Par ADAMS JOHN LUTHER. John Luther Adams' Everything That Rises for String Quartet. John Luther Adams' Everything That Rises for String Quartet. Composers note: I never imagined I would write a string quartet. Then I heard the JACK Quartet, and I understood how Imight 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, twomore 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 theirinstruments. 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 - aperformance-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 isa 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 spiralupward... until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows, sighing. Duration: 60 minutes/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

John Luther Adams' Canticles Of The Sky for String Quartet. Composer's Note: In the Arctic sky the low angle of the sun and heavy ice crystals in the air often produce vivid halos arcs andsundogs (parhelia). Sometimes these phenomena create the illusion of multiple suns. 'Sky With Four Suns' is a musical evocation of such an apparition from sunrise to sunset. Similar visions also occur at night which isthe image behind 'Sky With Four Moons.' 'Sky With Nameless Colors' and 'Sky With Endless Stars' evoke the extraordinary depth and clarity of Sonoran Desert skies. This music is drawn from Canticles of the Holy Wind– a concert-length work for four choirs and vocal soloists. In this version sixteen separate choral parts have been condensed into the string quartet. String designations should be carefully observed. Frequent stringcrossings are employed to create as lush and continuous textures as possible. All sounds should be legato. Bowing is free and full throughout. Total performance duration is about 18:00

Ave Maria was composed in about 1825 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828) when he was twenty-eight years old and filled with devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was written for voice and piano and first Published in 1826 as Op 52 no 6. The words most commonly used with Schubert's music are not the words that the composer originally set to music. Franz Schubert actually wrote the music for an excerpt from the poem 'The Lady of the Lake' by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) which was translated into German by Adam Storck. Schubert called his piece Ellens dritter Gesang (Ellen's third song). In this particular excerpt from the poem the heroine Ellen Douglas is in hiding and prays to theVirgin Mary. This version for string quartet makes a welcome addition its repertoire.

Homunculus is a short (circa 12 minutes) work for string quartet which the composer wrote during the Autumn months of 2007 for the Johannes Quartet.He wanted to compose a piece that would be very compact in form andduration but still contain many different characters and textures. In other words a little piece that behaves like a big piece.He has long been fascinated (and amused) by the arcane spermists’ theory who held the beliefthat the sperm was in fact a 'little man' (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child. This seemed to them to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception. It was later pointed out that if the spermwas a homunculus identical in all but size to an adult then the homunculus may have sperm of its own. This led to a reductio ad absurdum with an endless chain of homunculi. This was not necessarily considered by spermists afatal objection however as it neatly explained how it was that 'in Adam' all had sinned: the whole of humanity was already contained in his loins.He decided to call my piece Homunculus despite the obvious weaknesses of thespermists’ thinking as he found the idea of a perfect little man strangely moving.