String Quartet

SKU: HL.14008374

Composed by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Music Sales America. Classical. Score. Composed 2006. 24 pages. Chester Music #CH68629. Published by Chester Music (HL.14008374).

ISBN 9781846096150. UPC: 884088435202. 8.25x11.75x0.105 inches.

The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies' fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company, first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace, Oslo, Norway, as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004, with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor, an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq. I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560, now in Vienna), which had been the inspiration for my sixth Strathclyde Concerto, for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination, but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of the work. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog, bind the devil with a cord, truss, wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks, guess whom I shall choose, courting, odds and evens. The single movement juxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture, taking liberties which would never be present in, for instance, Brunelleschi architectural drawings, so here, with a constant sequence of transformation processes, I have distorted the neat, precise implications of modal progression, expressed in the unison opening phrase (from F to B through A sharp/B flat), so that the ear is led, en route, into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that I was reading into, and behind the games, adult motives and implications, concerning aggression and war, with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B progression underlying the whole construction derives from a passage in the development of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, and the opening of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. However, unlike in these models, here a real - if temporary - sense of resolution occurs at the close of the quartet: as when the curtain falls on the reconciled Count and Countess in 'Figaro' one wonders how long the F/B truce will hold, and games break out again. The quartet is dedicated to Giuseppe Rebecchini, Roman architect, and friend since the nineteen-fifties.

Composer's notes: This piece came about in a rather unusual way. I had a dream in which a string quartet were playing some very beautiful music. I was exhorting them to 'play it like late Beethoven' When I woke up, I could not remember any themes or details of what they had been playing, but had an intense memory of the 'feeling' of the music, which was soft, sensual and muted, and I immediately sat down to write a string quartet. What began to emerge was nothing like Beethoven at all, and very early into the writing I had a strong vision of some people dancing a formal and intense series of dances in a village in a very dry and hot landscape - the Australian outback or Africa maybe. The dances were very moving, with an inward, ritualistic quality and they obviously had great meaning for the people performing them. Geoffrey Burgon

String quartet String Quartet

SKU: PR.16400272S

Cassatt. Composed by Dan Welcher. Premiere: Cassatt Quartet, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL. Contemporary. Full score. With Standard notation. Composed 2007. WRT11142. 52 pages. Duration 24 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #164-00272S. Published by Theodore Presser Company (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.

Bassoon, Viola, Violin 1, Violin 2, Violoncello

SKU: PR.16400261S

Composed by Dan Welcher. With Standard notation. Duration 15 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #164-00261S. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.16400261S).

UPC: 680160038411.

Since the bassoon is my own instrument, many people have asked me why I've written so little for the instrument. Beyond my early Concerto Da Camera for bassoon and small orchestra, written for Leonard Sharrow in 1975, I've not written a single piece that features the bassoon as a solo vehicle (though I have written three woodwind quintets). When I first began composing seriously, critics were quick to point out that my orchestral writing revealed nothing of my roots as a woodwind player--and bassoonists asked why my pieces didn't have more bassoon solos. Perhaps I was so aware that people were looking at me as a bassoonist/composer that I was determined to remove that stigma. Now that my transformation from performer to composer is complete, however, it's time to re-address my instrument. I wanted this new piece to be serious rather than whimsical. The Wind Won't Listen represents my return to the bassoon as the highly expressive, poetic soul that it is.   As such, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the piece is based on a poem, and that the title of the piece as well as both its movement titles come from lines in that poem. I first read Beth Gylys' poem Split at the MacDowell Colony in the summer of 2001, and it made a big impression on me. My personal life had been ruptured by divorce in the preceding year. This poem, with its dry insistence on observation rather than feeling, expressed the wrung-out state of my emotions at the time better than any I had seen. I set it to music, as a song, immediately. In this format, for voice and piano, I was able to put a musical note to every word of the poem. The first lines of the poem, Everyone I know is crying, or should be crying, became a melody that haunted me even without the words.   The work for bassoon and string quartet is an outgrowth of the song. The first movement is labeled Romanza, and has a loose formal arch structure of A-B-C-B-A, with B and C being fast sections framed by the lamenting A music. In addition to hearing the bassoon's first notes attached to the lines Everyone I know is crying, there's a sense of agitation, of loss, of longing, and at times of desperation in the music. At one point, the opening theme from Tristan even appears in the strings.   The second movement follows, without a real pause--the pizzicato final chords of the first movement becoming the increasingly aggressive opening chords of the second. The recitative is actually a foreshadowing of the basic theme that will be varied, again to the words of the song: Life makes itself without us. Don't let me tell you how it is. Go out. Look. The recitative begins in an anguished state, but subsides into more gentle singing by the end, when it simply falls into an ostinato 5/8-3/4 pattern to begin the variations. Marked Very steady tempo; Dancing, this set of variations consists of three dances, each faster than the previous. The first, in the aforementioned 5/8-3/4 meter, gives way to a 3/8 scherzo, which in turn takes on a furious 2/4 scurrying motion. The music becomes breathless, almost pulse-less, and an ethereal theme appears in the violins while the rushing music continues, sotto voce in the bassoon. This new theme is also from the song: Why do I do this? The wind won't listen. The bassoon re-states its Everyone I know is crying melody from the first movement, and at length the 5/8-3/4 music returns, more subdued this time. The piece ends on a major-minor chord, suspended.   The Wind Won't Listen is dedicated to the man who commissioned it, bassoonist Steven Dibner--who shares my passion for poetry and language. --Dan Welcher.

Chamber Music String Quartet

SKU: PR.14440218S

After Zurbarán. Composed by James Primosch. Full score. With Standard notation. Duration 18 minutes. Merion Music #144-40218S. Published by Merion Music (PR.14440218S).

UPC: 680160027170. 9.5 x 13 inches.

The concerts and exhibits of the Cleveland Museum of Art were an important formative influence for me during my student days. So when the invitation came to create a new work celebrating this institution on its seventy-fifth anniversary, I was not only happy to accept, but knew immediately that I wanted to write a piece that would somehow relate specifically to the museum. I decided to make the work a reflection on a painting in the museum's collection: Zurbaran's The Holy House of Nazareth. My quartet is not program music in a narrative sense, but rather a kind of meditation that takes its tone from this painting's remarkable integration of intense affect, mysterious repose and secret geometry. Besides Zurbaran's painting, the piece is occupied with a purely musical object of contemplation: the hymn tune Picardy, best known with the text Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. This tune permeates the harmonic and melodic life of the quartet, sometimes appearing in a very simple, straightforward fashion, but often hidden amidst more complex structures. I was attracted to the melody for its musical qualities, but later realized that the hymn's text also resonates with the mood of the painting; the words speak of a reverent awe, of cherubim with sleepless eye, and of the mystery of the Incarnate Word who must suffer: King of kings, yet born of Mary...

Composed by Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904). Henle Study Scores. Study score (paperbound). 56 pages. G. Henle #HN7352. Published by G. Henle (HL.51487352).