By Bohuslav Martinu. Czech title: Smy covy kvartet 5. Published by Praha (Czech import).

Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello - Grade 4

SKU: AP.36-52703303

Arranged by Bert Ligon, Bud Caputo, Martin Norgaard, Matt Turner, and Thom Sharp. Performance Music Ensemble; String Quartet. Ludwig Masters. Score. LudwigMasters Publications #36-52703303. Published by LudwigMasters Publications (AP.36-52703303).

ISBN 9781621567455. UPC: 660355097294. English.

Arrangers Bud Caputo, Bert Ligon, Martin Norgaard, Matt Turner and Thom Sharp bring you jazz in the string quartet world! These seven standards are ideal for students and professionals alike. Includes: It's Only A Paper Moon (Ligon); It Had To Be You (Norgaard); Bye Bye Blackbird (Caputo); Blue Moon (Turner); Take Five (Ligon); How High The Moon (Sharp); and A Day In The Life Of A Fool (Ligon).

These products are currently being prepared by a new publisher. While many items are ready and will ship on time, some others may see delays of several months.

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

This product is Printed on Demand and may take several weeks to fulfill. Please order from your favorite retailer.

Composed by Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979). Chamber/Ensemble. Score and parts. 52 pages. Oxford University Press #9780193867499. Published by Oxford University Press

String quartet

SKU: HH.HH462-FSP

Composed by Ming Wang. String Quartet. Full score and parts. Edition HH Music Publishers #HH462-FSP. Published by Edition HH Music Publishers (HH.HH462-FSP).

ISBN 9790708146711.

Cica da larvae live underground for years, creeping about slowly and peacefully in the darkness until that sudden, beautiful brief moment when, one warm, damp summer’s eve, they emerge, metamorphosed into a highly mobile life form. Gaily they dance in the sunshine, singing ardently to the trees in all their greenery --- but only for a short while, for, just as suddenly, they are gone. The same process repeats year upon year. The life cycle of this string quartet resembles that of the cicada. Initially, two embryonic cells remain hidden within dense, gloomy note-clusters; over time they evolve into buds, grow and then blossom. They appear for the first time in their adult form in the fast middle section, where they assume the shape of two very popular Chinese folk melodies, Jasmine and Old Six Blows, albeit in wholly chromaticized and defamiliarized variants. After their grand efflorescence, these forms gradually dissolve into transparent wisps of sound.

From My Life. By Bedrich Smetana. (Study Score). Schott. Size 5.25x7.5 inches. 51 pages. Published by Eulenburg Germany (Schott).

Chamber Music String Quartet

SKU: PR.144402180

After Zurbarán. Composed by James Primosch. Set of Score and Parts. With Standard notation. 20+8+8+8+8 pages. Duration 18 minutes. Merion Music #144-40218. Published by Merion Music (PR.144402180).

UPC: 680160027156. 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...

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...