Opp. 127 130-133 135-Beethoven's late String Quartets are universally regarded as supreme transcendent works - among the greatest and most intimate music in chamber literature. Composed in the last years of the master's life - between 1823 and 1827 - these quartets contain astonishing experiments in thematic development and musical form that laid the foundation for innovations in 20th Century string quartet writing especially in the important works of Bartok and Shostakovich.This volume reprinted from the definitive Breitkopf and Hartel edition includes:String Quartet No.12 In E Flat Op.127String Quartet No.13 In B Flat Op.130String Quartet No.14 In C Sharp MinorOp.131String Quartet No.15 In A Minor Op.132String Quartet No.16 In F Op.135 and theGrosse Fuge In B Flat Op.133This convenient affordable volume is the ideal edition for study in the classroom at home or in the concert hall.

Par DUFOURT HUGUES. Dawn Flight est le titre d'une toile que le graveur et peintre britannique Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988) réalisa en 1959. Sa formation scientifique - chimie, géologie - son habileté mathématique furent un atout considérable dans ses recherches de matières et de couleurs, qui peuvent atteindre des tons fluorescents. Hayter, qui fut l'une des premières figures du mouvement surréaliste, s'engagea à New York sur les voies de l'abstraction, aux côtés de Pollock, Rothko, Baziotes, Matta, Motherwell, De Kooning, Riopelle. Il est reconnu comme celui qui a révolutionné les techniques de la gravure au cours du XXe siècle. Il inventa le procédé qui permet d'obtenir plusieurs couleurs sur une même plaque en un seul passage. Rentré en 1950 à Paris, il expérimente de nouvelles techniques de gravure: empreintes, utilisation de l'acide sur le métal et surtout le burin multipointe. Il poursuit une recherche sur l'émergence des formes, sur la transparence, l'interférence, la vibration, les moires. Ses toiles intensifient la couleur, le dynamisme gestuel, et s'attachent sur la fin à capter les jeux de lumière à la surface de l'eau. Dawn Flight est construit sur un éventail d'obliques divergentes, remontant la diagonale, illustrant ainsi le paradoxe d'un flux ascendant, aspiré par le haut. La forme étirée et allongée des stries, la torsion intime de la trame, la tension paradoxale des entrelacs donnent le sentiment d'une réalité élémentaire, de l'aurore d'un monde. La production de Hayter à cette époque - Perseïdes, Poissons volants, Vague, Ixion, Cascade, Mérou, Méduse, Night - montre d'étranges associations de bleu et de noir, d'orange, de jaune transparent, de bleu et de vert. Frank Stella et Donald Judd comptent parmi les artistes qui ont le plus radicalement récusé l'idée d'un procès formateur de l'art, évacuant l'idée même de nécessité intérieure, voire de composition formelle. Transparence, profondeur, épaisseur, rayonnement ne seraient que des catégories factices tirées d'une illusion d'intériorité et l'idée même de progression structurée ne serait que l'effet d'une tyrannie du dedans. Qu'en est-il du quatuor qui fut la construction par excellence de l'intériorité, l'exemple même d'une logique compositionnelle épurée et réduite à la forme essentielle d'un développement ? Ecrire un quatuor après Donald Judd est-il encore possible ? Car il ne suffit pas de se confronter à l'histoire d'un genre, mais à la question de sa possibilité. L'idée même d'un dynamisme des voix a-t-elle encore un sens ? Et celle d'un tout dont les parties sont solidaires ? On n'osera même plus parler de texture, car il s'agit encore d'une forme interne, de l'expression d'une cohérence intérieure. Ecrire un quatuor pourrait signifier le retour à une réflexion sur les formes fondamentales du mouvement - comme l'attraction, la répulsion, l'inclusion ou la pénétration. Ou encore sur ce que signifient des gestes comme briser, couper, déchirer ou fendre. Ce serait aussi revenir sur ce qu'est une interférence de fluctuations, sur la plasticité, ou au contraire la tension désordonnée. A moins de supprimer le quatuor, il faut bien convenir qu'il est à l'image du tissu, d'une continuité ininterrompue, d'un entrelacs de fils et qu'il s'agit de l'oeuvre humaine par excellence: écrire un quatuor c'est renouer le fil. Froisser, tordre, déplier, déployer, dérouler, tels sont les exigences primordiales du quatuor, que l'on dit parfois soyeux ou moiré. Judd et ses contemporains ont rendu caduque l'idée qu'une oeuvre puisse formuler et suivre des règles explicites, assurer la conservation d'une forme dans une certaine série de transformations. Dans cette vue, la pensée musicale serait alors rendue à un état d'instabilité, de glissement perpétuel. Mais elle pourrait alors trouver peut-être de nouveaux schémas de connexion, et attribuer un sens original à l'idée de processus orienté, en lui donnant la forme d'un devenir global et unique, sans répétitions. La musique récente sait susciter l'émergence de propriétés inédites et s'absorber dans la réalité supérieure qu'elle suscite: elle n'est pas tant l'imagination des possibles que l'articulation des moments de l'expérience. Revenir à Hayter, ce serait se concentrer sur une topologie concrète d'intervalles et de liaisons, penser la musique comme flux, modulation, émergence perpétuelle, lumière illocalisable, masse en essor ou tournoiement sans prise. Ce sont là quelques bonnes raisons d'écrire un quatuor. Hugues Dufourt / contemporain / Date parution : 2008-06-24/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Jouni Kaipainen's String Quartet No. 6 'The Terror Run' Op. 92. Commissioned by the BBC Radio for the Proms concerts 2010. Dedicated to the Meta4 Quartet. Parts available: WH31197A Programme note: My former experience in writing string quartets has made me used to the idea that a piece of mine in this genre lasts close to half an hour and consists of several movements with different characters. This time the commission clearly stated a duration of 12 minutes and this naturally brought about lots of thinking and orientating. Eventually I luckily found out that I actually can alter mybasic “string quartet philosophy” so that such a short piece became an existing option. In the music itself there is nothing very much to explain. The quartet is for the most part quite lively flowing music in fast tempi. In the very beginning there is something haunting in the atmosphere but soon joyful for the most part delicately light at times maybe also “dance-like” characters take over.  But in terms of dramaturgy   the music has a tendency to grow more weighty and harsh and these quasi-violent elements gradually threaten the sunny unproblematic flow. Closer to the end we come to a point where nothing is easy anymore. This brings about a slow section of quite different nature and after that the former hilarious swing tries to make a comeback – but does not really succeed. The run goes on but the overtones are now more shadowy and the mood on the scary side. The subtitle comes from the novel The Camomile Lawn (1984) by Mary Wesley of which Ken Taylor made a wonderful TV series adaptation for Channel 4 (1992) where a marvellous casting of great actors supports the colourful beautiful and delightful story. In this novel young Sophie (gorgeously played by the 10-year-old Rebecca Hall) has eagerly waited for her older cousins to arrive to her aunt’s house at the

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

for Cello. Par . Les musiciens apprécieront cette fabuleuse collection de 101 chansons classiques apaisantes : Ave Maria, Op. 52, No. 6 - Bridge over Troubled Water - Come Away with Me - Desperado - Edelweiss - Faithfully - In Your Eyes - Misty - Nobody Does It Better - Yesterday - et plus encore. / Date parution : 2022-05-31/ Recueil / Violoncelle

At the end of the 18th century the town of Cádiz in southern Spain provided the backdrop for a Passion to mark Christ?s hour of death; its focal point was the reading and interpretation of Christ?s last words. Haydn wascommissioned to write short meditative music to be played alternately with the readings. Haydn composed a work for orchestra. Due to its success the publisher commissioned Haydn to make an arrangement for string quartet. As thewind instruments double the strings for the most part only a few changes had to be made to the string parts. Here is the Henle Urtext Edition of Joseph Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Christ arranged for StringQuartet based upon on the musical text of the Haydn Complete Edition.

Joseph Haydn's Die Sieben Letze Worte Unseres Erlösers Am Kreuze. The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross' Op.51 In 1785 or '86 Haydn received a commission from the Canon of Cadiz for what would serve essentially as 'incidental' music for a Good Friday service (akin to the one centering upon The Stations of the Cross although there are twelve of those) in which the celebrant recites in turn each of Christ's utterances on the way to Calvary then gives a 'reflection' thereupon followed by music to accompany a brief interval of silent congregational prayer. To this Haydn added an introductory movement and a conclusiondepicting the earthquake that followed the passing of Jesus. The structure of the work then is: Introduction -- 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do.' -- Sonata 1 -- 'Verily I say unto thee today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.' -- Sonata 2 -- 'Woman behold thy son.' -- Sonata 3 -- 'My God my God why hast thou forsaken me?' -- Sonata 4 -- 'I thirst.' -- Sonata 5 -- 'It is finished.' -- Sonata 6 -- 'Father into thy hands I commend my spirit.' -- Sonata 7 -- Conclusion (Earthquake)

Janá ek?s 2nd String Quartet Intimate Letters is regarded as a highlight of the modern string quartet literature. It was written during the composer?s last year of life between 29 January and 19 February 1928 inspired by the ageing Janáèek?s exceptional love for Kamila Stösslová. The Moravian Quartet devoted themselves to this impressive work; Janá ek attended a total of three of their rehearsals in May and June 1928. This had several consequences including his abandoning his original idea of using a viola d?amore. After Janá ek?s unexpected death (12 August 1928) the uncertain genesis of the work became the greatest problem of the IntimateLetters : the surviving copies were not definitively authorised. The editors of this new edition have reverted to Janá ek?s autograph sketches as the main most reliable source and using these as a basis have reconstructed the work as it stood at the point of Janá ek?s death. The musical text taken from the Critical Complete Edition of the Works of Leo? Janá ek (Vol. E/4) therefore contains clear differences in comparison with older editions.

After working for three years at the NationalConservatory in New York, Dvorak returnedhome in 1895 feeling extraordinarily happy. The fruit of this ecstatic periodare thecomposer's last two string quartets. The Quartet in G major, Op. 106, waswrittenimmediately after his return from America. The melodic freshness of the light,airythemes, alternating folk idioms in a temperate, unobtrusive musical allusion,betraysthe composer's maturity and mastery. The editor of this work, published as partof the first Complete Critical Edition of Works by Antonin Dvorak, is FrantisekBartos.

Mezmer for string quartet is an adaptation of the last movement of Re-Collecting ASTORoids, an earlier suite for orchestra from Kats-Chernin. Commissioned by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the suite was written in tribute to Astor Piazzolla and is clearly inspired by tango, though Kats-Chernin uses various rhythms as her source of inspiration. Mezmer is a miniature and has an intimate, smoky feel with a bluesy violin solo laden with vibrato. An air of solitude and reflection surrounds the piece. / Quatuor A Cordes

The six sonatas for cello and basso continuo in this volume all belong to the ?Fondo Correr? collection held in the library of the conservatory of music ?Benedetto Marcello? in Venice. This valuable collection consists of about thirty printed editions and some 1600 original manuscripts from various sources. The majority of these works is composed by Venetian musicians among them Bonaventura Furlanetto one of the last masters at the Ospedale della Pietà Gaetano Latilla Andrea Bernasconi Giovanni Porta Giuseppe Sarti and Antonio Martinelli. The latter (Antonio Martinelli) was one of the best known music teachers at the Ospedali Grandi in Venice. The three sonatas edited in this volume are his only compositions for cello accompanied by basso continuo that survive today. First edition.

String Quartet F major op. 135-Beethoven’s Op. 135 one of the last works he composed is equally famous for its compositional clarity and for the inadequacy of previous editions. The problem lies in the surviving sources forBeethoven’s autograph score contains a great many contradictions compared to his autograph set of parts. In 1827 after Beethoven’s death the German publisher of the first edition posthumously ironed out thesediscrepancies as he saw fit and later editions simply adopted his interventions. Rainer Cadenbach’s volume is the first attempt to produce an authoritative text for Op. 135. Beethoven’s contradictoryformulations are laid bare allowing musicians to make their own decisions. This ambitious new edition also finds room for ideal page turns.

13 Lektionen-The long awaited Sassmannshaus method Early Start on the Double Bass is now here. At last students of the largest instrument in the string family can make use of this tried and tested method for beginners developed by Egon Sassmannshaus for the other string instruments and applied here to the double bass by Holger Sassmannshaus and J. Peter Close. This method will meet the needs of the growing number of young bass students. Early Start on the Double Bass encompasses everything that one would expect from a Sassmannshaus method: an easy start progression at a suitable rate many cross-references to the other string instruments songs and scales in different positions from early on as well as many duets. Lively and colourful illustrations by Charlotte Panowsky complete the edition. For more than three decades “The Sassmannshaus Tradition” has been the household name for excellence in beginner string methods in German-speaking countries. The English editions for violin viola and violoncello which were introduced to the international market in 2008 have proven to be very successful particularly in the United States. Kids to the Bass!While children learning other string instruments can start as early as the age of four the appropriate age to begin the double bass is approximately eight (possibly even six); this allows for a faster progression than on the other string instruments and the method consists of only three volumes. The first volume will be published separately in an English and a German edition; the following two volumes will have German and English text in each book. Original compositions by Boguslaw Furtok enrich the volumes. Based on the tried-and-tested Sassmannshaus methods for violin viola and cello Volume 1: Separate editions in German and English Volumes 2 and 3: Bilingual German/English editions Moderate increase in difficulty Position playing duets Includes new original compositions to B. Furtok Volume 3 with piano accompaniments to 7 pieces The authorsHolger Sassmannshaus is a double bass player with the Niederrheinische Sinfoniker in

Holmboe's last quartet work which is unoffi­cially also String Quartet No. 21 was the last work he ever composed and was unfinished on his death in 1996. His pupil Per Nørgård has finished the quartet and himself characterizes his contribution by saying that the score existed “in an only partly completed form which could however be written out with only a few cases of doubt”. With only two movements and a play­ing time of about nine minutes it is at its exist­ing length the shortest of Holmboe's string quar­tets. The first movement takes the form of one long arch in a rocking triple time which constantly shiftsamong different tempo and pulse sensations. At the same time the rhythmic en­ergy increases until the movement in a faster Con moto tempo accelerates to a more flowing 12/8 time coloured both rhythmically by cross-­rhythms in duple time and timbrally by harmon­ics in the viola. In its middle section Con fuoco the movement culminates in both tempo and expression until it falls calm in brief recapitula­tions in reverse order of the first two sections. The rocking feeling continues in the second movement but now at a more extroverted level from the outset Allegro and pizzicato. The en­ergy builds up further as the mood intensifies to Con fuoco while all instruments go over to bowed playing but like the first movement this movement ends Adagio here however not as a gradual attenuation but through a sudden shift in tempo to a calm imitative passage before the movement slowly thins out to the almost inaudible through a last dense open sounding chord with a brief violin solo above it. The quartet is dedicated to Holmboe's wife MeLa May Holmboe and was given its first performance by the Kontra Quartet on 22nd March 1997 at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense Denmark.

Par ROCHE COLIN. Je travaillais à mon second quatuor à cordes à la fin de l'année 2001, dans le cadre d'une commande du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon pour le festival Musiques en Scène et le Quatuor Psophos. Ce quatuor à cordes était à l'origine prévu pour former une oeuvre écrite à quatre mains avec mon ami Guillaume Vautier. Notre idée de départ visait à confronter deux conceptions musicales de la lumière. Je l'ai écrite dans l'idée qu'elle puisse être aussi jouée seule. Dans mon esprit, cette période correspondait à une volonté d'aller vers un son sans artifice, qui ne se cacherait pas derrière une technique compositionnelle trop édulcorée. Décidé à me libérer, ce quatuor était une remise à plat de mon esthétique. Je travaillais à des couleurs instrumentales blanches, voire translucides, lorsque je vécu, comme tous, le traumatisme des attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Le blanc devint gris sombre, la lumière beaucoup plus opaque. C'était la seule façon pour moi d'aller au bout de l'écriture: ne pas faire comme si rien ne s'était passé et que ça n'avait pas d'incidences sur mon écriture. Rarement entreprise ne m'a paru aussi vaine sur le coup... et fondamentale après coup, car elle me permit de me poser les véritables questions: qu'écrire et pourquoi ? Quelques mois plus tard, le plasticien Simon Artignan me demanda s'il pouvait utiliser ma musique pour une de ses vidéos. J'acceptais avec honneur, et le laissait entièrement libre de son utilisation. Il m'invita en septembre au vernissage de son exposition. Je pu découvrir en avant première Petites économies de nos pollutions, qui marqua le début d'une très longue et passionnante collaboration. Elle marqua aussi le début d'un mode d'échange entre nous: nous n'intervenons jamais sur le travail de l'autre, et la plupart du temps, l'un s'appuie sur la création de l'autre. Ces rebonds successifs nous ont mené jusqu'à la création de La robe des choses - installation concertante en 2006. Colin Roche / contemporain / Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes