SKU: FG.55011-510-1

ISBN 9790550115101.

Matthew Whittall's preface to Bright Ferment (2019): I have a complicated history with the string quartet. Actually, it's not that complicated. I spent months writing a huge one in my early twenties and hastily withdrew it after a long delayed premiere, vowing never to write another. In a typical case of karmic retribution, my fear of the form would eventually be overcome by the unrefusable offer to write the compulsory piece for the Banff International String Quartet Competition in my native Canada. The short duration requested, about nine minutes, also felt like a good way to wade gingerly back into the medium. The title was originally just a nice-sounding pair of words that surfaced in a brainstorming session with fellow composer Alex Freeman over an injudicious amount of fermented barley. When I looked it up later, I found that it was a phrase of older coinage, seemingly used more for poetic resonance than any fixed meaning. Ferment by itself denotes a state of confusion, change or lack of order. With bright, it takes on a more positive connotation with regard to society and creativity: a wild profusion of ideas barely checked by reason. (It may not actually mean that, but it describes this piece nicely, so let's go with it.) Fermentation in its trendy culinary usage is also hinted at via a recurrent percolating device of scattered pizzicati. As one may guess from the tone of this introduction, there is little attempt at gravity in Bright Ferment, the only means by which I felt I could sidestep the historical and expressive weight of the string quartet genre. Styles, gestures and moods are tossed around, cross-cut and abandoned in stream-of-consciousness fashion, connected by little except an intuitive sense of rightness in their juxtaposition. If the piece acquires depth in spite of me, it will only be because its disparate parts amplify and strengthen each other simply by being together - much like the ensemble itself. Bright Ferment was commissioned by the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with additional funding from the Americas Society (New York), for the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. Duration: ca. 9 minutes.

SKU: HL.14042754

ISBN 9780711965447.

A series of popular music for working string quartets. Light enjoyable repertoire pieces and entertaining encores. Each folio contains five pieces. Contents: 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', 'Candle In The Wind', '(Everything I Do) IDo It For You', 'Killing Me Softly With His Song', 'Without You'.

SKU: HL.49015903

ISBN 9783795763466. UPC: 073999317336. 5.25x7.5x0.098 inches.

With more than 1,200 titles from the orchestral and choral repertoire, from chamber music and musical theatre, Edition Eulenburg is the world's largest series of scores, covering large part of music history from the Baroque to the Classical era and looking back on a long tradition.

SKU: HL.49004992

ISBN 9790001053518. UPC: 884088108632. 6.0x8.25x0.2 inches.

SKU: HL.49009699

ISBN 9790200201888. UPC: 073999367379. 5.25x7.5x0.068 inches.

With more than 1,200 titles from the orchestral and choral repertoire, from chamber music and musical theatre, Edition Eulenburg is the world's largest series of scores, covering large part of music history from the Baroque to the Classical era and looking back on a long tradition.

SKU: PR.114410380

UPC: 680160015160. 9.5 x 13 inches.

My second String Quartet was written twenty years after the first, Opus 4 from 1978. The First Quartet is an obsessively contrapuntal work in one movement, which was no doubt influenced by my studies with David Diamond. I had always intended to return to the medium once I left the astringency of my earlier style, but it was only when the National Federation of Music Clubs commissioned a major chamber work, with unspecified instrumentation, to celebrate their 100th Anniversary that I was enabled to do so. The Second Quartet is in four movements: Moderato, Allegro isterico, an Andante theme with 11 variations, and the closing Allegro, which then returns to the tempo of the first movement. An audience member at the premiere told me that she heard echoes of recent tragic events such as the Oklahoma bombing in this work. While I had no such programmatic intent while writing the quartet, it was not an entirely incorrect assessment of the work's intended emotional impact. The quartet is pervaded by a sense of seriousness, even mournfulness. The second movement's scherzo is an aggressively animated piece of musical machinery. The third movement's Variations unfold into a greater variety of moods than the others - but the moments of lyricism are countered by aggressive or ironic outbursts. The final movement's attempt at triumph quickly subsides into a return of the first movement, before being transformed onto a sense of resignation and acceptance as the chromaticism of the opening theme is transformed into a pure and diatonic C-Major. The work received its world premiere by the Shanghai Quartet at the 100th Anniversary Congress of the National Federation of Music Clubs at the Congress Hotel in Chicago on August 19th 1998.
My second String Quartet was written twenty years after the first, Opus 4 from 1978.  The First Quartet is an obsessively contrapuntal work in one movement, which was no doubt influenced by my studies with David Diamond.  I had always intended to return to the medium once I left the astringency of my earlier style, but it was only when the National Federation of Music Clubs commissioned a major chamber work, with unspecified instrumentation, to celebrate their 100th Anniversary that I was enabled to do so.The Second Quartet is in four movements:  Moderato, Allegro isterico, an Andante theme with 11 variations, and the closing Allegro, which then returns to the tempo of the first movement.An audience member at the premiere told me that she heard echoes of recent tragic events such as the Oklahoma bombing in this work.  While I had no such programmatic intent while writing the quartet, it was not an entirely incorrect assessment of the work’s intended emotional impact.  The quartet is pervaded by a sense of seriousness, even mournfulness.  The second movement’s scherzo is an aggressively animated piece of musical machinery.  The third movement’s Variations unfold into a greater variety of moods than the others – but the moments of lyricism are countered by aggressive or ironic outbursts.  The final movement’s attempt at triumph quickly subsides into a return of the first movement, before being transformed onto a sense of resignation and acceptance as the chromaticism of the opening theme is transformed into a pure and diatonic C-Major.The work received its world premiere by the Shanghai Quartet at the 100th Anniversary Congress of the National Federation of Music Clubs at the Congress Hotel in Chicago on August 19th 1998.

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.'.