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.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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What I can expect from Henle Urtext editions:

• error-free, reliable musical texts based on meticulous musicological research - fingerings and bowings by famous artists and pedagogues
• preface in 3 languages with information on the genesis and history of the work 
• Critical Commentary in 1 – 3 languages with a description and evaluation of the sources and explaining all source discrepancies and editorial decisions 
• most beautiful music engraving 
• page-turns, fold-out pages, and cues where you need them 
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SKU: AY.CM3224PM

ISBN 9790543573703.

The great American philosopher William James talks about a credit system of truth in which we take for granted the knowledge of the world around us. For instance as a child you learn what a car is, what it looks like, what it does, what its made of, etc. So, every time you see a car you do not need to re examine all these aspects,you use a credit of truth to know about all cars what you learned about the first. I found this fascinating and made it a challenge for myself to translate this sentiment into music. In my string quartet a melody is repeated many times but each time its reality is a bit different, you think you know this melody at one point but the music around it and its structure are always mutated a bit to challenge your credit system of truth. Gene Pritsker.