SKU: HL.284555

UPC: 888680912901. 9x12 inches.

Composers note:

I never imagined I would write a string quartet. Then I heard the JACK Quartet, and I understood how I might be able to make the medium my own. The result was The Wind in High Places - a twenty-minute work composed entirely on natural harmonics and open strings.

Over the next few years, two more quartets followed. The second quartet, untouched, is a further exploration of the aeolian sound world of the first. Then, in Canticles of the Sky, the musicians finally touch the fingerboards of their instruments.

And now comes Everything That Rises.

This fourth quartet is more expansive, both in time and in space. It grows out of Sila: The Breath of the World - a performance-length choral/orchestral work composed on a rising series of sixteen harmonic clouds.

Everything That Rises traverses this same territory, but in a much more melodic way.

Each musician is a soloist, playing throughout. They surround the audience. Time floats.

Over the course of an hour, the lines spin out - always rising - in acoustically perfect intervals that grow progressively smaller as they spiral upward... until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows, sighing.

SKU: BT.YE0009

Very little is known about the two sonatas which appear here in their original keys. They were placed in the library of the Music School in Oxford at the end of the seventeenth century in a form convenient for playing (i.e.unbound). The library was catalogued by Hake between 1850 and 1855 and the sonatas were eventually bound in 1855 with other instrumental and vocal manuscripts of the same period, some of which are dated 1698.

The sonatasare both inscribed on the title page Sonata Violone Solo. Col Basso per l'Organo, o Cembalo. A third sonata bears the words Sonata Violino e Violoncino â?¦ di Giovannino del Violone. Giovannino (=Little, or Young John)musthave been a performer, and although the third sonata has been copied by a different hand, it is conceivable that Giovannino is a connecting link between the three. He cannot, however, be assumed to be theirauthor.

The Violone was a six-stringed instrument with frets, and there is evidence to suggest that the Contrabasso of the same period was similar but probably a little larger; the Violoncino (=Little Violone, orVioloncello) must have been smaller. The word 'Violone' was also used as a collective term embracing all members of the Viol family, which means that the sonatas might well have been written for a tenor or a bass Viol, and notnecessarily a Violone as such. Indeed, when they are played on a Violone, or Double Bass the continuo bass line must be played at a lower pitch than the solo instrument, to prevent inversion of the intended harmony. (The use ofa Violone/Double Bass continuo or 16' organ tone would overcome this problem.)

The editor has added no ornaments or embellishments to the solo part as it appears in the original manuscript. It is open to debate whether aViolone player, owing to the very nature of his instrument, would have used any but the simplest melodic decorations. Nevertheless, the performer should acquaint himself thoroughly with those seventeenth century traditions thatare known today (see Dart.

SKU: CF.BE11F

ISBN 9780825888595. UPC: 798408088590. 8.5 x 11 inches.

Beginning in the 1950s, the CIA became very interested in psychological research beingconducted on the effects of sensory deprivation on humans. The research, that suggestedrapid regression in those tested, provided a framework for sections of what would later beknown as the KUBARK manual, the first a series of US-government documents thatprovided techniques for interrogating detainees. These methods involved radicallyaltering a detainee’s sense of time and environment.Among these techniques, some developed independently of the manuals by interrogators,were the manipulation of light and sound. In order to weaken the resolve of a detaineeand prolong “capture shock,” complete sensory deprivation followed by blasts of light ornoise, or very loud music, proved effective. So much so that variations and combinationsof these techniques were widely used by the United States as well as both its allies andenemies in Vietnam, Latin America, Northern Ireland, and the Middle East.Though the idea of sound as a weapon is at least as old as the account of Joshua’s siegeof Jericho, it was only recently deemed “inhuman and degrading” for the purposes ofinterrogation by the European Court of Human Rights in the 1978 case “Ireland v. theUnited Kingdom.”.
Accidentals apply only to the notes they precede with the exception of tied or consecutively repeated notes.Tempi are consistent throughout the meter changes (Le., ~'=),)=)l, etc.).Grace notes are always to be played as fast as possible. Each grace note in a group should be of the same duration. Gracenotes curtail the previous measured note's duration with the exception noted below.Approximate duration: 16 minutes.

SKU: CF.BE24

ISBN 9781491156780. UPC: 680160915323. 9 x 12 inches. La.

Based on Wallace Stevens' poem The Planet on the Table this string quartet's world is made of the music and sounds of remembered times or of something heard that the composer, Martin Bresnick, liked. The quartet has five movements, each headed by a quotation from one of Stevens' poems as a point of departure or pathway into those remembered sounds and music. What matters is that my music, like his (Stevens') poetry, should bear some lineament or character, some affluence, if only half perceived in the poverty of its sounds, of the planet of which it was part..
Wallace Stevens' poem The Planet on the Table begins - Ariel was glad he had written his poems, They were of a remembered time Or of something seen that he liked. In this string quartet, also entitled The Planet on the Table, my planet is made of the music and sounds of a remembered time or of something heard that I liked. The quartet has five movements, each headed by a quotation from one of Stevens' poems* as a point of departure or pathway into those remembered sounds and music: I. Mrs. Anderson's Swedish Baby II. She Measured the Hour III. Scene 10 Becomes 11 IV. Someone Has Walked Across the Snow V. His Self and the Sun Like Stevens, my self and the sun are one, and my music, like his poetry, although makings of my self, is also makings of the sun. Stevens wrote it was not important that his poetry survive, which is also true of my work. What matters is that my music, like his poetry, should bear some lineament or character, some affluence, if only half perceived in the poverty of its sounds, of the planet of which it was part. *Sources for the titles: I. The Pleasures of Merely Circulating II. The Idea of Order at Key West III. Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion IV. Vacancy in the Park V. The Planet on the Table.
Wallace Stevens' poem The Planet on the Table begins -Ariel was glad he had written his poems,They were of a remembered timeOr of something seen that he liked.In this string quartet, also entitled The Planet on the Table, my planet is made of the music and sounds of a remembered time or of something heard that I liked.The quartet has five movements, each headed by a quotation from one of Stevens' poems* as a point of departure or pathway into those remembered sounds and music:I. Mrs. Anderson's Swedish BabyII. She Measured the HourIII. Scene 10 Becomes 11IV. Someone Has Walked Across the SnowV. His Self and the SunLike Stevens, my self and the sun are one, and my music, like his poetry, although makings of my self, is also makings of the sun. Stevens wrote it was not important that his poetry survive, which is also true of my work.What matters is that my music, like his poetry, should bear some lineament or character, some affluence, if only half perceived in the poverty of its sounds, of the planet of which it was part.*Sources for the titles:I. The Pleasures of Merely CirculatingII. The Idea of Order at Key WestIII. Chaos in Motion and Not in MotionIV. Vacancy in the ParkV. The Planet on the Table.

SKU: HL.14030980

ISBN 9788759871973. 12.0x16.0x0.285 inches.

Score available: KP00250 The 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 to say 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 closer, culminates and at last disappears like an echo. Related to this, the general pattern of Angel's Music is divided into three: a pre-echo, culmination and echo.. The relationship between the three part is 5: 6: 4. The reason why I can say this precisely and prosaically is that it was necessary to me to mark the overall guidelines before I started to compose. I had to do this in order to enable the relationships to crawl from the general pattern almost fractionally into the smallest cells of the music, or more correctly; crawl from the small cells into the general pattern.'.

SKU: PR.164002720

UPC: 680160573042. 8.5 x 11 inches.

My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements. I see this theme as Mary's Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change.   I The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]   The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals. Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal. The style of the painting doesn't yet show Cassatt's originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face. Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above. The music begins with Mary's Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an alla Spagnola-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter. It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla.   Midway through, there's an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music. The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style. Cassatt's painting, too, is rather conventional.   II At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts]   This painting is one of Cassatt's most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage. Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her - though it is not him that she's looking at. It's an intriguing picture.   This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional. The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type mini-overture lasting less than a minute, based on Mary's Theme. My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box. What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of Soldier's Chorus from Gounod's FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello. This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment. On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod. It's as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it. Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first). This music isn't at all Gounod-derived; it's entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary's Theme and its scale. The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin's aria Avant de quitter ce lieux reappears in a kind of coda for all four players. It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however. The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream.   III Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts]   The painting, one of Cassatt's last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture. The colors are pastel and yet bold - and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure. It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody - three melodies, to be exact (Young Woman, Green, and Sunlight). No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies. I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy's song Green, from Ariettes Oubliees. 1909 would have been Debussy's heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this.   Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined - something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss. My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a pure form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting. This makes an interesting two ways form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1.   String Quartet No.3 (Cassatt) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.

SKU: BR.EB-9244

ISBN 9790004185445. 9 x 12 inches.

It was the practice of Khoomii (throat singing) - following several workshops with Michael Ormiston - that first attracted me to Tuvan music. Composing this Songbook, the first in a series commissioned by the Ligeti Quartet, I took the chance to reflect on compositional questions around transcription and arrangement of existing music, and frequently found myself asking: where is the boundary between the source material and the new substance? Of course the relationship varies from piece to piece, and moment to moment: sometimes we seem to glimpse the pure source, but most of the time there are differing degrees of distance, working towards or away from it. This new version for string orchestra corresponds closely to the original quartet version, with an additional part for double basses.The traditional Tuvan songs that I have transcribed and recomposed are all known to me from the Ay Kherel CD The Music of Tuva: Throat Singing and Instruments from Central Asia (2004, Arc Music). According to the notes from that CD, this is what the songs are about:1. Dyngylday: If you have come on a horse in blue, it doesn't mean that you are the best. My heart tells me something else: my sweetheart doesn't have such a beautiful horse, but he is my darling.An alternative interpretation from Alash Ensemble (alashensemble.com): The word dyngylday is a nonsense term with no translation. The song makes good-humored fun of somebody for being a good-for-nothing.2. Eki Attar (The Best Steeds): The horse is the basis of our life. It is a magic creature. Even its step is full of music and rhythm. You may not be a horse rider, but when you hear this song you will always remember horses.3. Kuda Yry: This wedding song glorifies the strength of the groom and the beauty of his Horse.4. Ezir-Kara ('Black Eagle'): This was the name of a horse, who became a legend through his remarkable strength and speed.It is not just overtones that abound here: there are galloping rhythms aplenty, and though I am no horse rider I tried to keep the horses galloping in my imagination while composing these pieces.Christian Mason (with quotes from Ay Kherel and Alash Ensemble)

World premiere of the original version: London/UK, May 10, 2016, World premiere of the string orchestra version: Clermont-Ferrand/France, October 8, 2020.

SKU: BR.EB-9243

ISBN 9790004185438. 9 x 12 inches.

It was the practice of Khoomii (throat singing) - following several workshops with Michael Ormiston - that first attracted me to Tuvan music. Composing this Songbook, the first in a series commissioned by the Ligeti Quartet, I took the chance to reflect on compositional questions around transcription and arrangement of existing music, and frequently found myself asking: where is the boundary between the source material and the new substance? Of course the relationship varies from piece to piece, and moment to moment: sometimes we seem to glimpse the pure source, but most of the time there are differing degrees of distance, working towards or away from it. This new version for string orchestra corresponds closely to the original quartet version, with an additional part for double basses.The traditional Tuvan songs that I have transcribed and recomposed are all known to me from the Ay Kherel CD The Music of Tuva: Throat Singing and Instruments from Central Asia (2004, Arc Music). According to the notes from that CD, this is what the songs are about:1. Dyngylday: If you have come on a horse in blue, it doesn't mean that you are the best. My heart tells me something else: my sweetheart doesn't have such a beautiful horse, but he is my darling.An alternative interpretation from Alash Ensemble (alashensemble.com): The word dyngylday is a nonsense term with no translation. The song makes good-humored fun of somebody for being a good-for-nothing.2. Eki Attar (The Best Steeds): The horse is the basis of our life. It is a magic creature. Even its step is full of music and rhythm. You may not be a horse rider, but when you hear this song you will always remember horses.3. Kuda Yry: This wedding song glorifies the strength of the groom and the beauty of his Horse.4. Ezir-Kara ('Black Eagle'): This was the name of a horse, who became a legend through his remarkable strength and speed.It is not just overtones that abound here: there are galloping rhythms aplenty, and though I am no horse rider I tried to keep the horses galloping in my imagination while composing these pieces.Christian Mason (with quotes from Ay Kherel and Alash Ensemble)

World premiere of the original version: London/UK, May 10, 2016, World premiere of the string orchestra version: Clermont-Ferrand/France, October 8, 2020.

SKU: HL.14041525

ISBN 9788759871829. UPC: 196288071020. 9.5x14.25x0.167 inches. Danish-English.

Programme Note During the composition of my tenth string quartet a flower-name, host-tidlos, came to my mind - and it would not me leave again. [hosttidlos is actually autumn crocus in English, but the composer prefers harvest-timeless, to maintain some of the associations of the Danish flower-name, red.] The paradoxical union of a seasonal time (harvest) and no-time-at-all was a good fit to the sections of the work that I had composed at that time, and I decided to tentatively stick to that title for the work-in-progress, and now, having finished the piece, I can say that is is still a fitting title - and it stands. Enough about the title, I will go on to describe themusic, a somewhat more precarious project. My tenth string quartet is probably the most basic string quartet that I have composed: melodically - and in sound - it employs the naturally based overtones and undertones (perceived at major and minor, respectively), and rhythmically it is based on growth, on the principles of the Golden Section, and the structure itself contrasts abundance and exuberance with sections of immobility and contemplation. However, Melos, melody, is definitely the dominating aspect of my STRING QUARTET NO. 10: behind even the most rhythmically complex or pure sonoric sections lies a firm - if hidden - basis of melodic or polyphonic ideas. The work was composed in 2004-2005 for the Kroger Quartet.

SKU: PE.EP72822

ISBN 9790577011769. 232 x 303mm inches. English.

I have only visited Damascus once, twenty years ago, on the way to Palmyra.  I had a purpose (I was writing music for a play about Palmyra’s Queen Zenobia) but essentially I was a tourist.  Like any visitor, I was thrilled to step out of the noisy modern city into the magical ancient world of the walled Old City, its vibrant souk leading to the magnificent mosque, and a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets filled with the smell of unleavened bread.

In Palmyra, I was met with extraordinary kindness everywhere.  On one occasion, a little Bedouin boy noticed that I was risking sunstroke wandering bare-headed among the spectacular ruins: he showed me how to tie a turban, then took me to have tea with his family in their tent.

Since then, I have watched helplessly as these places of wonder have been devastated and their inhabitants scattered and killed.  When the Sacconi Quartet suggested that I might choose a Syrian poet for our collaboration, I welcomed the idea.

I searched for a long time to find a contemporary poet whose work might gain from any music I could imagine.  I felt it was important to find first-hand accounts of the Syrian experience – but, of course, I was always reading them in translation.  In an anthology called Syria Speaks, I was astonished to read something that looked like prose, but was full of poetry.  It was Anne-Marie McManus’s fine translation of Ali Safar’s A Black Cloud in a Leaden White Sky – an eloquent, thoughtful, contained yet vivid account of life in a war-torn country, all the more moving for its restraint.

In setting these words, I have not attempted to imitate Syrian music.  However, there is what might be called a linguistic accommodation in my choice of scale, or mode.  Several movements are in a mode that I first discovered while writing a cantata commemorating the First World War: it has a tuning that I associate with war, its violence and desolation.  This eight-note mode is similar to scales found in Syrian music.  I did not choose it in the abstract: it emerged from the harmonies I was exploring in the earlier work, and emerged again as I was looking for the right musical colours to set Ali Safar’s words.  In this work, its Arabic aspect is more prominent. - Jonathan Dove

SKU: HL.49046188

ISBN 9781540051684. UPC: 888680938703. 9.0x12.0 inches.

When Cuarteto Casals approached me with the idea of illuminating Beethovens quartets anew, you can imagine the many thoughts and feelings that where going through my mind: what a joy, what a great honor What an intriguing head-scratcher! How can you possibly shine a new light on something that is already perfect? Weeks, months went by in search of a common ground between the Master and myself until I finally found it in the realization that a word lays hidden in the St. Johns hymn that gave musical notes their original name: Re, Sol, Ut, Io (D, G, C, B in English music notation) Perfect! “Resolutio” in Latin means both the resolution of aproblem and the re-solution: a re-blend of many elements that will eventually coagulate to make something new. There was finally themelodic and a rhythmical canvas for my piece. On this canvas I wrote the story of a funny little contest, played on a sunny Mediterranean square, between street musicians and Cuarteto Casals just minutes before they are about to go on stage to perform Beethovens Harp Quartet. After all the characters, each in his own way, had the chance to tell their story, a gentle rain starts to fall, dissolving (Re-solving) again the music sheet to eventually leave us with just a white piece of paper for somebody else to continue the Work. (Lucio Franco Amanti).