Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp minor, Op. 108 (1960): Score and Analysis

Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet 7 is a remarkable piece of music and one of the finest quartets he had ever written. It is the first one to break the chain of keys in the quartet cycle (remember that quartets 1-6 are tonally distant by descending thirds) and is the first minor key quartet to appear in the cycle.

This quartet opens up a series of his 'middle period' quartets (them being 7-10), which are essentially the very best of his quartet writing along with some quartets of his 'late' period (11-15), specifically 13th and 15th, and also of his 'early' period (1-6), specifically 3rd and 5th.

Shostakovich dedicated it to the memory of his first wife Nina Vassilyevna Varzar, who died in December 1954. A tragic event dictated the imagery of the entire quartet. At the time of its composition, it was the darkest quartet. In addition to its tonal plan, where all the movements are in minor keys (as was the case in Prokofiev's second piano sonata and Shostakovich's 4th and 5th symphonies), the imagery lies in the realm of coldness, alienation, blatant fear, and fury. The only theme in major of the secondary subject of the first movement transitions to minor and loses its initial 'brightness'. The quartet is written in three movements:

• Allegretto
• Lento
• Allegro – Allegretto

The two themes of the first movement represent images of internal ironic monologue and hidden, yet supressed, panic anxiety. The two themes of the second movement alternate between mournful songs of solitude and a funeral march. All the themes are permeated by the leitmotif of a diminished tetrachord, but in these themes, it is relatively hidden, as the movements themselves do not carry any internal conflicts. This cold and measured atmosphere is disrupted by a sharp outburst of energy leading to a developmental fugue in the finale, made of the leitmotif and the funeral march. At the climax of the finale, there is a failed recapitulation of the main themes of the first two movements in a mirrored order, followed by a waltz-like epilogue that serves as the "true" recapitulation. Thus, the three-movement cycle forms a unified variant of sonata form, analogous to Franz Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor and George Enescu's String Octet in C major.

To understand the significance of the quartet in the context of the composer's body of work, let's examine the major preceding compositions chronologically. These include Symphony No. 11 in G minor "The Year 1905" Op. 103 (1957) and Cello Concerto No. 1 in E♭ major Op.107 (1959).

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