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

Nadia Boulanger's Three Pieces for Viola and Piano transcribed from the original for Cello. Posterity has retained of Nadia Boulanger only her gifts as a virtuoso of the piano and organ her skill as a conductor (of vocal ensemble and orchestra) and most of all her incredible charisma as a teacher. For nearly sixty years 'Mademoiselle' made the most of her famous Wednesdays bringing rigour and passion to the training of several generations of musicians: among so many others Aaron Copland Leonard Bernstein Igor Markevitch Michel Legrand Witold Lutoslawski Astor Piazzolla Quincy Jones and John-Eliot Gardiner have all kept unforgettable memories of thesetimes.Was Nadia Boulanger wrong to let teaching music take precedence over her composing as Gabriel Fauré the great master she venerated believed? The publication of Three Pieces for Viola and Piano raises the question. This transcription of Three Pieces for cello and piano was composed between 1911 and 1913 and published by Heugel. The two initial pieces were originally written for organ: the first in E flat minor brings a moderate tempo to a melancholy cantilena with Romantic accents while the second in A minor exudes warmth and tenderness. The third piece (C sharp minor) most likely originally titled Danse espagnole heralds the Roaring Twenties with its restlessness and festive crackle. Together they emit a charm that is difficult to resist.