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| Per Nørgård: String
Quartet No.8 'Night
Descending': String
Quartet: Study Score
Quatuor à cordes: 2 violons,
alto, violoncelle [Conducteur d'étude / Miniature]
Wilhelm Hansen
This is the Study Score edition of Per Nørgård's String Quartet No.8 'Nigh...(+)
This is the Study Score edition of Per Nørgård's String Quartet No.8 'Night Descending'. Programme note: This piece is based on 5 sections from my chamber opera Nuit des homme where a string quartet is the leading instrumental ensemble. Even though the subject is The Great War (1st World War) the plot is on a psychological level and follows the development of a couple - in poems of Guillaume Apollinaire. The couple's war enthusiasm in the beginning is replaced by horror and in the end dehumanizing. The five movements of the quartet express phases in this process: from the Eulogy of the prologue praise of the The Sun of Gold above the humananimal - a rhythmic tense and still more and more militaristic movement - to The Journey whose enlargement of conscience due to the exhausting tempo of the new era is suddenly stopped in the fourth movement carrying the title of the piece and expressing the calm before storm not as a blessing of peace but as a latent anxiety. In the epilogue of the fifth movement the theme of the prologue reappears but it is changed from hymn to elegy. The quartet is dedicated to the Zapolsky Quartet who took part in the world premiere of the opera in September 1996. Per Nørgård 1997
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| Bent Sørensen: Schreie
Und Melancholie - String
Quartet No.4: String
Quartet:
Quatuor à cordes: 2 violons,
alto, violoncelle [Partition] - Avancé
Wilhelm Hansen
Premiered by the Arditti String Quartet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts IC...(+)
Premiered by the Arditti String Quartet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts ICA London 22nd October 1995. Programme note: SCHREIE UND MELANCHOLIE is dedicated to the Arditti Quartet and was commissioned with support from the Danish Arts Foundation. In the summer of 1993 I worked briefly on some sketches for a choral suite with texts by Georg Trakl. The project was abandoned but the moods from Trakl's poetry in which 'scream' and 'melancholy' are key words stuck in my mind when I began working on my fourth string quartet. This is music full of high siren-like wails and almost infinitely descending glissandi which permeate a landscape of warped tonalharmony. SCHREIE UND MELANCHOLIE is in four movements played attacca. The third movement is a barcarole - a memory of an autumn in Venice. (Bent Sørensen)
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| Joan Tower: In Memory:
String Quartet: Score and
Parts
Quatuor à cordes: 2 violons,
alto, violoncelle [Sheet music] - Intermédiaire/avancé
Associated
The second String Quartet by Joan Tower is a short but complex work addressing t...(+)
The second String Quartet by Joan Tower is a short but complex work addressing thoughts of death and loss written in memory of an old friend. The piece was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Tokyo String Quartet who firstperformed the piece in February 2002 at the 92nd Street Y New York City.Further inspired by the events in New York on September 11th 2001 the writing contains high sustained celestial material which slowly descends. Thiswriting is paired with more forceful driving and repetitive musical ideas that attempt to express the anger and pain that results from the loss of people in one's life.
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| Per Nørgård: Whirl's
World: Wind Ensemble:
Parts
Quintette à Vent: flûte,
Hautbois, basson, clarinette, Cor [Partition]
Wilhelm Hansen
Programme Note WHIRLS´ WORLD (1970) for wind quintet. 'Whirl´s World' was ...(+)
Programme Note WHIRLS´ WORLD (1970) for wind quintet. 'Whirl´s World' was composed in 1970 as one of a series of works which explored the so-called musical ´difference-phenomenon´. This term (which I coined in connection with a series of lectures in California that year) indicates a motivic duplicity in which two - often very simple - melodic ideas come ´out of phrase´ with each other giving rise to a course of constantly changing conditions. In Whirl´s World the difference phenomenon is heard from the beginning where a three-note motif and a four-note motif are set against each other. It all proceeds lake a lightning-fast series of chess moves; first notenumber 1 of the three-note motif is moved then note number 1 of the four-note motif thereafter note number 2 of the three-note motif - and so on. This fast opening flows into a slow section in which the differences now appear as ´fluctuations´ between very closely related tones (of which one is sung by the musician). There is only one movement built up as an organic growth from slow to furiously fast whirling and back again to slow which can be heard as ´slow-motion whirls´ as a water-world of ripples and bubbles. All this is framed by the introduction described above and a corresponding conclusion in which the movement is now descending ending in the resolute bass full-stop. Per Norgård
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| Per Nørgård: Whirl's
World: Wind Ensemble:
Score
Quintette à Vent: flûte,
Hautbois, basson, clarinette, Cor [Partition]
Wilhelm Hansen
Programme Note WHIRLS´ WORLD (1970) for wind quintet. ?Whirl´s World? was comp...(+)
Programme Note WHIRLS´ WORLD (1970) for wind quintet. ?Whirl´s World? was composed in 1970 as one of a series of works which explored the so-called musical ´difference-phenomenon´. This term (which I coined in connection with a series of lectures in California that year) indicates a motivic duplicity in which two - often very simple - melodic ideas come ´out of phrase´ with each other giving rise to a course of constantly changing conditions. In Whirl´s World the difference phenomenon is heard from the beginning where a three-note motif and a four-note motif are set against each other. It all proceeds lake a lightning-fast series of chess moves; first notenumber 1 of the three-note motif is moved then note number 1 of the four-note motif thereafter note number 2 of the three-note motif - and so on. This fast opening flows into a slow section in which the differences now appear as ´fluctuations´ between very closely related tones (of which one is sung by the musician). There is only one movement built up as an organic growth from slow to furiously fast whirling and back again to slow which can be heard as ´slow-motion whirls´ as a water-world of ripples and bubbles. All this is framed by the introduction described above and a corresponding conclusion in which the movement is now descending ending in the resolute bass full-stop. Per Norgård
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