String Quartet in C minor op. 56

Allegro maestoso ed espressivo – Minuetto : Moderato – Adagio cantabile e sostenuto – Finale : Vivace

Op. 56 is a member of the group of twelve quartets which Onslow composed during 1833-34 after having discovered the late quartets of Beethoven espoused in Paris by Pierre Baillot. The dedicatee of this work was the cellist Alexandre Chevillard (1811-1877), a member of various orchestras (one of them being the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire), who later taught at the Conservatoire. This instrumentalist was one of the first in France to recognise the importance of late Beethoven. Assisted by the violinist Jean-Pierre Maurin (one of Baillot’s former pupils), he formed the Société des Derniers Quatuors de Beethoven in 1852. Although Onslow himself was never an unquestioning admirer of these exceptional scores, he was nonetheless shaken to the core by them. Through discovering them his writing became richer and more diversified: in Op. 56 one encounters a variety of textures and a theatricality in his discourse in the development section of the first movement; there is a special balance involving the four players in the Adagio with all the instruments taking a melodic role; and lastly, a rhythmical vigour in the Finale. Onslow dares to make use of a certain harshness (for example, in the Vivace), whilst preserving the openhearted cantabile which characterizes him. If he can briefly allow himself to disrupt the feeling for the time signature, he never permits himself the kind of “punchy” accents as hammered out by the maestro from Bonn. Where Onslow makes the second movement larger, with a structure of consisting of minuet-trio-minuet-trio-minuet (as in Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony), this is above all done so that the quartet’s dedicatee would be able to play this trio swirling with scales and staccato arpeggios not once, but twice.