SKU: HL.49045762
ISBN 9784115902282. 8.25x11.75x0.1 inches.
This is the eleventh work in my chamber music series, STRATA, and my fourth string quartet following STRATA I, V, and IX. This series started in 1988 based on the idea of regarding registers as strata (the plural form of stratum), from which the title in derived. While I continue to write pieces, however, the initial concept changed in various aspects. This time, I returned to the original idea To put it simply, I restarted from STRATA I. I used the same instruments and stared at strara created by the four string parts. That became the act of composing STRATA XI. The work doesn't have 'development' in the general sense but represents a panorama of strata. It consists of four movements (fast-slow-fast-slow). In fact, before writing the STRATA series, I wrote a long string quartet when I was a student, but I didn't include it in my list of works. Anyway, the thought of writing string quartet has never disappeared from me. It alays weighs heavily on my mind. Shin-Ichiro Ikebe.
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SKU: HL.14001159
ISBN 9788759805527. UPC: 888680792657. 8.25x11.75x0.106 inches.
Study score to Bent Sorensen's Adieu for String Quartet. The slow choral-like music which initiates Adieu was the result of an image or almost a dream that I had. Without being able to explain why, I imagined a procession of people, maybe medieval monks, wearing large gray mantles with Ku-Klux-Klan-like white cowls on their heads, something like a funeral procession. The title Adieu is partly a comment on this funeral procession, but also used because the piece is split up by three slow-ascending glissandi, a kind of farewell glissandi which removes the intervening music. The first absorbing glissando is soft and removes both the slow funeral choral and the agitating figures in the first half of the piece. The second glissando is given only to the cello and crawls out from the elegiac melodies in the middle part. The third and final glissando is intense and agitating, and prepares the way for the end of the piece. This end primarily deals with the relationship fast - slow. This relationship is turned topsy turvy: the music gets faster and faster until it is so fast that it suddenly becomes slow, so slow in fact that it is very quickly able to become extremely fast again. Bent Sorensen.
SKU: HL.14030978
ISBN 9788759877142. UPC: 888680792640. 9.75x14.5x0.141 inches.
Score available: KP30120 The composer writes: The slow choral-like music which initiates Adieu was the result of an image or almost a dream that I had. Without being able to explain why, I imagined a procession of people, maybe medieval munks, wearing large gray mantles with Ku-Klux-Klan-like white cowls on their heads, something like a funeral procession. The title Adieu is partly a comment on this funeral procession, but also used because the piece is split up by three slow-ascending glissandi, a kind of farewell glissandi which removes the intervening music. The first absorbing glissando is soft and removes both the slow funeral choral and the agitating figures in the first half of the piece. The second glissando is given only to the cello and crawls out from the elegiac melodies in the middle part. The third and final glissando is intense and agitating, and prepares the way for the end of the piece. This end primarily deals with the relationship fast - slow. This relationship is turned topsy turvy: the music gets faster and faster until it is so fast that it suddenly becomes slow, so slow in fact that it is very quickly able to become extremely fast again.
SKU: HL.14030979
Parts available: KP00248 The composer writes: The slow choral-like music which initiates Adieu was the result of an image or almost a dream that I had. Without being able to explain why, I imagined a procession of people, maybe medieval munks, wearing large gray mantles with Ku-Klux-Klan-like white cowls on their heads, something like a funeral procession. The title Adieu is partly a comment on this funeral procession, but also used because the piece is split up by three slow-ascending glissandi, a kind of farewell glissandi which removes the intervening music. The first absorbing glissando is soft and removes both the slow funeral choral and the agitating figures in the first half of the piece. The second glissando is given only to the cello and crawls out from the elegiac melodies in the middle part. The third and final glissando is intense and agitating, and prepares the way for the end of the piece. This end primarily deals with the relationship fast - slow. This relationship is turned topsy turvy: the music gets faster and faster until it is so fast that it suddenly becomes slow, so slow in fact that it is very quickly able to become extremely fast again.
SKU: PR.14440385S
UPC: 680160029907.
A shorter and less stringent work than my two previous quartets (1992 and 1994), the Fourth Quartet is comprised, almost obsessively, of the interplay between two thematic kernels: (1) a 5-note motto, announced at the outset, derived from pitches in my own name; and (2) a brief legato line of expressive sevenths (minor/major), which is itself born out of the first cell. Both of these fragments constantly pervade the entire work, albeit in ever-changing raiment. The piece is extremely classical in design: four movements played without interruption - slow/fast/slow/fast - with the first and third sections alternating declamatory and calmer gestures, and the second and fourth being, in effect, almost variants of each other. Quartet No. 4 is approximately 20 minutes in duration and each movement, as noted, was written in memory of dear friends who passed away during late 1995 and early 1996. The work was completed in April of 1996 in Ormond, Florida and Fairport, New York. --Sydney Hodkinson.A shorter and less stringent work than my two previous quartets (1992 and 1994), the Fourth Quartet is comprised, almost obsessively, of the interplay between two thematic kernels: (1) a 5-note motto, announced at the outset, derived from pitches in my own name; and (2) a brief legato line of expressive sevenths (minor/major), which is itself born out of the first cell. Both of these fragments constantly pervade the entire work, albeit in ever-changing raiment.The piece is extremely classical in design: four movements played without interruption – slow/fast/slow/fast – with the first and third sections alternating declamatory and calmer gestures, and the second and fourth being, in effect, almost variants of each other.Quartet No. 4 is approximately 20 minutes in duration and each movement, as noted, was written in memory of dear friends who passed away during late 1995 and early 1996. The work was completed in April of 1996 in Ormond, Florida and Fairport, New York.—Sydney Hodkinson.
SKU: PR.16400272S
UPC: 680160588442. 8.5 x 11 inches.
My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements. I see this theme as Mary's Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change. I The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals. Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal. The style of the painting doesn't yet show Cassatt's originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face. Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above. The music begins with Mary's Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an alla Spagnola-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter. It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla. Midway through, there's an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music. The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style. Cassatt's painting, too, is rather conventional. II At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts] This painting is one of Cassatt's most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage. Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her - though it is not him that she's looking at. It's an intriguing picture. This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional. The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type mini-overture lasting less than a minute, based on Mary's Theme. My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box. What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of Soldier's Chorus from Gounod's FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello. This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment. On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod. It's as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it. Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first). This music isn't at all Gounod-derived; it's entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary's Theme and its scale. The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin's aria Avant de quitter ce lieux reappears in a kind of coda for all four players. It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however. The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream. III Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts] The painting, one of Cassatt's last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture. The colors are pastel and yet bold - and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure. It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody - three melodies, to be exact (Young Woman, Green, and Sunlight). No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies. I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy's song Green, from Ariettes Oubliees. 1909 would have been Debussy's heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this. Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined - something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss. My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a pure form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting. This makes an interesting two ways form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1. String Quartet No.3 (Cassatt) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.
SKU: PR.164002720
UPC: 680160573042. 8.5 x 11 inches.
SKU: BT.WHKP01684
English.
Three Little Nocturnes was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2005. Commissioned by the Cikada Ensemble, with support from NOMUS, and written for Frode Haltli and the Cikada String Quartet. Programme Note: In the first nocturne a slow, falling music emerges on an irregular pulse, filled with high harmonics in the strings. The second nocturne is fast and unrestful music, with a lot of passion, which in a moment runs into a glimpse of a tango. In this movement the accordion is employed in its traditional fashion, using the chord bass, with its “oom-pah-pah†standard chords. The third nocturne is again slow, indeed very slow, and it has German tempo and expression markings. Thepiece ends with a lullaby in the accordion, played with an unusual technique, imitating the string portato. This is accompanied by high harmonics in the strings, while the first violin slowly and softly plays a melody from the second nocturne. Hans Abrahamsen.
SKU: PR.114405050
UPC: 680160008377. 11 x 14 inches.
Although structurally it subdivides into five movements, the entire quartet emerges as one vast continuum. There are no formal breaks between movements. However, certain musical signposts can be discerned, associated with each of the movements' terminations and new beginnings. The opening movement, The Nostalgia of Clanging Bell Sonorities, begins floating on recurrent Bbs whose soft rhythmic flow slowly puts into motion strong undercurrents suggestive of the latent power of water... After several suggestions of tolling bells, the movement gradually fades into hushed tones of veiled and very distant sonorities. It uses a unique efffect, for the first time in a musical context, conveyed through the use of extra heavy practice mutes. The second movement, The Spill of Water , disengages itself from the first through its distinct contrast in tempo. Water moves fast, and when it splashes, it tends to run wildly. In this case, it happens to be bubbly water that gushes forth bodly... smashing across rocky shorlines. So, too, the music attempts to conjure such moods. At the end of this movement, a cello cadenza emerges, introducing an introspective type of melodicism. The third movement, The Poignancy of Memory, contains many silences as it tries to convey memory through fragmented remembrances much like often occur in our dream state. Progressing through several slowly building images, it gradually works itself into juxtaposition of musical images. Towards the movement's end, high harmonics are sounding in all four instruments while left hand pizzicato notes in the cello pluch the last remembrances of this central core. Almost imperceptibly, the viola assumes leadership as it dissolves into: The fourth movement, The Fluidity of Motion, which has mostly the viola, but also the cello, articulating lyrical statements against the sheets of sound conjured up by the two violins playing a flood of swirling figures, evokes a kind of static motion in spae. Here, the virtually imperceptible manner in which this hushed whisper continues incessantly, can suggest the potential fluidity with which movement may inch forward... Later into the fourth movement , two fairly extended solos by the second and then the first violins, lead to a kind of spontaneous dialogue among the four instrumentalists. Eventually, this musical conversation gets caught up in: The fifth movement's The Rush of Time, which opens with a hushed flurry of speed, precipitates the Finale. It generates, at first slowly, but then very swiftly, whole shifts of rhythmic fields that initially seem to conflict with one another. Ultimately, this use of 'psycho-rhythmics contributes to an on-rush of motion and time. Rhythmic changes are, at times, abruptly precipitated with but little or no preparation creating a kind of inevitability in forward thrust, while the movement rushes forward with a feeling of gradual and continuous acceleration. It gathers density as more and more notes are piled progressively upon successive beats. The attempt is to spark tension and ignite excitement by means of frenetic confrontations of dissimilitudes. Ultimately - with the help of time - these polarities centrifically spin out their own destinies with their accompanying fall-out and own inevitable resolutions.
SKU: PR.11440505S
UPC: 680160008391. 11 x 14 inches.
Although structurally it subdivides into five movements, the entire quartet emerges as one vast continuum. There are no formal breaks between movements. However, certain musical signposts can be discerned, associated with each of the movements' terminations and new beginnings. The opening movement, The Nostalgia of Clanging Bell Sonorities, begins floating on recurrent Bbs whose soft rhythmic flow slowly puts into motion strong undercurrents suggestive of the latent power of water... After several suggestions of tolling bells, the movement gradually fades into hushed tones of veiled and very distant sonorities. It uses a unique effect, for the first time in a musical context, conveyed through the use of extra heavy practice mutes. The second movement, The Spill of Water, disengages itself from the first through its distinct contrast in tempo. Water moves fast, and when it splashes, it tends to run wildly. In this case, it happens to be bubbly water that gushes forth bodly... smashing across rocky shorelines. So, too, the music attempts to conjure such moods. At the end of this movement, a cello cadenza emerges, introducing an introspective type of melodicism. The third movement, The Poignancy of Memory, contains many silences as it tries to convey memory through fragmented remembrances much like often occur in our dream state. Progressing through several slowly building images, it gradually works itself into juxtaposition of musical images. Towards the movement's end, high harmonics are sounding in all four instruments while left hand pizzicato notes in the cello pluck the last remembrances of this central core. Almost imperceptibly, the viola assumes leadership as it dissolves into: The fourth movement, The Fluidity of Motion, which has mostly the viola, but also the cello, articulating lyrical statements against sheets of sound conjured up by the two violins playing a flood of swirling figures, evokes a kind of static motion in space. Here , the virtually imperceptible manner in which this hushed whisper continues incessantly, can suggest the potential fluidity with which movement may inch forward... Later into the fourth movement, two fairly extended solos by the second and then the first violins, lead to a kind of spontaneous dialogue amont the four instrumentalists. Eventually, this musical conversation gets caught up in: The fifth movement's The Rush of Time, which opens with a hushed flurry of speed, precipitates the Finale. It generates, at first slowly, but then very swiftly, whole shifts of rhythmic fields that initially seem to conflict with one another. Ultimately, this use of psycho-rhythmics contributes to an on-rush seem of motion and time. Rhythmic changes are, at times, abruptly precipitated with but little or no preparation creating a kind of inevitability in forward thrust, while the movement rushes forward with a feeling of gradual and continuous acceleration. It gathers density as more and more notes are piled progressively upon successive beats. The attempt is to spark tension and ignite excitement by means of frenetic confrontations of dissimilitudes. Ultimately - with the help of time - these polarities centrifically spin out their own destinies with their accompanying fall-out and own inevitable resolutions.
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