String quartet - Grade 3

SKU: DS.169424

Composed by Willaim C. Dix. Arranged by Dana F. Everson. Christmas. Sheet Music. Sacred instrumental music. Score and parts. David E. Smith #169424. Published by David E. Smith (DS.169424).

A string quartet with optional third violin for viola. After a brief introduction the theme is presented in a straight forward ensemble harmonization with some altered pitches. The next section places the melody in the viola line with opposing lines in the violins. The ensuing section now gives the tune to the second violin with contrapuntal action in the other voices. A chorus section is now more articulated and active until the tune is handed to the first violin with ever more moving counterpoint in the other voices. The piece then ends in a strong statement.

Key of G, D.

String Quartet (2vl,va,vc)

SKU: BR.EB-9383

Composed by Misato Mochizuki. Chamber music; stapled. Edition Breitkopf. New music (post-2000). Full score. Composed 2019/2020. 12 pages. Duration 7'. Breitkopf and Haertel #EB 9383. Published by Breitkopf and Haertel (BR.EB-9383).

ISBN 9790004188538. 9 x 12 inches.

Two years ago in Rome, I encountered a murmuration of starlings and I was amazed with its overwhelming beauty, changing shape as it moved. Moving of a fish school that you can watch in an aquarium, has the same beauty and the energy. According to the scientists, their fine movement in a flock is based on the following three simple rules: - steer to avoid crowding local flockmates - steer towards the average heading of local flockmates - steer to move towards the average position (center of mass) of local flockmates The word Boids refers to bird-like objects (bird-oids), representing the beauty of their movements in a flock which is a result of balancing out with each other, following the principle of least effort. I wonder if these rules can be applied to the way a string quartet is shaped. Boids again has been written as a sequel to the piece Boids (2017), a 4 minute study for string quartet in the frame of the Kronos Quartet's educational project 50 for the Future. (Misato Mochizuki)

World premiere: Osaka, International Chamber Music Competition, February 12, 2021 Commissioned by Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and Festa Commission.

String quartet

SKU: HH.HH389-FSP

Composed by Litha Efthymiou. Two Violins, Viola, Violoncello. Full score and parts. Duration 10 minutes. Edition HH Music Publishers #HH389-FSP. Published by Edition HH Music Publishers (HH.HH389-FSP).

ISBN 9790708146032.

The inspiration for Tread Softly came from two contrasting sources: the religious music of early medieval Spain, and Debbie Locke’s work of art ‘Retracing Your Steps - Bristol I’. Although over a thousand years apart, these two sources share a common feature - a powerful sense of movement enclosed within a static form. In early Spanish music this manifests in the use of extended melisma, and in Locke’s work it is depicted through the seemingly moving, web-like form of the central image. Tread Softly explores the idea of movement within stasis through the use of a main melodic gesture that transforms very slowly, but constantly, throughout.

String Quartet; Voice (Parts)

SKU: HL.14042073

Parts. Composed by Pelle Gudmundsen-holmgreen. Music Sales America. Contemporary. Softcover. Composed 2012. Edition Wilhelm Hansen #WH31591A. Published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen (HL.14042073).

ISBN 9788759879405. International (more than one language).

Score also available: 14042074.

String quartet

SKU: LO.30-3583L

Composed by Mark Hayes. Choral. Sacred Anthem, Christmas. Score and parts. Lorenz Publishing Company #30/3583L. Published by Lorenz Publishing Company (LO.30-3583L).

UPC: 000308150209.

Strin g Quartet Score and Parts for A Christmas Lullaby (10/5139L) Mark Hayes seamlessly blends two timeless cradle songs to create the quintessential Christmas lullaby suitable for concert or worship venues. It is a tender and moving reminder of the beautiful Christmas story.

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

SKU: PR.154400180

Composed by Andrea Gabrieli. Edited by Hans David. Arranged by Hans Theodore David. Renaissance. Score and parts. With Standard notation. 28 pages. Theodore Presser Company #154-40018. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.154400180).

UPC: 680160642465. 9 x 12 inches.

Andrea Gabrieli was a major force in moving the classical music world toward the more modern Venetian school of the Renaissance. Called by Alfred Einstein One of the greatest and most influential masters of the Renaissance period, Gabrieli fully developed the use of choirs of voices and instruments, often in opposition to each other. David has selected three examples from a posthumous 1589 collection, advising that the four-part pieces were originally scored for viols but are here arranged for modern instruments. And while the arrangement will accommodate a number of players per part, single players would be more historically correct. As important as Andrea was to the Venetian School, his fame would be eclipsed by his nephew and student, Giovanni Gabrieli.

String Quartet

SKU: PR.15440018S

Composed by Andrea Gabrieli. Edited by Hans David. Arranged by Hans Theodore David. Renaissance. Score. With Standard notation. 12 pages. Theodore Presser Company #154-40018S. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.15440018S).

UPC: 680160642489. 9 x 12 inches.

Andrea Gabrieli was a major force in moving the classical music world toward the more modern Venetian school of the Renaissance. Called by Alfred Einstein One of the greatest and most influential masters of the Renaissance period, Gabrieli fully developed the use of choirs of voices and instruments, often in opposition to each other. David has selected three examples from a posthumous 1589 collection, advising that the four-part pieces were originally scored for viols but are here arranged for modern instruments. And while the arrangement will accommodate a number of players per part, single players would be more historically correct. As important as Andrea was to the Venetian School, his fame would be eclipsed by his nephew and student, Giovanni Gabrieli.

String Quartet; Voice (Score)

SKU: HL.14042074

Score. Composed by Pelle Gudmundsen-holmgreen. Music Sales America. Contemporary. Softcover. Composed 2012. Edition Wilhelm Hansen #WH31591. Published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen (HL.14042074).

ISBN 9788759825662. International (more than one language).

Parts also available: 14042073.

Chamber Music String Quartet

SKU: PR.11440902S

Composed by Behzad Ranjbaran. Full score. With Standard notation. Composed 1990. 44 pages. Duration 22 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #114-40902S. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.11440902S).

UPC: 680160013708.

The quartet begins with a 5-note motif, played in unison that permeates melodically and harmonically throughout the movement. The energetic and hard-driven character of the second musical idea propels the music forward with fast moving notes and greater urgency. It often alternates with the more lyrical rendition of the 5-note motif, yielding contrasting sections. After a brief coda, the 5-note motif concludes the movement much the same way it had begun but with greater intensity. The second movement explores the world of fantasy. To some extent the beginning and the ending of the movement function as the opening and closing doors that separate the reality from the dream and subconscious. It is one continuous movement in an arch form that gradually accelerates to an expansive emotional climax and returning steadily to the surface led by an ethereal solo cello. The transcendent ending is similar to the beginning, though half step higher. The third movement begins boldly with the 5-note motif transformed into a dance character in a compound meter. The asymmetrical meter of the Persian folk music influences much of the rhythmic character of the movement. The return of many materials from earlier movements interwoven into the fabric of this movement reinforces the cyclical and organic character of the quarter. Particularly, a mysterious passage, reminiscence of the second movement leading to a brief full-blown ballad is a favorite moment of Ranjbaran's in the quartet. A blazingly virtuosic viola leads the quartet to an uplifting conclusion.

String Quartet (2vl,va,vc)

SKU: BR.EB-9384

Composed by Misato Mochizuki. Chamber music; stapled. Edition Breitkopf. New music (post-2000). Set of parts. Composed 2019/2020. 36 pages. Duration 7'. Breitkopf and Haertel #EB 9384. Published by Breitkopf and Haertel (BR.EB-9384).

ISBN 9790004188545. 9 x 12 inches.

Two years ago in Rome, I encountered a murmuration of starlings and I was amazed with its overwhelming beauty, changing shape as it moved. Moving of a fish school that you can watch in an aquarium, has the same beauty and the energy. According to the scientists, their fine movement in a flock is based on the following three simple rules: - steer to avoid crowding local flockmates - steer towards the average heading of local flockmates - steer to move towards the average position (center of mass) of local flockmates The word Boids refers to bird-like objects (bird-oids), representing the beauty of their movements in a flock which is a result of balancing out with each other, following the principle of least effort. I wonder if these rules can be applied to the way a string quartet is shaped. Boids again has been written as a sequel to the piece Boids (2017), a 4 minute study for string quartet in the frame of the Kronos Quartet's educational project 50 for the Future. (Misato Mochizuki)

World premiere: Osaka, International Chamber Music Competition, February 12, 2021 Commissioned by Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and Festa Commission.

String quartet

SKU: FG.55011-775-4

Composed by Alex Freeman. Classical, contemporary. Score & parts. Fennica Gehrman #55011-775-4. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-775-4).

ISBN 9790550117754.

Alex Freeman found initial inspiration for his string quartet (2015) in a series of photographs a geologist friend showed him of en échelon veins in rock formations. The open strings punctuated with pizzicato unisons that begin the single-movement work call to mind something crystalline and shimmering, which is immediately infused with tumbling lyrical lines in something of a rapid caccia technique throughout. The middle of the work becomes more suspended in slower material loosely based on a technique of prolation canon, comprises layers of free, expressive, lyrical, and even elegiac music moving at different speeds. As the work concludes, the materials converge in a rhythmically pulsating stasis and an almost chorale-like statement.

Duration: c. 13'

This product includes the score and the parts (A4 sized).


American-Finn ish composer Alex Freeman (b.1972) has established himself among the foremost composers of choral music in Finland. A dedicated citizen of his musical community, a teacher, and a choral singer himself, he composes music that reflects an appreciation for a wide range of aesthetics and a passion for communicating with listeners and performers. In his choral works, in particular, we find music that aims to be sonorous, melodic, and resonant, but is always crafted to carefully avoid the cliches that can burden conventional tonality.

His instrumental works run the gamut: a cantata with orchestra based on poetry of Whitman; a significant body of solo piano works that reveal deep roots in everything from austere absolute music to soaring elegaic rhetoric (see Albany Records, Inner Voice); his chamber work Blueshift (Navona Records), which is a kind of paean to Reich and Adams in miniature; open-ended modular works, like various iterations of his Slow All Clocks for electronic media, solo clarinet, and mixed choirs of kanteles; and, recently, some new directions in microtonal music.

Tenor & String Quartet

SKU: PE.EP72822

Composed by Jonathan Dove. Voice(s) & Various Instruments. Edition Peters. Living Composer. Score and Part(s). 164 pages. Duration 00:30:00. Edition Peters #98-EP72822. Published by Edition Peters (PE.EP72822).

ISBN 9790577011769. 232 x 303mm inches. English.

I have only visited Damascus once, twenty years ago, on the way to Palmyra.  I had a purpose (I was writing music for a play about Palmyra’s Queen Zenobia) but essentially I was a tourist.  Like any visitor, I was thrilled to step out of the noisy modern city into the magical ancient world of the walled Old City, its vibrant souk leading to the magnificent mosque, and a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets filled with the smell of unleavened bread.

In Palmyra, I was met with extraordinary kindness everywhere.  On one occasion, a little Bedouin boy noticed that I was risking sunstroke wandering bare-headed among the spectacular ruins: he showed me how to tie a turban, then took me to have tea with his family in their tent.

Since then, I have watched helplessly as these places of wonder have been devastated and their inhabitants scattered and killed.  When the Sacconi Quartet suggested that I might choose a Syrian poet for our collaboration, I welcomed the idea.

I searched for a long time to find a contemporary poet whose work might gain from any music I could imagine.  I felt it was important to find first-hand accounts of the Syrian experience – but, of course, I was always reading them in translation.  In an anthology called Syria Speaks, I was astonished to read something that looked like prose, but was full of poetry.  It was Anne-Marie McManus’s fine translation of Ali Safar’s A Black Cloud in a Leaden White Sky – an eloquent, thoughtful, contained yet vivid account of life in a war-torn country, all the more moving for its restraint.

In setting these words, I have not attempted to imitate Syrian music.  However, there is what might be called a linguistic accommodation in my choice of scale, or mode.  Several movements are in a mode that I first discovered while writing a cantata commemorating the First World War: it has a tuning that I associate with war, its violence and desolation.  This eight-note mode is similar to scales found in Syrian music.  I did not choose it in the abstract: it emerged from the harmonies I was exploring in the earlier work, and emerged again as I was looking for the right musical colours to set Ali Safar’s words.  In this work, its Arabic aspect is more prominent. - Jonathan Dove

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String quartet

SKU: BO.B.3664

Composed by Jordi Cervello. Published by Editorial de Musica Boileau (BO.B.3664).

Cuarteto San Petersburgo (The Saint Petersburg Quartet) was written between January and March 2011. It owes its name to the fact that Saint Petersburg has been a very significant city for me. I was invited there in 1988 to take part in a big contemporary music festival, but my uninterrupted bond with the city started on 2002, thanks to the negotiations of my friend and pupil Albert Barbeta. Since then, I have constantly travelled there in order to record a considerable part of my repertoire: seventeen pieces. In addition to the concerts we went to, I took the opportunity during my trips to visit the well-known conservatoire where so many great personalities from the world of music composition once taught, and the place that launched the most important violin school in the whole of Russia: the school of Leopoldo Auer. Spending a long time in Auer's classroom writing my concert for violin and orchestra was an unforgettable experience for me. His large portrait motivated me even further.

Cuartet o San Petersburgo evokes many of the most cherished and moving moments that I have had in this city. It is structured in four movements. The first one, Allegretto-Allegro, opens with an introduction that sets forth the two main themes, amid a soft and elastic atmosphere. The Allegro starts vigorously and in it we find changes in the tempo and moments of mystery, as well as certain seclusion, returning then to the emphatic theme where the counterpoint finds its place. The movement ends placidly.

The Scherzo-marcato that follows is marked by a persistent rhythm of triplets that carries on from beginning to end. The tempo does not change, but brief and decided themes are introduced, as well as passages of counterpoint. Brief and dissonant chords are heard throughout the movement, which ends vigorously.

The third movement, Ut, is a very special one. For a while already I had been playing with the idea of writing a movement that was to have the tonality C as a leitmotiv. This one is made up by two slow and static parts. In the first one, the first violin plays pizzicatti-glissandi. In the second, the first violin and particularly the violoncello settle on C while the other two instruments produce descending chromatic harmonies.

Final ly, the Introduccion-Presto (the Introduction-Presto). It starts with some bucolic passages which remind us of the introduction to the first movement. A fast and energetic Presto suddenly erupts. A kind of moto perpetuo which alternates with two expressive passages and, towards the end, a viola and violoncello tremolo, all of great mystery and expectation, make way for a resounding finale marcato.

String Quartet (Score)

SKU: HL.14008409

Composed by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Music Sales America. 20th Century. Book Only. Composed 1999. Chester Music #CH55681. Published by Chester Music (HL.14008409).

This is - so far - the earliest composition by Davies to be available for performance, and mighty interesting it is. Written while he was still a young student, it provides a candid glimpse of the thing that concerned him: how music could be both forward-moving in the classical Western sense (this is, after all, a piece for a wholly conventional medium) and repetitive in the manner of the Indian and medieval music in which he was interested. What results is a singular machine geared to an intermittent ostinato in the first violin. This movement for string quartet was first performed by the Arditti Quartet in May 1983, as part of the 40th Anniversary Gala concert of the Society for the Promotion of New Music at the Barbican Hall, London. Score (miniature). Duration c. 5mins.