Canticle. Par JALBERT PIERRE. Canticle (String Quartet No. 6) was commissioned by the Chiara String Quartet. It consists of seven movements, highly contrasting in character, with movements I and VII serving as similar bookends to the overall arch of the work. The piece opens with the quartet members striking various crotales, producing bell sounds that eventually blend with the string quartet – evoking the title, Canticle. The faster, pulse-oriented music requires the players to use glass rods on their instruments and at one point quickly moves back and forth between alternating rhythmic subdivisions, producing extremely rapid metric modulations. The last movement blends the string quartet with the bowing of the crotales to produce an ethereal, other-worldly finale to the canticle. Pierre Jalbert / Niveau : Avancé / Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

A selection of folk ballads from England Ireland Scotland and Wales.A ballad is the blending of words the beauty of melody tone rhythm and expression. They reflect the history of a people their legends religion love and work. British ballads are renouned for their verse melodic construction and for the enormous range of expression.1 The Lass of Richmond Hill is a poem by Leonard McNally a barrister about a lass who became his wife in 1787. The music is by James Hook (1746 1827).2 Sally in our Alley. The words are by Henry Carey who also wrote the original music but this was replaced by the tune we now know an English traditionalmelody in 1790.3 Caller Herrin'. The poem is by Lady Nairne (1766 1845). Nathaniel Gow the famous Scottish violinist wrote the music in 1798 as a harpsichord piece combining the traditional Edinburgh fish wives cry Caller Herrin' with the bells of St Andrew's Church Edinburgh.4 Men of Harlech. The music is traditionally Welsh and the ballad probably originated from North Wales where the native princes had ruled the longest.5 David of the White Rock (Dafydd y Garres Wen). Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote the words to this ballad The Dying Bard. David Owen the Welsh bard of the ballad composed the tune on his death-bed on awakening from a trance in which be believed himself to have heard the tune in heaven.6 Oft in the Stilly Night. The words describe an old man's memories of the smiles the tears of boyhood years. The eyes that shone now dimmed and gone and how oft in the stilly night he remembers other days. The ballad is by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779 1852) who set the words to a traditional air.7- The Meeting of the Waters. Written by Thomas Moore music Irish traditional.The Meeting of the Waters is the confluence of the rivers Avonmore and Avonberg in a beautiful valley near Avoca County Wicklow.8 Oh! Charlie is my Darlin'. The

Early String Quartets-The Weinzierl castle in Lower Austria which still stands today can be considered to be the birthplace of a chamber music genre which is firmly established in our present-day repertoire. The young Haydn was invited to spend sometime at this place by a wealthy musical friend and often met up with the steward at the castle the castle priest and the cellist Anton Albrechtsberger to make music. Although his first two works for '2 violins viola and bass'still have five movements their musical value establishes the success of the string quartet in its own right.Also available as part of a 12 part set including all Haydn's works for String Quartet Cat. No. HN9216

String Quartet No.2 was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 1981. Programme note: Hans Abrahamsens's second string quartet was commissioned by the Lerchenborg music-week of 1981 during which it was first performed by the Gaudeamus Quartet. In Hans Abrahamsen's second quartet it is the continuous alternation of soberness and drama that first catches the listner's ears: the lyrical/gestural tradition as we know it from Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg pitched - not against - but around the 'sober barbarism' which is characteristic of rhytmic neo-classicism. Both the first and the last movement of th is quartet are emotional at manylevels: sad - and still seething with life and always unpredictable in their development it is night twilight and white-hot light. Sparkling diamonds set off by scarlett velvet. The two middle movements link the contrasts without cushioning: the second movement a gruelling stripped rhythmical drill followed by a hushed far-off dance in triple meter which shifts and hesitates all the time though. There is an ambience of the classics glimpsed through many veils. The second quartet is music which is fraught with danger in its ambiguous relation to tradition: the past emerges as a most relevant and living ghost. The Beauty and the Beast as musical drama.