The sixth movement of the 21st Quartet is an Intermezzo, in the manner of a somewhat macabre waltz alternating with static 'trio' sections.  The waltz melody grows out of a twelve-tone melody first spelt out rather more cryptically in the Landscape movement.  The harmony is also informed to a certain extent by dodecaphony, and the movement as a whole remains to date the closest I have ever come to the techniques of the Second Viennese School.  The trio sections, also in large part twelve-tonal, constitute the most geo-specific passages in the quartet.  In May 1992 I had the extraordinarily eerie experience of flying over the Kyzylkum Desert in Uzbekistan, in the early dawn before sunrise.  Our aeroplane followed the desert highway for what must have been a hundred miles or so, during which I saw not a single sign of human life.  Something of the utter loneliness of that landscape may be found in the music.  Something also of the sparse scrub of that environment, and of the insect and animal life eked out among it, is depicted in the previous Nocturne.

The Intermezzo runs without a break into the seventh movement.

Wizard - 1627 SideM

Wizard

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