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.
Chamber Music String Quartet SKU: PR.164002720 Cassatt. Composed b...(+)
Chamber Music String
Quartet
SKU:
PR.164002720
Cassatt. Composed
by Dan Welcher. Spiral
and Saddle. Premiere:
Cassatt Quartet,
Northeastern Illinois
University, Chicago, IL.
Contemporary. Set of
Score and Parts. With
Standard notation.
Composed 2007. WRT11142.
52+16+16+16+16 pages.
Duration 24 minutes.
Theodore Presser Company
#164-00272. Published by
Theodore Presser Company
(PR.164002720).
UPC:
680160573042. 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.
Composer's notes: This piece came about in a rather unusual way. I had a dream i...(+)
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
Parts for String Quartet No.3 'Angel's Music' by Bent Sorensen (1988) Premiered ...(+)
Parts for String Quartet
No.3 'Angel's Music' by
Bent Sorensen (1988)
Premiered by the Arditti
String Quartet at the
Danish Radio Concert Hall
16 November 1988. Score
available: KP00250 The
composer writes: 'Even
when I was writing Adieu,
I knew that I wished to
write Angels Music. The
title existed in an
incomplete form in my
mind and gradually more
and more ideas and a few
outlines became clear.
The actual work on Angels
Music was started in
Rome, where I spent the
autumn of 1987 staying at
The Danish Academy.
Whether this stay has
influenced the quartet or
not is impossible to say.
however, it is true to
say that, in the Roman
churches I visited, I saw
countless angels playing
in the top of frescoes
and altars. Without these
angels, together with the
many crackled-gold
paintings in this city
and my general
fascination with the
Italian renaissance
painter Fra Angelico, (in
fact there are only a few
paintings by him in Rome,
but even his name..!) I
am not sure my quartet
would have been what it
is. Anyway I do feel that
there is a bit of Italy
in the piece. The angels
apart there are, in the
short rhythmic agitating
part of the quartet,
reminiscences of the
Italian medieval Trotto
dance, and in the most
expressive part ofthe
piece there are flashes
of Puccini-like music.
From the very beginning
of my work on the
quartet, the distant,
extremely muted sound in
the high register which
opens the piece, was on
my mind. A sound satiated
with a dense heterophonic
and polyphonic texture of
elegiac melody and
vibrating trills. I
imagined that little
songs (maybe angel songs)
could be created in this
density, these songs
constantly echoing
themselves. Gradually as
this sound got a more and
more concrete musical and
instrumental form, I
felt, that not only
should the little songs
be created, played and
die out in an echo, but
also that the general
pattern of the quartet
should give the feeling
of music which, from the
distance, is getting
closer and closer,
culminates and at last
disappears like an echo.
Related to this, the
general pattern of Angels
Music is divided into
three: a pre-echo,
culmination and echo..
The relationship between
the three part is 5: 6:
4. The reason why I can
say this precisely and
prosaically is that it
was necessary to me to
mark the overall
guidelines before I
started to compose. I had
to do this in order to
enable the relationships
to crawl from the small
cells into the general
pattern.'
Vistas. Composed
by Shulamit Ran. Set of
Score and Parts. With
Standard notation. 42 +
112 pages. Duration 25
minutes. Theodore Presser
Company #114-40698.
Published by Theodore
Presser Company
(PR.114406980).
UPC:
680160010806.
Shula
mit Ran’s second
string quartet, subtitled
“Vistas,â€
occupies a large canvas
that is cast in a
traditional fourmovement
mold, where the outer
movements present,
explore, and later return
to the work’s
principal musical
materials, surrounding a
slow movement and
scherzo-type third
movement with a trio. In
addition to tempo-based
titles, the individual
movements have subtitles
that are evocative of
each movement’s
character, as follows: I.
Concentric: from the
inside out II. Stasis
III. Flashes IV.
Vistas. My second
string quartet,
“Vistasâ€, is
a work cast in a
traditional four-movement
formal mold, with the
outer movements,
presenting and later
returning to the
work’s principal
musical materials,
surrounding a slow
movement and a
scherzo-type third
movement.While the four
movements’
“properâ€
names -- Maestoso con
forza, Lento, Scherzo
impetuoso, and
Introduzione; Maestoso e
grande – give some
indication of the general
character of the
individual movements, I
have also subtitled, less
formally, each movement
as follows:Â 1)
Concentric:Â from the
inside out 2)Â
Stasis 3) FlashesÂ
4) Vista. The images
evoked by these titles
tell one, I think, a bit
more about the inner
workings of the
quartet.In the first
movement, a prominently
presented opening pitch
(E) reveals itself, as
the movement unfolds, to
be a center of gravity
from which ever-growing
cycles of activity
gradually evolve.Â
While various important
themes come into being as
the movement progresses,
their impact on the
listener has, I believe,
a great deal to do with
their juxtaposition and
relationship to the
initial central point of
gravity.Stasis is, as the
name implies, a movement
where activity seems, at
times, almost
suspended. Being
also, as Webster’s
Dictionary reminds us,
“a state of static
balance and equilibrium
among opposing tendencies
or forces,†it
develops various
materials, including ones
from the first movement,
without bringing them to
points of
resolution.Flashes is
short and very fast,
evoking in my mind the
quick shimmer of
fireflies, a
“sudden burst of
lightâ€, but also a
“brief
timeâ€. Perhaps,
even, a
“smile�Final
ly, the last movement,
Vista, is not only
“a view or
outlookâ€, but also
“a comprehensive
mental view of a series
of remembered or
anticipated
events.â€Â After
a brief recall of the
opening of the second
movement, this movement
brings back all the
important themes of the
first movement in their
original order. But
just as going back can
never really mean going
back in time, the
movement is much more
than recapitulatory.Â
By cutting through
previously transitory
passages and presenting
the main ideas in a
fashion more direct yet
more evolved, it also
sheds new light on
earlier events, offering
a retrospective, synoptic
view of the first
movement as it brings to
culmination the work as a
whole. “Vistasâ
€ was commissioned by
C. Geraldine Freund for
the Taneyev String
Quartet of what was then
Leningrad. It was the
first commission given in
this country to a Soviet
chamber ensemble since
the 1985 cultural
exchange accord between
the Soviet Union and the
United States.
Parts supplied with fingerings and bowing marks by Engelbert Rontgen. Compose...(+)
Parts supplied with
fingerings and bowing
marks
by Engelbert Rontgen.
Composed by Ludwig van
Beethoven (1770-1827).
Edited by Engelbert
Rontgen.
The Breitkopf Originals
series opens up a
fascinating view into the
Breitkopf and Hartel
publishing-house
archives.
The focus is on its
rarities
and treasures, together
with
milestones in the history
of
interpretation for works
of
the . Breitkopf and
Haertel
#KM-254. Published by
Breitkopf and Haertel
Parts Supplied with Fingerings and Bowing Marks by Engelbert Rontgen. Compose...(+)
Parts Supplied with
Fingerings and Bowing
Marks
by Engelbert Rontgen.
Composed by Ludwig van
Beethoven (1770-1827).
Breitkopf and Haertel #KM
277. Published by
Breitkopf
and Haertel
Parts Supplied with Fingerings and Bowing Marks by Engelbert Rontgen. Compose...(+)
Parts Supplied with
Fingerings and Bowing
Marks
by Engelbert Rontgen.
Composed by Ludwig van
Beethoven (1770-1827).
Breitkopf and Haertel #KM
286. Published by
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and Haertel
Third String Quartet Quatuor à cordes: 2 violons, alto, violoncelle Theodore Presser Co.
Los Tangos Azules. Composed by Carter Pann (1972-). Sws. Score-and-parts. Dura...(+)
Los Tangos Azules.
Composed
by Carter Pann (1972-).
Sws.
Score-and-parts. Duration
18
minutes. Theodore Presser
Company #114-41969.
Published
by Theodore Presser
Company