| Tuvan Songbook String Quartet: 2 violins, viola, cello [Score] Breitkopf & Härtel
String Quartet (2vl,va,vc) SKU: BR.EB-9243 Full Score. Composed by...(+)
String Quartet (2vl,va,vc) SKU: BR.EB-9243 Full Score. Composed by Christian Mason. Chamber music; stapled. Edition Breitkopf. World premiere of the original version: London, May 10, 2016World premiere of the string orchestra version: Clermont-Ferrand, October 8, 2020. New music (post-2000). Full score. Composed 2016/2020. 40 pages. Duration 19'. Breitkopf and Haertel #EB 9243. Published by Breitkopf and Haertel (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. $57.95 - See more - Buy onlinePre-shipment lead time: 3 to 4 weeks | | |
| Tuvan Songbook String Quartet: 2 violins, viola, cello Breitkopf & Härtel
String Quartet (2vl,va,vc) SKU: BR.EB-9244 Set of Parts. Composed ...(+)
String Quartet (2vl,va,vc) SKU: BR.EB-9244 Set of Parts. Composed by Christian Mason. Chamber music; stapled. Edition Breitkopf. World premiere of the original version: London, May 10, 2016World premiere of the string orchestra version: Clermont-Ferrand, October 8, 2020. New music (post-2000). Set of parts. Composed 2016/2020. 92 pages. Duration 19'. Breitkopf and Haertel #EB 9244. Published by Breitkopf and Haertel (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. $92.95 - See more - Buy onlinePre-shipment lead time: 3 to 4 weeks | | |
| Bright Ferment - String Quartet No. 2 String Quartet: 2 violins, viola, cello [Score and Parts] Fennica Gehrman
String quartet SKU: FG.55011-510-1 Composed by Matthew Whittall. Score an...(+)
String quartet SKU: FG.55011-510-1 Composed by Matthew Whittall. Score and parts. Fennica Gehrman #55011-510-1. Published by Fennica Gehrman (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. $54.95 - See more - Buy onlinePre-shipment lead time: 4 to 6 weeks | | |
| String Quartet No. 2 String Quartet: 2 violins, viola, cello Theodore Presser Co.
Chamber Music Cello, Viola, Violin 1, Violin 2 SKU: PR.114406980 Vista...(+)
Chamber Music Cello, Viola, Violin 1, Violin 2 SKU: PR.114406980 Vistas. Composed by Shulamit Ran. Set of Score and Parts. With Standard notation. 42 + 112 pages. Duration 25 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #114-40698. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.114406980). UPC: 680160010806. Shulamit Ran’s second string quartet, subtitled “Vistas,†occupies a large canvas that is cast in a traditional fourmovement mold, where the outer movements present, explore, and later return to the work’s principal musical materials, surrounding a slow movement and scherzo-type third movement with a trio. In addition to tempo-based titles, the individual movements have subtitles that are evocative of each movement’s character, as follows: I. Concentric: from the inside out II. Stasis III. Flashes IV. Vistas. My second string quartet, “Vistasâ€, is a work cast in a traditional four-movement formal mold, with the outer movements, presenting and later returning to the work’s principal musical materials, surrounding a slow movement and a scherzo-type third movement.While the four movements’ “proper†names -- Maestoso con forza, Lento, Scherzo impetuoso, and Introduzione; Maestoso e grande – give some indication of the general character of the individual movements, I have also subtitled, less formally, each movement as follows: 1) Concentric: from the inside out 2) Stasis 3) Flashes 4) Vista. The images evoked by these titles tell one, I think, a bit more about the inner workings of the quartet.In the first movement, a prominently presented opening pitch (E) reveals itself, as the movement unfolds, to be a center of gravity from which ever-growing cycles of activity gradually evolve. While various important themes come into being as the movement progresses, their impact on the listener has, I believe, a great deal to do with their juxtaposition and relationship to the initial central point of gravity.Stasis is, as the name implies, a movement where activity seems, at times, almost suspended. Being also, as Webster’s Dictionary reminds us, “a state of static balance and equilibrium among opposing tendencies or forces,†it develops various materials, including ones from the first movement, without bringing them to points of resolution.Flashes is short and very fast, evoking in my mind the quick shimmer of fireflies, a “sudden burst of lightâ€, but also a “brief timeâ€. Perhaps, even, a “smileâ€?Finally, the last movement, Vista, is not only “a view or outlookâ€, but also “a comprehensive mental view of a series of remembered or anticipated events.â€Â After a brief recall of the opening of the second movement, this movement brings back all the important themes of the first movement in their original order. But just as going back can never really mean going back in time, the movement is much more than recapitulatory. By cutting through previously transitory passages and presenting the main ideas in a fashion more direct yet more evolved, it also sheds new light on earlier events, offering a retrospective, synoptic view of the first movement as it brings to culmination the work as a whole. “Vistas†was commissioned by C. Geraldine Freund for the Taneyev String Quartet of what was then Leningrad. It was the first commission given in this country to a Soviet chamber ensemble since the 1985 cultural exchange accord between the Soviet Union and the United States. $285.00 - See more - Buy onlinePre-shipment lead time: 2 to 3 weeks | | |
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