String
Quartet.

The String Quartet, without any tonality designation¹ according to the terminology commonly used at the Société Nationale de musique and noted by the composer at the head of his single ink manuscript², is one of the rare Ravel works to have gone through several distinct publications and successive documented alterations of its text.

While the work was premiered on Saturday 5 March 1904 at a Société Nationale concert³, the score having been completed in April 1903 according to the date appearing after the last bar of the fourth movement⁴, it is almost certain that the premiere was given from handwritten parts — now lost — by the Heymann Quartet⁵.

It was in 1905, and not the previous year as generally stated in numerous publications⁶, that the first engraving of the work ("Score and Parts") was issued by the publishing house G. Astruc & Cie. Very few copies of this incunabulum and its parts remain visible today⁷.

The comparative study of the manuscript and the 1905 publication yields fascinating information on the evolution of the compositional gesture — modifications of a given stroke, of the use of double or triple stops, of harmonics, or of a given agogic marking corrected a posteriori —, most certainly after the work had been dissected by the musicians of the Société Nationale.

Reading the musical gazettes and concert reviews, we learn that Ravel's Quartet was regularly performed again — notably by the Parent Quartet in 1907, and by the ever-present Capet Quartet. Further performances that certainly allowed the composer, who throughout his life remained open to the advice of instrumentalists, to refine his work and to perfect his specific knowledge of string writing.

A letter dated 12 October 1910⁸ from Ravel to "Monsieur G. Astruc & Cie" states: "I have the honour to inform you that I approve the transfer made by us to Messrs Durand & Cie of my two works 'Shéhérazade' and 'Quatuor à cordes'. By the present letter, I release you fully and entirely."

Thus, in the Durand plate-number ledger⁹, it is noted that this second edition was submitted for legal deposit on 24 December 1910¹⁰, and printed — for the score — in five hundred copies¹¹. A fresh comparison between the two successive editions makes it clear that Durand — in addition to the legal acquisition of the title — was also able to acquire the lead plates that had been used for the 1905 engraving: the page composition and the fonts used were strictly identical.

A few corrections were added, and once again the composer altered technical details of string writing — although no direct evidence has been preserved of corrections in the composer's or an editor's hand —, for a new issue that was not marketed by the second publisher on the Place de la Madeleine under the label of a "revised edition".

In the context of this 2021 revised edition — prepared from the 1902-1903 manuscript, the very first 1905 edition, and completed by that of 1910 —, we wished to present what was the very first compositional gesture of a twenty-eight-year-old composer, while indicating in the form of inserts on the score the successive modifications that led to the 1910 text.