Petit Quatuor à cordes en ut mineur CG 561

Numerous sketches reveal Gounod’s continued liking for the quartet format. His only known finished quartets were written between 1885 and 1892 to explore the virtues of formal clarity that he advocated to young composers in the face of prevailing trends. Doubts remain about their chronology. Going only by its title, the Petit Quatuor (“Petit” signifying “unpretentious” here) might have been written at the same time as the Petite Symphonie and the Petite Étude-Scherzo for double bass, thus in 1885; nothing is known about its first performance. The troubled solemnity of the initial C minor, echoed again at the end of the work, casts a gloomy light over this work which, when it moves into the Allegro moderato, seems to have shucked off its worries. Over an obsessive motif passed from one instrument to another, the Andante con moto is the movement in which the polyphonic writing affords the greatest variety and density, and in which the inner voices are at their most distinctive. The Scherzo, whose “fairy music” in a minor key recalls Mendelssohn, contains two contrasting trios: one moves over a double pedal while the strange interference-like effect of the viola in the other conjures up the humming of a spinning wheel. After a hesitant start, the final Allegro is reminiscent of a tarantella offset by light contrapuntal passages. However, the sonata form, summarily removed, leads unexpectedly into a repeat of the work’s introduction and the quieter conclusion, in the major key, is nonetheless melancholy.