SKU: SU.27050020

In this work, the elements of a classical string quartet are fragmented like the polished stone of a mosaic. The piece is in two large movements - or panels - separated by a pause, but fragments of a lively and playful sonata movement, a lyrical slow movement and a fast, energetic rondo constantly interrupt each other, creating a mercurial and unexpected sequence of events.String Quartet Duration: 20' Composed: 1997 Published by: Distributed Composer.

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: FG.55011-875-1

Lotta Wennäkoski's Pige (2021-2022) for string quartet was commissioned to be paired with the Death and the Maiden quartet by Franz Schubert (pige is Danish for girl). The composer tells:

The first movement Vorüber, ach, vorüber! is based on the first half of Schubert’s lied lying behind his The Death and the Maiden quartet. The maiden’s song in the beginning of the lied has not found its way to his string quartet, so I wanted to use this material in mine. The second move-ment Daktylus borrows its idea from the haunting pulse of Schubert’s chant of Death. Something fierce and something soundless can be heard here - along with other variants on the dactyl rhythm. For example, I’ve written a lyrically flowing melody based on the same rhythmic pattern (long-short-short).

Schubert’s quartet is wonderful music and of course a cornerstone of the repertoire, and the death and the maiden is a strong, tempting and gloomy motif in art history. On the other hand, I just couldn’t help seeing the motif also as a - somewhat passé - image of an old male desiring the ulti-mately young female body. The third movement thus turns its gaze to the girl herself. Pigen og scrapbogen, The Girl and the Scrapbook, is joyful textural music - compiled of fragments and freely handled quotations that might spring to mind when thinking of a vital girl’s life.


This product includes the full score and the set of parts.

Movements:
1. Vorüber, ach, vorüber!
2. Daktylus
3. Pigen og scrapbogen (das Mädchen und das Scrapbuch)

The first movement can also be performed separately as a prologue to The Death and the Maiden string quartet by Franz Schubert.

SKU: HL.14031816

8.5x11.75x0.3 inches.

Though conceived as four separate movements, my second string quartet has a single motif which is common to them all. This is the three-note Muss es sein? from Beethoven's last quartet, Op. 135. But whereas Beethoven's theme is notated G E A flat, thus giving it an F minor connotation, I have sued an alternative spelling - G E G sharp - which suggests an ambiguous E minor-major. This ambiguity, in fact, becomes the tonal basis of the whole work, only to be resolved at the end of the final movement. Each movement begins with a variant of the basic motif on the cello. The first has the original form of the theme, while the second has a majorised version which is also expressed as a chord. The third movement, with its scherzoid middle section, reverts to the major-minor ambiguity of the first, and the finale begins with the majorised version as an ostinato accompaniment on pizzicato cello. The slow movement is sub-titled In memoriam DSCH and concludes with a quotation of Shostakovich's motto - D E flat C B - which is basically the same as Beethoven's with the addition of one note. This is not to imply that the work contains no other thematic material. One important theme, a rising fifth and a second, is also common to three of the movements, and is ultimately derived from my first quartet, Op. 1 of 27 years earlier, to which this second contribution to the form is in many ways like a sequel. Like the earlier work, too, this quartet is dedicated to my wife.

SKU: CA.1641814

Language: all languages.

Score available separately - see item CA.1641800.