’t sound just like the string quartets we all know today. For a whole bunch of years, pieces for 4 stringed instruments, were most frequently “occasional music”– background music or light music for events held by the nobility and the rich.
Serious and significant works in the shape began to be produced within the late 1700s by Franz Josef Haydn — as he did in so many other genres, Haydn grew in his prowess of composing these pieces over time, and he brought the shape to maturity as he did so. He wrote his first string quartet around 1760 and his last in 1803, a span of greater than 40 years, over which period he wrote some 77 works for string quartet.
Perhaps probably the most prolific composer of string quartets in history was Italian composer Giuseppe Cambini (1746 – 1825?), who began writing them about 1772, and produced at the very least 149 in about 50 years.
Other prolific composers of string quartets within the classical era include Johann Albrechtsberger (1736 – 1809), who wrote 73; Paul Wranitzky (1756 – 1808), who wrote nearly 60; Ignaz Pleyel (1757 – 1831) who wrote some 94 quartets over 60 years of composing; Franz Krommer (1759 – 1831), who’s credited with 100 or more; and Louis (Ludwig) Spohr (1784 -1859), who wrote 36.
The primary masterpieces include the late quartets of Haydn. In his wake, Mozart and Beethoven set recent standards of brilliance. Mozart accomplished his first string quartet in 1770 and wrote the 23rd, his last, in 1790, in a span of about 20 years, at a mean of multiple quartet a 12 months. Beethoven began his first quartet in 1798 and wrote the 16th, his last, in 1826, a span of 28 years.
Then the floodgates open. Tons of of quartets (possibly greater than a thousand) were produced within the 19th century by composers in any respect levels of talent and skill, and the 20th century saw many more.
Franz Schubert was amongst most prolific and distinguished writers of the 19th, with 15 composed over a span of 16 years or so.
In the fashionable era, composers have broadened the language of the shape and the ways wherein their quartets were written. A few of the boldest experimenters were Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951) who wrote 5, 4 of which utilize his serial or twelve-tone system, and John Cage (1912 – 1992) and Witold Lutosławski (1913 – 1994), who each wrote just one, employing probability elements of their compositions.
Listed below are another notable string quartet writers of the fashionable era, ranked by the variety of quartets accomplished as of this date. It’s price noting that, unlike Smith’s, nearly all of their quartets utilize standard notation.
Northern Irish composer Ian Wilson (1964 – ) wrote his first string quartet in 1992. He has written 21 thus far in over 31 years.
Danish composer Vaqn Holmboe (1909 – 1996) wrote his first in 1926 and his last in 1995, producing 21 works over 69 years.
French composer Darius Milhaud (1892 – 1974) wrote his first in 1912 and his last in 1973, producing 19 works over 61 years.
Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov (1970 – ) wrote her first in 1995. She has written 18 thus far over 28 years.
Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (1929 – 2014) wrote his first in 1945 and his last in 2010, producing 18 works over 65 years. Several of his quartets add the Aboriginal instrument the didjeridu to the usual ensemble.
Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 – 1959) wrote his first in 1815 and his last in 1957, producing 17 over 42 years.
English composer Robert Simpson (1921 – 1997) wrote his first in 1945 and his last in 1996, producing 16 works over 51 years.
Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) wrote his first in 1938 and his last in 1974, producing 15 over 36 years.
English composer Peter Maxwell Davies (1934 – 2016) wrote his first in 1961 and left his last unfinished on the time of his death, producing 14 works over 55 years.
English composer David Matthews (1943 – ) wrote his first string quartet 1969. He has written 14 thus far over 54 years.
Russian composer Nikolai Miaskovsky (1950 – 1881) wrote his first in 1907 and his last in 1949, producing 13 over 42 years.
English composer Elisabeth Lutyens (1906 – 1983) wrote her first in 1939 and her last around 1979, producing 13 over 40 years.
English / Irish composer Elizabeth Maconchy (1907 – 1994) wrote her first in 1933 and her last in 1983, producing 13 over 40 years.
Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881 – 1945) wrote his first quartet in 1909 and his last in 1939, producing 6 over 30 years.
Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911 – 2000) wrote his first in 1936 and his last in 1976, producing 5 over 40 years.
Steve Elman’s greater than 4 many years in Recent England public radio have included 10 years as a jazz host within the Seventies, five years as a classical host on WBUR within the Eighties, a brief stint as senior producer of an arts magazine, 13 years as assistant general manager of WBUR, and fill-in classical host on 99.5 WCRB.