The full score for String Quartet No.3 'Angel's Music' by Bent Sørensen (1988) Premiered by the Arditti String Quartet at the Danish Radio Concert Hall 16 November 1988. Parts available: KP00249The composer writes:'Even when I was writing 'Adieu' I knew that I wished to write 'Angel’s Music'. The title existed in an incomplete form in my mind and gradually more and more ideas and a few outlines became clear. The actual work on 'Angel’s Music' was started in Rome where I spent the autumn of 1987 staying at 'The Danish Academy'. Whether this stay has influenced the quartet or not is impossible to say. however it is true tosay that in the Roman churches I visited I saw countless angels playing in the top of frescoes and altars. Without these angels together with the many crackled-gold paintings in this city and my general fascination with the Italian renaissance painter Fra Angelico (in fact there are only a few paintings by him in Rome but even his name..!) I am not sure my quartet would have been what it is. Anyway I do feel that there is a bit of Italy in the piece. The angels apart there are in the short rhythmic agitating part of the quartet reminiscences of the Italian medieval Trotto dance and in the most expressive part of the piece there are flashes of Puccini-like music. From the very beginning of my work on the quartet the distant extremely muted sound in the high register which opens the piece was on my mind. A sound satiated with a dense heterophonic and polyphonic texture of elegiac melody and vibrating trills. I imagined that 'little songs' (maybe angel songs) could be created in this density these songs constantly echoing themselves. Gradually as this sound got a more and more concrete musical and instrumental form I felt that not only should the 'little songs' be created played and die out in an echo but also that the general pattern of the quartet should give the feeling of music which from the distance is getting closer and

This single-movement for String quartet employs some of the more familiar elements of Herrmannâ??s compositional style: short musical phrases repeated and then repeated again in other positions sharp use of dynamics among them. It is a fascinating sidelight into the work of one of the 20th centuryâ??s most brilliant composers.Bernard Herrmann was among the greatest of all composers of music for cinema and there are many who avow that he was the greatest of all. A very short list of the films for which this award-winning composer created soundtracks includes Citizen Kane The Man Who Knew Too Much Vertigo Jason and Argonauts Fahrenheit 451 Obsession and Taxi Driver. He had along and fertile association with Alfred Hitchcock during the most productive period of Hitchcockâ??s career and with Orson Welles from the time of the Mercury Theatre on the Air. In addition to his conducting and composing work for the entertainment world Herrmann wrote concert pieces including a symphony opera and cantata.

Commissioned by the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts Limited with funds provided by the Arts Council of Wales for premiere in August 2012 by the Carducci String Quartet in St. Andrew?s Church Presteigne.Composer's Note.'Some years ago I noted down the opening theme of what I anticipated would be a relatively Classical string quartet ?Classical? in the sense of the forms adopted plus perhaps a predominantly lyrical tone of voice. The commission for this work from the Presteigne Festival for their 30th anniversary in 2012 gave me the opportunity of putting into practice this long-held idea. It isdedicated to the Festival and to the Carducci Quartet whose career as much-admired friends and colleagues I have greatly enjoyed.The only break with ?classical? tradition is that there are five movements instead of four with two Scherzi as the second and third though both these are very short and contrasting. I found myself listening to Haydn?s string quartets a lot before and during the composition of this work and I hope the spirit of his delight in writing for this medium is echoed in my own music. The opening movement is in sonata form unusually for me and lyricism is I hope the basis of it though there is a good deal of activity at times. The Scherzo light and marked by frequently-changing rhythms is followed by an equally short but ferocious Perpetuum mobile marked Wild und rasch (one of my favourite German tempo markings). The fourth movement is an intense Adagio in which a single phrase uttered strongly in unison is gradually transformed into gentle diatonic chords before the close intermingled with cadenzas for cello for viola and for the two violins together. The finale (a Rondo) resumes the classical tone of the first movement but apart from one dance-like episode it builds up a fair head of steam towards a final Presto which however ascends slows and quietens towards a gentle summer sky at dusk.'