Chaconne. Par LERDAHL FRED. Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music. My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach’s D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern. My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

String Quartet was composed by Mumbai-born Brian Elias in 2012 and was commissioned by the Jerusalem String Quartet. Lasting around 20 minutes this is the full score of the work arranged for Violin I Violin II Viola and Cello. The work has been laid out in the conventional four movements Allegro Adagio Presto Adagio-Allegro-Adagio but it is essentially a work in a single movement to be performed withno breaks. A set of double variations generates the thematic and harmonic material for the entire piece in its first few bars with a brilliant Viola solo afterwards. Throughout the piece changes in dynamics and tempocharacterise the different movements before finally ending with a calming return to the slow music.  You can purchase the individual instrument  Parts here.

A Photo from the Birthday Party is written for string quartet and was composed to mark the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the Silesian Sting Quartet.

Composed between 1973 and 1976  Ainsi La Nuit for String Quartet is one of the most important works of its genre by Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) a French composer following the paths of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy. Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Juilliard Quartet  Ainsi La Nuitis based on a series of studies lasting 18 minutes and divided into 7 sections: 1. Nocturne 2. Miroir d'espace 3. Litanies 4. Litanies II 5. Constellations 6. Nocturne II 7. Temps suspendu Built on single hexachords it also uses theoctatonic mode and focuses on harmonies contrasts and oppositions of register. Henri Dutilleux was internationally acclaimed for his work winning prizes such as the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society and the UNESCO's International Rostrum of Composers among many others. His work also includes a Piano sonata two symphonies the Violin concerto 'L'arbre des songes' (The tree of dreams) and the Cello concerto 'Tout un monde lointain' (A whole distant world).

Simon Holt's 3rd Quartet is the third of six pieces which make up a cycle with the overall title 'Terrain'. Lasting around 23 minutes this wonderful work is arranged for String Quartet and wasco-commissioned by The Radcliffe Trust NMC Recordings Internationales Musikfestival Heidelberger Fruhling and Wigmore Hall. The premiere was performed on 19th January 2015. The six different compositions ofwhich 3rd Quartet is the third are for different combinations of stringed instruments featuring Piano in the second piece. The music that comprises 3rd Quartet is drawn from theother parts of the cycle as a whole yet in a reverse order. In this way the piece develops what has come before foreshadows what's to come all the while encompassing the entire cycle in a single piece.