SKU: 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.
SKU: HL.257826
ISBN 9781540015716. UPC: 888680724504. 9.0x12.0x0.076 inches.
Peter Gregson's Primary Colours arranged for String Quartet.
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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: HL.370494
ISBN 9781705147009. UPC: 840126994025.
The First String Quartet in C major, Op. 37, was written in the autumn of 1917 and earned Szymanowski the first prize in a competition organized by the Ministry of Religious and in a competition organized by the Ministry of Religious and Educational Affairs in January 1922. The First String Quartet is notable for its clar and simple construction. The first movement is in the formof a sonata allegro; the Andantino semplice (in modo iuna canzone) in the middle is a cross between ternary and variation form. The final Scherzando alla burlesca also keeps to the form of a sonata allegro. The combinations and proportions of formal factors and the treatment of thematic material betray a fairly conventional adoption of classical models. Similarly, the expressive and structural use of melodic material shows a respect for traditional norms. Szymanowski created, in other works from the same period, his own individual type of melodic line, which was strongly expressive and achieved its effect chiefly by its tonal qualieties; nevertheless in this Quartet he returns to a fluid, cantilena-like, symmetrically shaped melodic line, which runs along in broad phrases of a concentrated, reflective character. Melody becomes the chief factor in the development of the form, both in thematic usage and in the application of a more polyphonic texture. Harmonic and tonal means are considerably simplified in the Quartet []. Most of the writing is linear, or horizontal, with individual treatment of each part, the parallel continuation of the four sound planes, almost a matter of principle. The functions of the particular instruments in realizing these planes are constantly changing,which accounts for the even greater variedy of tone-colour. The decision to forego experiment with forms and sonorities is reflectedin the overall approach to musical expression. The predominant atmosphere of restrained emotion, quiet lyricism and serenity is strongly suggestive of classical aestetic models. (Based on Zofia Helman Commentary on Szymanowski Complete Edition, Vol. B6) (II) The ''Second String Quartet'' represents an interesting attempt to revert to classical form coupled with the new harmonic and tonal vocabulary worked out previously in the ''Slopiewnie'', ''Stabat Mater'' and ''Mazurkas''. It was also the first time the composer had used folk elements in the framework of a major classical form. The ''Second String Quartet'' is in a special category among Szymanowski's works. Though it dates from the composer was still occupied with folk music, it nevertheless shows him returning to classical models, but at the same time using an aesthetic of subjective expression, which gives the work its own individual stamp. The ''Second String Quartet'' synthesis of the various directions in which Szymanowski was attempting to develop. The sonority and texture used in the first.
SKU: HL.14031851
ISBN 9788759880661. Danish.
Holmboe's last quartet work, which is unofficially also String Quartet No. 21, was the last work he ever composed, and was unfinished on his death in 1996. His pupil Per Nørgård has finished the quartet, and himself characterizes his contribution by saying that the score existed “in an only partly completed form, which could however be written out with only a few cases of doubt”. With only two movements and a playing time of about nine minutes it is at its existing length the shortest of Holmboe's string quartets. The first movement takes the form of one long arch in a rocking triple time which constantly shiftsamong different tempo and pulse sensations. At the same time the rhythmic energy increases until the movement, in a faster Con moto tempo accelerates to a more flowing 12/8 time, coloured both rhythmically by cross-rhythms in duple time and timbrally by harmonics in the viola. In its middle section, Con fuoco, the movement culminates in both tempo and expression until it falls calm in brief recapitulations in reverse order of the first two sections. The rocking feeling continues in the second movement, but now at a more extroverted level from the outset, Allegro and pizzicato. The energy builds up further as the mood intensifies to Con fuoco, while all instruments go over to bowed playing, but like the first movement, this movement ends Adagio here however not as a gradual attenuation but through a sudden shift in tempo to a calm, imitative passage before the movement slowly thins out to the almost inaudible through a last, dense, open sounding chord with a brief violin solo above it.
The quartet is dedicated to Holmboe's wife MeLa May Holmboe, and was given its first performance by the Kontra Quartet on 22nd March 1997 at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense, Denmark.
SKU: HL.14015171
ISBN 9788759878224. Danish.
Quartetto Sereno - String Quartet No.21 Op.197 (op. posth.) by Vagn Holmboe.
Holmboe's last quartet work, which is unofficially also String Quartet No. 21, was the last work he ever composed, and was unfinished on his death in 1996. His pupil Per Nørgård has finished the quartet, and himself characterizes his contribution by saying that the score existed “in an only partly completed form, which could however be written out with only a few cases of doubt”. With only two movements and a playing time of about nine minutes it is at its existing length the shortest of Holmboe's stringquartets. The first movement takes the form of one long arch in a rocking triple time which constantly shifts among different tempo and pulse sensations. At the same time the rhythmic energy increases until the movement, in a faster Con moto tempo accelerates to a more flowing 12/8 time, coloured both rhythmically by cross-rhythms in duple time and timbrally by harmonics in the viola. In its middle section, Con fuoco, the movement culminates in both tempo and expression until it falls calm in brief recapitulations in reverse order of the first two sections. The rocking feeling continues in the second movement, but now at a more extroverted level from the outset, Allegro and pizzicato. The energy builds up further as the mood intensifies to Con fuoco, while all instruments go over to bowed playing, but like the first movement, this movement ends Adagio here however not as a gradual attenuation but through a sudden shift in tempo to a calm, imitative passage before the movement slowly thins out to the almost inaudible through a last, dense, open sounding chord with a brief violin solo above it.
The quartet is dedicated to Holmboe's wife MeLa May Holmboe, and was given its first performance by the Kontra Quartet on 22nd March 1997 at the Carl Nielsen Academy of.
SKU: HL.49044199
ISBN 9790001193740. 9.0x11.75x0.286 inches.
These two chamber music works are one of the main focuses in the oeuvre of Ulvi Cemal Erkin. Lively and spirited, they combine Western European tradition with rhythmic and melodic elements from Turkish folk music. Both are perfectly suitable for music lessons and concert recitals, adding a new interesting colour to the common chamber music repertoire.Erkin (1906-1972) is one of the most important composers of Turkey. He studied piano and composition in France and later returned to his home country where he became professor in Ankara.
SKU: HL.49018966
ISBN 9790001170680.
Patchwork, the third string quartet by Barbara Heller, with its cheerful and light character, is an enjoyable piece. Playfully flowing figures, often in pizzicato, alternate with 'still soundscapes'. Designed by Heller as a tritone study, the tonal material consists of whole-tone relations throughout. The unusual tone colour of the tritone therefore requires precise intonation. with regards to tempo, it allows for free interpretation: Patchwork can either be played statically at a moderate tempo or one can 'scurry' quickly and humorously through the piece.
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