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String Quartet No. 3 (Bacewicz)
The String Quartet No.3 is a composition for string quartet written in 1947 by Polish Composer Grażyna Bacewicz. This piece was written during her stay in Paris following the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and was later awarded the Polish Ministry of Culture Award in 1955 alongside her Symphony No.4 and Violin Concerto No.3. This quartet was the first to be initially published alongside quartets 4-7 before more recent reprintings of her prior quartets.

Historical Context
Following the failed operation in Warsaw, Bacewicz and her family temporarily departed from Poland during the violent conflicts of World War II. Upon returning, Warsaw was then occupied by the Germans, causing their authorities to ban the performance of Polish music. This led Bacewicz and others to perform and have their works read during privately held underground concerts. String Quartet No.3 written in the years following her later arrival and subsequent musical establishment in Paris as a renowned soloist. In this contrastingly optimistic period of her life which afforded her a higher degree of creative liberty Bacewicz noted several of the positive experiences she had as both a violinist and composer, remarking the pride in her composition of the quartet, and with respect to her composition of the quartet, that "Paris has some ineffable quality which is favourable to creative work."

Analysis
Written during Bacewicz' notably neoclassical era, this quartet precedes her later use of Polish folk tunes as seen in her String Quartet No.4. Featuring frequent polyphonic use of interweaving melodic lines, much of the harmony featured throughout the quartet is more tonally based than that of her later works which feature more avant garde compositional techniques such as serialism. All 3 movements are not assigned any particular key signature, and include particularly detailed descriptions of bowings, styles of articulations, which specific string sections are to be played on, and expressive gestures such as downward glissandos. Bacewicz distinctly orchestrates large sections of the quartet to harmonically allow the frequent use of open strings and their respective natural harmonics throughout all three movements.

Reception
Alongside receiving the Polish Ministry of Culture Award nearly a decade later, her friend and colleague Witold Lutosławski remarked in particular "...and her String Quartet No. 3, which is marked by an exceptional polyphonic skill in addition to its masterly idiomatic writing for string quartet."