Brian Boydell [1917-2000]
String Quartet No.2 [1957]
Performed by the Lir Quartet
St Brendan’s Church, Bantry, 19th October 2025
Brian Boydell was an Irish composer whose works include orchestral pieces, chamber music, and songs. He was Professor of Music at Trinity College Dublin for 20 years, founder of the Dowland Consort, conductor of the Dublin Orchestral Players, and a prolific broadcaster and writer on musical matters. He was also a prolific musicologist specialising in 18th-century Irish musical history. He described his Second String Quartet as follows:
The first movement, which is mainly fairly slow, opens with a very quiet motif, in which the harmonies, with their bare fourths and filths, owe something to the flavour of certain types of medieval music. This motif, in less developed form, was used in the composer's Divertimento for Three Music-Makers and in this quartet the possibilities of this idea are greatly expanded and developed. The quiet opening gradually assumes a more passionate expression, and is then interrupted by a more restless section, with repeated notes. Further development of the first idea follows this, and the movement ends very quietly, as it began.
The second movement is mainly a violent Presto, with constantly changing metre, driving restlessly towards a climax. This main section is preceded by an Allegro introduction, which appears as a keystone after a quieter middle-section, and also as a conclusion to the movement. The middle section still contains the irregular rhythms which pervade the movement, but is less impetuous and more melodic (displaying a ‘spikey’ tune with a nervous hesitation which is treated canonically). Whereas the first movement is mainly lyrical in character, the only lyricism in the finale is one short passage in the middle section.
The quartet is dedicated to the Benthien Quartet, who gave the first performance in the RDS in 1959.