Post-Minimalism (Beamish)

• String Quartet no. 2: Opus California for string quartet


  Composition by Sally Beamish
• First Movement: Boardwalk


  First movement of Opus California
• Composition date of Opus California


  1999
• Duration


  12 minutes
• Opus California (String Quartet no.2) was commissioned by The Brodsky Quartet
• First performance by Brodsky Quartet, Cabot Hall, Canary Wharf, London

  08 Mar 2000
• The first movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in C minor, Op.18, No.4 was the first piece the composer ever played in a string quartet, at the age of fifteen
• The composer took the first subject, first bridge passage, second subject and second bridge passage/coda respectively, as the material for four very simple movements of Opus California
• The composer had just returned from the Cabrillo Festival, Santa Cruz, California, where she had heard a great deal of 20th-Century American music
• The four movements each take a fragment of the Beethoven and develop it, using aspects of jazz and contemporary American style
• Boardwalk

  First movement of Opus California, describing the types 'strutting their stuff' along the boardwalk in Santa Cruz
• Golden Gate

  Second movement of Opus California, a snapshot of the Golden Gate Bridge, from the air, in an early morning mist
• Dreams before Lullabies

  Third movement of Opus California, a gentle cradle song
• Natural Bridges

  Fourth movement of Opus California, named after a popular beach with spectacular rock formations
• Sally Beamish was born in London in 1956 and now lives in Scotland
• She studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, and spent ten years as a professional viola player
• She switched from playing to composing around 1990 after having her first child
• She quickly established her name in the early 1990s with the help of an Arts Council Composers' Bursary
• In 1999, Sally Beamish became Composer-in-Residence with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra
• In 2002, her opera, Monster was premiered by Scottish Opera
• Scottish music began to gain an international reputation in the 1950s with composers such as Iain Hamilton, Thomas Wilson, Thea Musgrave and Ronald Stevenson
• Like Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sally Beamish has embraced and been influenced by Scottish culture and the richness of its folk music
• Opus California was commissioned by the Brodsky Quartet and first performed by them on 8 March 2000 at Cabot Hall, Canary Wharf, London
• The four movements of Sally Beamish's Opus California are based on four short extracts from the first movement exposition of Beethoven's String Quartet in C minor, Op.18, No.4
• The relationship with the Beethoven work came about as a response to a commission from the Brodsky Quartet who were assembling a set of pieces inspired by Beethoven's Op.18 Quartets
• The link with California, USA, came about because the composer had recently visited the Cabrillo Festival in Sata Cruz, California and there heard a lot of American music
• The idea of transforming passages or fragments of another composer's music as happens here is a more recent practice, particularly used by Stravinsky
• Boardwalk: Structure

  1. Section A (bars 1-29)

  2. Section B (bars 30-47)

  3. Reprise of Section A (bars 47-68)
• Section A (bars 1-29) is a transformation of bars 1-2 of the first movement of Beethoven's C minor Quartet, Op.18, No.4
• Section B (bars 30-47) is a brief development, insofar as it is very unstable in harmonic terms with no one key ever established
• The reprise of Section A (bars 47-68) returns to C minor to round off the first movement
• 1. note cells

  Bars 18, 20-22, expanding to a longer passage at the close
• 1. note figure

  Introduced in violin 1 on the final two beats of bar 22, will assume more significance later
• Section B (Bars 30 - 46)


  1. Very unstable in harmonic terms with no one key ever established

  2. All the harmony is made up of altered seventh chords of differing varieties that are never resolved or settle in one key
• Harmonic reduction of bars 30-33 of Beamish Boardwalk


  • See Example 6
• Section B (Bars 30 - 46)


  • Emphasis is entirely on harmony
  • Melody in the first violin (bars 32-36) is in C minor and the harmony (through to bar 33) is related to the same key
• Section B (Bars 37 - 44)

  1. Varied repeat in rhythmic and harmonic terms of bars 30-36

  2. Passage from bar 41-44 passes through several suggested keys, coming to rest on an 11th chord on D as a dominant preparation for the next section
• Section C (Bars 46 - 68)


  Recapitulation of the music of bars 1-29 beginning initially in G minor (the dominant) but returning to the home key at the close
• Recapitulation of bars 1-7 in Section C (Bars 46 - 53)

  • Key is now G minor and the section starts on an anacrusis
  • In bars 47-8, a D flat (#iv) is heard in opposition to the home key in the cello, introducing the tritone (G – D flat) that eventually comes to dominate the final movement
  • Melodic figures at bars 49, 51-53 have been re shaped and a new figure added at 50-1 in the viola rising mainly in 3rds
• Section C (Bars 54 – 58)

  1. Recapitulation of bars 8-11 with a new bar of transition at 58

  2. Key now returns to C minor with a rising cello solo heard throughout loosely based on the original melodic material of bars 3-7