String quartet no. 4

The composition of Krzysztof Penderecki’s four string quartets is marked by an idiosyncratic interruption: the first two experimental, improvisatory quartets were composed in swift succession in the 1960s. The third and fourth quartets followed substantially later, but were also written in relatively quick succession in the years 2008 and 2016.

The quartet cycle as a whole is exemplary of the composer’s two extensive creative phases, thus displaying a stylistic change that is in a class of its own in the history of music. The very short unnumbered quartet Der unterbrochene Gedanke [The Broken Thought], written 1988 in the middle of the ‘quartet break’, appears as an only too apt commentary.