For Marty.(Martin Boykan's Fourth String Quartet)(Brief Article)(Critical Essay)

MIDWAY THROUGH the initial presentation of ideas in the first movement of Martin Boykan's Fourth String Quartet, an octave line enters in the second violin and viola. After the Coriolanian imperative at the movement's opening, this moment unfolds in rich dramatic contrast, operatic in its sudden gathering of voices into a brief, yet sweeping line of Verdian cantilena. Remarkable, yes; and typical of a music which matches a singing linearity with a vigilant will to action. Take also the brocade of splinters and slivers from his Echoes of Petrarch, the second "song" of this instrumental work, the sonetto, "Pace non trovo e non ho da far guerra." Intricacies of phrasing and design are carried along by the freely drawn and pliant harmony, dancing in and out of motion and pause. Nowhere does that Boykan favorite, the trembling dyad at phrase end, more keenly reinvigorate itself in order to spin off into the new phrase in magical ricochet or cut itself off in an abrupt punch before the music just as suddenly reasse mbles itself in the note-charged air than in ...