To some ears, the combination of voice and string quartet produces an effect comparable to that achieved by Beethoven's inclusion of vocal parts in that other paradigm of "absolute" music—the symphony. This effect, as Wagner observed with respect to Beethoven's Ninth, is of the voices making the instrumental music more fully articulate.

The repertoire for voice and string quartet is considerably more modest than its symphonic analogue; its masterpieces include Chausson's Chanson perpétuelle and Vaughn Williams' On Wenlock Edge (both with piano and string quartet), Barber's Dover Beach, Respighi's Il Tramonto and Schoenberg's Second Quartet (with voice only in one movement). These works fall into two categories: settings of song texts that simply use the quartet in place of a keyboard accompaniment, and works where the voice is a fully integrated member of the chamber ensemble. It is this second style, true chamber music, that characterizes Schoeck's Notturno.

With over 400 songs, Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957), was one of Switzerland's most prolific composers of vocal music. The son of a painter, he studied in Zürich and later in Leipzig with Max Reger. Hermann Hesse, a friend and admirer of Schoeck, wrote that: "Nowhere in Schoeck's settings is there the slightest misunderstanding of the words; nowhere can we fail to note the most sensitive feeling for light and shade; everywhere he puts his finger with almost alarming certainty on the central point where the experience of the poet has been crystallize in a word or in the vibrations between two words. It is this penetration to the germinal cell of each poem that to me had always been the surest indication of Schoeck's genius."

Notturno, completed in 1932, is characteristic of the dark, chromatic, expressionist style Schoeck developed after World War I. The five movements contain settings of ten poems by Nikolaus Lenau and one by Gottfried Keller— all exploring the themes of death and loss. Particularly evocative are the scherzo movement, describing a nightmare; and the final setting of the Keller text, set to the accompaniment of held notes in the strings. The form of the work resembles a traditional four-movement string quartet: two large outer movements, moderate in tempo, each containing a central interlude for strings alone; a second part in scherzo-trio form; and slow third and fourth movements, which taken together form a large period of repose before the finale.







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