This is the Study Score edition of Per Nørgård's String Quartet No.8 'Night Descending'. Programme note: This piece is based on 5 sections from my chamber opera Nuit des homme where a string quartet is the leading instrumental ensemble. Even though the subject is The Great War (1st World War) the plot is on a psychological level and follows the development of a couple - in poems of Guillaume Apollinaire. The couple's war enthusiasm in the beginning is replaced by horror and in the end dehumanizing. The five movements of the quartet express phases in this process: from the Eulogy of the prologue praise of the The Sun of Gold above the humananimal - a rhythmic tense and still more and more militaristic movement - to The Journey whose enlargement of conscience due to the exhausting tempo of the new era is suddenly stopped in the fourth movement carrying the title of the piece and expressing the calm before storm not as a blessing of peace but as a latent anxiety. In the epilogue of the fifth movement the theme of the prologue reappears but it is changed from hymn to elegy. The quartet is dedicated to the Zapolsky Quartet who took part in the world premiere of the opera in September 1996. Per Nørgård 1997

The second String Quartet by Joan Tower is a short but complex work addressing thoughts of death and loss written in memory of an old friend. The piece was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Tokyo String Quartet who firstperformed the piece in February 2002 at the 92nd Street Y New York City.Further inspired by the events in New York on September 11th 2001 the writing contains high sustained celestial material which slowly descends. Thiswriting is paired with more forceful driving and repetitive musical ideas that attempt to express the anger and pain that results from the loss of people in one's life.