Quartettsatz c-Moll

Like the Quartettsatz of 1914 (ED 7816), Quartettsatz in c-Moll of 1921, premièred by the Henschel Quartet at the Orff Centre in Munich in 2007, testifies to Orff’s early struggles towards the classical-Romantic tradition. Originally left unfinished as a fragment in C sharp minor, the first version has now been reconstructed (in C minor) from a source that only survived as a copy with autograph corrections. It is interesting to see a new tonal language appearing quite suddenly (and notated without bar lines in the first version) in the coda.