Tenor & String Quartet

SKU: PE.EP72822

Composed by Jonathan Dove. Voice(s) & Various Instruments. Edition Peters. Living Composer. Score and Part(s). 164 pages. Duration 00:30:00. Edition Peters #98-EP72822. Published by Edition Peters (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

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String Quartet

SKU: HL.49047454

Score and Parts. Composed by Julian Anderson. String Ensemble. Chamber, Classical. Softcover. 148 pages. Duration 1380 seconds. Schott Music #ED13989. Published by Schott Music (HL.49047454).

UPC: 842819101086. 9.0x12.0x0.358 inches.

My 3rd String Quartet is in six contrasted movements. Certain musical figures recur across the work, but there are few themes as such. The main emphasis is on contrast of mood, texture, harmony, pacing and timing. Unlike many of my works this quartet had no extra-musical inspiration, and in principle should have no subtitle. Certain features already present in my music became more prominent in this new work: modes (limited collections of pitches) have always helped me to focus musical character, but here a sense of key note for each mode became much more pronounced, as did the difference between modes for each section of the work. A sort of hybrid key-system emerged (even with equivalents of major and minor) which is not normal tonality, nor does it aim to imitate it. Unlike tonality this key-system includes noises, extended performance techniques and intervals outside Western tuning as available resources. What I hope it does is to focus the listening experience onto different musical areas, to encourage a sense of both modulation from one area to another and to give the music a sense of goal. No conscious knowledge of this is needed when listening: the music should communicate directly on its own. Here, then, is this collection of six musical colours, related and unrelated, different yet belonging together, variable yet in a set order. Hence the subtitle, chosen both for both its sound and its sense: 'hana no hanataba' meaning, in Japanese, 'bouquet of flowers'. A brief description: 1) Moderately fast. Short droplets of sounds gather increasing momentum. 2) Very fast. Canons and bells at different speeds. 3) Very slow - fast - very slow - very fast - very slow. The main slow movement and its main scherzo. An emphasis on non-tempered tunings and on inhaling and exhaling waves of sound. The slow sections feature florid melodic writing. In the exuberant scherzo competing duos and trios create imaginary folk music. 4) Extremely fast/extremely slow. Open strings and harmonics fuse into a single string instrument - like a sort of large resonating Medieval tromba marina. 5) Very fast. A variation on movement 2). Variation, Schoenberg told Cage, is just a sort of repetition 'with some things changed and others not.' 6) Slow - Very Fast - Fast - Slow. The opening calm harmonies and florid melodies evoke movement 3) in different music. The fast part features one overt theme: a fanfare-like call to attention which is subject to extensive development. There is much use of non-Western tuning. At its climax the music freezes into a frieze - a wall of sound standing in front of the audience with increasing obstinacy and certainty as the work grinds towards its cadence.

String Quartet - intermediate

SKU: BT.DHP-1115206-070

Composed by Billy Joel. Arranged by Anthony Gröger. De Haske Pops for String Quartet. Pop & Rock. Set (Score & Parts). Composed 2011. 12 pages. De Haske Publications #DHP 1115206-070. Published by De Haske Publications (BT.DHP-1115206-070).

ISBN 9789043149297. 9x12 inches. English-German-French-Dutch.

De Haske's best-selling Pops for String Quartet series offers excellent arrangements for intermediate string quartets who want to bring some classic pop to their performances.This lyrical ballad was released by Billy Joel in 1977 and has gained popularity recently when it was used for a John Lewis television advert.

Onder de naam Pops for String Quartet heeft de Haske een nieuwe serie ontwikkeld voor strijkkwartetten die zich eens buiten het klassieke pad willen begeven. Een collectie van uitstekende arrangementen in gemiddelde moeilijkheidsgraad!Deze prachtige ballad uit de jaren zeventig van Billy Joel leent zich uitstekend voor een gevoelige interpretatie door strijkkwartet.

Unter dem Titel Pops for String Quartet hat De Haske eine Notenreihe ins Leben gerufen, die Streichquartette, die sich einmal abseits der ausgetretenen klassischen Pfade bewegen wollen, mit ausgezeichneten Arrangements im leichten bis mittleren Schwierigkeitsgrad versorgt.Die lyrische Ballade von Billy Joel aus dem Jahre 1977 eignet sich vorzüglich für eine gefühlvolle Interpretation im Streichquartett!

La collection Pops for String Quartet des Éditions De Haske présente des arrangements originaux de pièces stupéfiantes, sans jamais dépasser un degré de difficulté élémentaire. Laissez-vous surprendre par ces quatuors d'un genre nouveau !Cette merveilleuse ballade, écrite par Billy Joel en 1977, a été magnifiquement arrangée pour Quatuor Cordes.

Pops for String Quartet: una collana per tutti i violinisti desiderosi di suonare qualcosa di diverso dal repertorio classico.La splendida ballata lirica di Bill Joel del 1977 si presta alla perfezione per essere interpretata da un quartetto di archi.

String Quartet (Parts)

SKU: HL.51481272

Set of Parts. Composed by Alexander Zemlinsky. Edited by Dominik Rahmer. Henle Music Folios. Classical. Softcover. G. Henle #HN1272. Published by G. Henle (HL.51481272).

UPC: 840126989250. 9.0x12.0x0.348 inches.

Alexander Zemlinsky's music was long unjustly overshadowed by what was regarded as the “more progressive” Second Viennese School. Although Zemlinsky was close friends with its protagonist Arnold Schönberg, he never did take the latter's radical step into dodecaphony. At the same time, he composed works that were no less original or fully fledged. Composed between 1913 and 1915, his Second String Quartet in particular pushed the contemporaneous understanding of form and tonality to its limits. With just one movement but spanning over 1,200 measures, this multi-faceted work numbers among the most significant contributions to the genre of the time and has long merited a critical new edition. The Urtext edition by G. Henle Publishers corrects many errors and inaccuracies in the first edition that came to light after careful comparison with the autograph sources in Vienna and Washington. For the first time, too, the metronome markings that survive only in one of Zemlinsky's letters have been incorporated. Editorial work was kindly supported by the Alexander Zemlinsky Endowment Fund in Vienna.

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By Various. Arranged by Brent Jorgensen. For String Quartet. Level: Easy. Published by Jackman Music Corporation.