SKU: PE.EP68680
ISBN 9790300762616.
Although his Signifying Riffs (1998) for percussion and strings is halfway there, String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living (2016) is the first proper string quartet by composer George Lewis. Borrowing its title from the writings of John Stuart Mill, Experiments in Living leads the performers through a series of idiosyncratic episodes featuring extremes of gesture and extended technique over the course of a single, 16-minute movement.
Commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living was composed for Spektral Quartet, who gave the premiere performance in October 2016 at Chicago's Harris Theater. This set of score and parts has been made available for sale by Edition Peters as part of the Peters Contemporary Chamber Series and includes full performance notes. Chopsticks and superball mallets are required to achieve some of the score's percussive playing techniques.
SKU: SU.29120030
String Quartet No. 2 is in three movements. The 1st movement engages from the opening bar with fast paced, off kilter 7/8 tutti rhythms and sharp-edged harmonies. This is a kind of musical caffeine living between tonal and polytonalism with rich, sliding chords and a haunting middle section reminiscent of Armenian folks tunes. The 2nd movement offers emotional storytelling with clear tonality but with moments of more complex stacked harmonies and tension. The 3rd movement is lively with raw energy. Voices are rapidly interchanged in a dance of weaving motivic development until the satisfying rush of notes to the end.String Quartet Duration: 15' Composed: 2019 Published by: Todd Mason String Quartet No. 2 (Youtube):.
SKU: PE.EP6623
ISBN 9790300719283.
4 scores needed for performanceThis product is Printed on Demand and may take several weeks to fulfill. Please order from your favorite retailer.
SKU: HL.49045929
9.0x12.0x0.057 inches.
The Austro-Hungarian composer Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) was musically precocious: At the suggestion of AntonÃn Dvorák, he receivedpiano lessons at the age of seven, and at the age of ten became a student at the Prague Conservatory. Further piano studies in Vienna, Cologne and Leipzig as well as composition lessons with Max Reger supplemented his education. His Jewish heritage, which defamed his music as “degenerateâ€, and his sympathy for communism, however, cost him his life. In Prague and finally interned in Wülzburg near Weissenburg in Bavaria, he died of tuberculosis. Schulhoff's musical significance lies in the integration of jazz into art music, for example in his oratorio H.M.S. Royal Oak or in his Hot Sonata for alto saxophone and piano. He earned his living as a jazz pianist for a long time. In August 1922 he wrote four short piano pieces, his Rag Music, to which he added four more phrases in November: released as Partita, also known as Jazz-like Partita - with the fashion dances Ragtime, Foxtrott, Shimmy, Boston and - as No. 7 - a tango. From a piano to a string quartet movement, the arrangement presents itself as a delicate and smart, technically not too difficult sweet, suitable as a diversion or addition in a quartet program.
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SKU: HL.49045761
ISBN 9784115902275. 8.25x11.75x0.145 inches.
Improvisational energy inherent in music that spouts The Savage Mind, which is mentioned by Japanese musicologist and anthopologist Masakuni Kitazawa in his book Sound as Metaphor, always fascinates me. One of the aims of writing this work was to test whether a highly refined medium like a string quartet can produce the energy. 'Inherent in music' mentioned above can be restated as 'inherent in human being.' Beyond the intellectual inquiring mind, I hope this worl is strongly connected to 'living in the present.' Tokuhide Niimi.
SKU: HL.49045309
ISBN 9781495082443. UPC: 888680656577. 9.0x12.0x0.859 inches. English.
I was immediately drawn to the quartet's poignant, intimate and expressive sound world, the evocative and hauntingly beautiful voice of contralto Karen Clark and the poetry of Henry David Thoreau whose words so thoroughly capture the transcendental spirit of nineteenth century New England life. Living and working in the high hills of rural New Hampshire provided a synergy of poetry and music that formed an ideal union to help frame the mood, character and direction of this work. Joseph Schwantner.
SKU: 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
SKU: BO.B.3542
Staeliana was commissioned by the Fundacio Caixa de Catalunya in 2007 for the inauguration of an exposition of the work of Nicolas Staël at La Pedrera, Barcelona. In this work I wanted to compose homage to a painter who knew how to join together in his unique works both the traditions of the past along with the vanguard of his time. Beginning with figurative works which lead toward abstraction, his body of work can be defined as a contrast between these two concepts which, with extreme simplicity, define his entire artistic conception. Staeliana, an expressive chorale, at times both luminous and dramatic, dissolves into the most minimal expression. From the first joining together of the voices it concludes with utter simplicity of expression. The suicide of the artist in 1955 is representative of the dissolution of his existence as well as of his artistic works. This contrast between figurative and abstraction is reflected in the music by the contrast between stability and tension. I believe that this duality may be found both in his work and in his life, always oscillating between living a creative life or opting for death, which may be seen as a fusion in nothingness with the plenitude of purest simplicity.
SKU: GI.G-008324
UPC: 641151083247.
