ABSTRACT

Maconchy had found herself isolated during the war years, and had found the lack of contact with players or performances to be immensely discouraging. In common with many creative artists, she was vulnerable to attacks of depression or ‘moments of silence’, as she put it, and had seriously considered giving up composing at this time. The urge to compose, however, returned – as compulsive and all-consuming as ever – and in the immediate post-war years her work gradually began to gain broader recognition and attract new supporters. In the spring of 1955, the BBC broadcast a series of concerts on the Third Programme in which all six of her string quartets were heard in sequence. The series came as a timely reminder to many of Maconchy’s mastery of the quartet genre. As Scott Goddard noted in The Musical Times (May, 1956):

[T]he complete series, so far, of Elizabeth Maconchy’s string quartets was broadcast [last year] and so one was able to watch the development of her remarkable talent. But perhaps development is the wrong term, at least as regards talent, for she appears, on the evidence of these six works, always to have possessed a talent for original thinking. It has not been so much talent as technique in expressing her thought that has developed. Her mind, one of the most interesting among the mature composers working in this country at present, has come to express itself with increasing ease.