Consonance vs. Dissonance—Bentoiu & Mozart String Quartets

Chamber Music Concert

Saturday, October 19, 2024 / 2 p.m.
Steinway Piano Gallery Detroit, 2700 E. West Maple Road, Commerce Charter Township, MI 48390

General Admission: $25
Students (through undergraduate with ID): $10

Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465, is nicknamed “Dissonance” due to the unusual, dissonant counterpoint found in its slow introduction. It is perhaps the most famous of his quartets. The 22-bar Adagio opens with quiet eighth-note Cs in the cello. The viola then joins on A-flat and the second violin on E-flat. The first dissonance is created once the first violin enters on an A, thus creating tension between the A-flat and A that will be a recurring feature in the entire quartet. This introduction presents the major ideas that will recur throughout the piece. Almost two hundred years later, Romanian composer Pascal Bentoiu’s String Quartet No. 2, “Consonance,” is an example of very tonal music in an age when dissonance is taken to exaggerated levels and reigns in much music of the time. Bentoiu believed that perhaps the consonant chords in his work will provoke the same unpleasantness as Mozart’s dissonant chords did in his String Quartet No. 19.

Concert Program

Poetry Reading with Pompilian Tofilescu

Pascal Bentoiu (1927–2016)
String Quartet No. 2, “Consonance,” Op. 19
I. Adagio—Allegretto
II. Giusto
III. Larghetto
IV. Allegro molto moderato

INTERMISSION

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, “Dissonance,” K. 465
I. Adagio—Allegro
II. Andante cantabile
III. Menuetto and Trio. Allegro
IV. Allegro molto