In december 2019 I finished my 24 string quartets in 24 keys. The cycle is an hommage to Dmitri Shostakovich, who was on his way to do the same, but never got the chance to finish.
What is the purpose of writing in specific and even remote tonalities? Many non-keyboard instruments respond differently to tonalities and only allow certain instrumental acoustic effects in specific fingering positions, in specific keys. In most cases a composer takes into account those technical aspects of instruments, hence the specific use of C flat major enabling better sonority on the harp (all pedals up) or, for the same reason, the popularity of E minor or on the guitar (open strings, and easier fingering).
How about the choice of keys for string quartets? Shostakovich last quartet, in the key of E flat minor, contains six flats, quite unnatural for strings, though not undoable. And he had a predecessor: Tchaikovsky’s third quartet. But how would raising its key to E minor affect the sound and the playability of this quartet? Quartets with five or more accidentals surely are few and far between; one has to look outside mainstream composers e.g. Vincent d’Indy or Serguey Taneyev. In the 20th century Mieczysław Weinberg (with whom Shostakovich was in a friendly race in quartet writing) even wrote his 16th quartet in A flat minor, a remarkable key signature of seven flats.
Most composers however, from Haydn to Prokofiev, have restricted themselves to quartets never exceeding four flats or sharps. None of Mozart’s quartets is even written with a key signature of more than three accidentals. There may seldom be a musical reason to choose writing a quartet in a remote key, and therefore musicians recommend writing in familiar keys, only touching the others in modulatory development sections, if unavoidable. And they definitely dislike the double accidentals which a music grammar conscious composer may write in remote keys.
However, there may be a personal reason for a composer to choose a specific tonality, going from sheer preference to think and create more easily in a specific key, to a ‘symbolic’ meaning some keys subjectively may have for certain composers. Creating a ‘pastoral’ atmosphere may seem more natural in G than in D sharp. Personally, I have no preference for specific keys except for practical reasons of instrumentation such as range or string choice.
In a collection of works written in all keys, by a composer who is not a string player himself, (like me) the reason that quartet X is in a remote key is only for the reason of exhaustivity. Once composed, a quartet is difficult to transpose to a more familiar key as registral problems then may occur at some point in some instrument.
Arranging the 24 keys
When a composer decides to publish a cycle of works in all keys, their sequentiality is in most cases a conscious choice. Bach’s preludes and fugues of the Well-tempered Clavier follow a chromatic order, with relative minor modes keeping the same tonic:
| 1: | C major | 0 alterations |
| 2: | C minor | 3 flats |
| 3: | C# major | 7 sharps |
| 4 | C# minor | 4 sharps |
| 5: | D major etc. | 2 sharps |
The most common order, used for example by Chopin and Scriabin in their piano preludes and also by Shostakovich in his collection of 24 Preludes and Fugues op. 87, is the circle of fifths, with parallel minor modes maintaining the key signature of the preceding major mode:
| 1: | C major | 0 alterations |
| 2: | a minor | 0 alterations |
| 3: | G major | 1 sharp |
| 4: | e minor | 1 sharp |
| 5: | D major etc. | 2 sharps |
The circle of fifths can be toured anti-clockwise as well, what has been demonstrated in the 24 Preludes and Fugues by Soviet composer Georguiy Mushel’ (C-a-F-d-Bb* etc.) Other composers have developed more complex rationales. Alkan’s Piano Preludes op. 31 move alternately up a fourth and down a third. Russian jazz composer Nikolai Kapustin harmonically separated the keys of his preludes and fugues as much as possible, spacing relative major and minor keys as far apart as possible too. He ordered their keys counterclockwise in the circle of fifths, the major ones starting with C and ending with G, alternating with the minor ones, starting with G♯ minor and ending with E♭ minor. The result:
| 1: | C major | 0 alterations |
| 2: | g# minor | 5 sharps |
| 3: | F major | 1 flat |
| 4: | c# minor | 4 sharps |
| 5: | B flat major | 2 flats etc. |
Yet some composers used no logical ordering at all, like Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco with his ‘Well-tempered guitars’ or Rachmaninov with his piano preludes and also myself with my string quartets, at least in their order of composition. Shostakovich however indulged in playing with numbers and obviously did not want to miss a new opportunity to come up with an innovative ordering for his ambitious quartet project. He must have enjoyed, in an intellectual way, deriving a logical system nobody else ever used before and using this order for the chronology of composition.
Finishing Shostakovich’ key sequence
Of course, a collection of 24 quartets is too large to function musically as a ‘cycle’, (otherwise I would have concluded with one more quartet – number 25- again in C major, to celebrate the ‘return home’) However, the integral collection can never be played in a single concert. Therefore it seems a less important issue how to order them. As isolated opuses my quartets remain numbered in their order of composition. For example, my C major quartet is not the number 1 but the 14th quartet. However, as an homage to Shostakovich I decided to present the entire collection of my quartets in Shostakovich’ innovative key sequence and, as mentioned before, even change the initial and closing tonalities of my first (Armenian) Quartet from A minor to Bb minor to avoid doubling with my eighth Quartet . My quartets are divided in 6 volumes, each book containing 4 quartets.
Shostakovich’ original setup started with C major and was supposed to conclude with e minor. He arranged the order of his quartets through systematically alternating a rising major or minor sixth for the tonic of the next quartet, where the crux is in giving priority to the major keys, otherwise the result would have been a retrograde/subdominant-wise tour of the circle of fifths, with parallel minor keys. Shostakovich’ ordering system is as follows: (uppercase letters are major keys, lowercase letters are minor keys)
Shostakovich consciously neglected this setup once, for a special quartet, dedicated to the memory of his wife Nina: the 9th quartet in f# minor. After this quartet, he resumed the chosen system. Unfortunately, suffering from poor health, he was not granted the necessary years to complete the entire cycle. Nine doubtlessly beautiful quartets (most of them to be written in minor keys) have never been written by the Russian master, who died after his intensely sad quartet swan-song, the 15th in e flat minor. I am happy to honor the composer posthumously, in 2020, with a fully completed collection.
This text is part of a larger article written for the Polilog i Sintez Isskustv congress at the St. Petersburg conservatory.