Minguet Quartett

Welcome to the 19th edition of Klarafestival! The theme Crossroads - Come Together keenly evokes the convergence of the audience, the artists and their inspiring concerts. A meeting place where the leading lights of international classical music enter into dialogue with challenging creations and young talent. 

The inspiration for this edition comes from festival artist Claron McFadden. As she told us in an interview, “I stand at a crossroads where styles and generations cross, meet, and collide”. This notion forms the core of the programme. We hope you will enjoy Klarafestival as a sanctuary of hope, polyphony and beauty in all its forms. As a place where the familiar takes on new meaning and where new experiences take you by surprise. 

Jan Raes, chairman

Joost Fonteyne, intendant

Chantal Pattyn, manager Klara

2024 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Italian composer Luigi Nono (1924-1990). His pioneering music symbolised the visionary new wind that blew through the world of music from the 1950s on. The Minguet Quartett celebrates Nono’s birthday and offers an insight into the musical universe of his only string quartet, Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima. The quartet is an intersection at which the new paths sought by the composer cross the music and influences that shaped him.   

Moving sounds

The musical universe in which Nono immerses us in Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima centres on a personal element: ‘My work is based on a human stimulus: an event, an experience or a text that touches my instinct and my soul.’ The experience that dominated his life between July 1979 and January 1980 – the period during which he composed his quartet – is, as Nono wrote, the need ‘to reconsider my entire existence as a musician and as an intellectual in this society, to discover new possibilities of cognition and creativity.’ In Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima, Nono introduces a new sound idiom. He works with what he calls ‘moving sounds’ which determine the music in a fragmentary way. The expressive musical gestures of which the quartet consists often last but a few seconds. They are tranquil fragments that move around the edge of the perceptible. The silence is an essential component of the music. Nono requires the performers to use such playing techniques as striking or rubbing with the horsehairs of the bow, with the bow alone, or both simultaneously. At other times, the performers play a wide range of tremolos, vibratos and overtones, work with different degrees of pizzicato or play the violin on, next to or behind the bridge. There is no longer any build-up or release of tension. Nono deprives the listener of any form of support, as the entire listening experience revolves around the delicate vulnerability of the music.    

Silent songs

The driving force behind the quartet is a set of 47 quotes from works by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), which Nono notes in 52 places in the score. Twelve of these are from the poem Diotima, written by Hölderlin in 1796 about a woman who embodies his highest ideal of beauty and wisdom. Some of the literary quotes Nono adopts consist of a single word. Others return multiple times, such as ‘... Das Weisst Aber du nicht…’ from the poem Wenn aus der Ferne: this is quoted five times. Hölderlin’s words form the ‘lyrics’ of the quartet, while remaining silent to the listener. In fact, Nono emphasises in the preface that the verses must not be recited or mentioned during performance. They form an internal programme intended solely for the performers. He calls these ‘silent songs’. The four musicians ‘may sing them in silence as they experience them, as sounds which strive for the ‘delicate harmony of the inner life’’ (Hölderlin).

The doubting head

The only footholds that Nono offers are a number of musical references to works by  Johannes Ockeghem, Ludwig van Beethoven and Guiseppe Verdi, woven into Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima and to which Minguet Quartett also introduces us throughout the concert. These references are part of the quartet’s multi-layered universe as each of them symbolises a stage of Nono’s life. For example, just before the end, the viola dips into the theme of Ockeghem’s song Malor Me Bat, published in Nono’s birthplace Venice in 1501. Ockeghem is known as the ‘father of modern counterpoint’, thanks to his emphasis on the use of complex polyphonic composition techniques. With this quote, Nono reaches towards the roots of music as well as towards his own background. He became familiar with Ockeghem’s music while studying under Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) who encouraged him to seek new paths. The reference to Ockeghem shows how Nono wanted to reinvent himself as a composer, as he did while studying. Or, in the words of Hölderlin: ‘When I sank into mourning… The doubting head’.

The flame of hope for the past

Nono demonstrates that his quartet is a response to that doubt with the regularly repeated musical note ‘mit innigster Empfindung’. This is a reference to the identical note in Ludwig van Beethoven’s string quartet Op. 132, also known as the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenden’. Nono uses the words in the most expressive passages of the quartet and asks that the musicians do not deploy any innovative playing techniques at these moments. They briefly revert to playing ‘arco normale’. Beethoven composed his quartet after a long period during which he was unable to compose due to illness. Therefore the quartet is an expression of joy at his recovery. Similarly, Nono’s piece represents the feeling of self-conquest, the conquest of grief and despair. This also explains the reference to Verdi’s four-part Ave Maria from 1889, the first part of the Quattro pezzi sacri. In this Ave Maria, Verdi harmonises a mysterious scale, the ‘scala enigmatica’. This scale blends elements of the major, minor and whole-tone scale. The scale was published in a journal in 1888 as a musical challenge to composers. In his restrained Ave Maria, Verdi playfully combined the modern expressiveness of the scale with a compositional style reminiscent of the Italian renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594). Nono borrowed Verdi’s idea of turning his quartet into an intersection of the present and the past. As such, Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima represents a new beginning, ‘outwards in air and light, hoping and enduring’. This citation of Hölderlin shows the poet’s importance to the composer. Nono links hope with the past: ‘The gift of igniting the flame of hope for the past belongs solely to the historiographer who is wholly of the conviction that in the presence of the enemy, if he wins, even the dead are not safe. And this enemy has not ceased to prevail.’ The delicate web of whispered sounds, ephemeral memories and musical memories shows how the door to the future is opened by the past.   

Waldo Geuns, translated by ISO Translation & Flagey

Minguet Quartett

The Minguet Quartett takes its name from the 18th century Spanish philosopher and music educator Pablo Minguet. The quartet shares with him the mission to open art up to the general public, and they are now doing this at the leading concert halls worldwide. Since its founding in 1988, the Minguet Quartett has been equally committed to the classical-romantic and modern string quartet repertoires. For example, it has recorded the string quartets of Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Ruzicka and Jörg Widmann in their entirety on CD and the quartet regularly performs new creations, often in combination with related works from the classical-romantic repertoire.