(Parts). By Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Masterworks; Part(s); Quartet; String Quartet. Faber Edition. 20th Century; Masterwork. Published by Faber Music

String Quartet

SKU: HL.14008374

Composed by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Music Sales America. Classical. Score. Composed 2006. 24 pages. Chester Music #CH68629. Published by Chester Music (HL.14008374).

ISBN 9781846096150. UPC: 884088435202. 8.25x11.75x0.105 inches.

The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies' fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company, first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace, Oslo, Norway, as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004, with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor, an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq. I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560, now in Vienna), which had been the inspiration for my sixth Strathclyde Concerto, for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination, but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of the work. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog, bind the devil with a cord, truss, wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks, guess whom I shall choose, courting, odds and evens. The single movement juxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture, taking liberties which would never be present in, for instance, Brunelleschi architectural drawings, so here, with a constant sequence of transformation processes, I have distorted the neat, precise implications of modal progression, expressed in the unison opening phrase (from F to B through A sharp/B flat), so that the ear is led, en route, into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that I was reading into, and behind the games, adult motives and implications, concerning aggression and war, with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B progression underlying the whole construction derives from a passage in the development of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, and the opening of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. However, unlike in these models, here a real - if temporary - sense of resolution occurs at the close of the quartet: as when the curtain falls on the reconciled Count and Countess in 'Figaro' one wonders how long the F/B truce will hold, and games break out again. The quartet is dedicated to Giuseppe Rebecchini, Roman architect, and friend since the nineteen-fifties.

String Quartet - difficult

SKU: HL.49008206

Score and Parts. Composed by Peteris Vasks. This edition: Saddle stitching. Sheet music. Edition Schott. Classical. Score and Parts. Composed 1977/1997. 86 pages. Duration 15'. Schott Music #ED 8899. Published by Schott Music (HL.49008206).

ISBN 9790001124003. UPC: 073999655742. 9.0x12.0x0.34 inches.

With serious string players this Latvian composer has long been recognized because of his sonorous tonal concepts and his modal, occasionally aleatoric idiom. Works like 'Cantabile per Archi' or 'Musica dolorosa' are already quite well-known, but newer pieces like the violin concerto with string orchestra 'Fernes Licht', commissioned by Gidon Kremer for his Kremerata Baltica, are also gaining wide international exposure. The genre of the string quartet is well represented in Vasks' output. The 2nd string quartet 'Summer Tunes' (ED 8512) has been published for some time and the 3rd was premiered by the Kronos Quartet who were so enthused that they commissioned a 4th quartet. In 1996, prompted by a complete recording of all his string quartets by the Miami String Quartet for Conifer Records Vasks totally revised his early 1st string quartet 1996, it is here presented for the first time in a printed edition.

String Quartet (Score)

SKU: HL.14023669

Composed by Michael Nyman. Music Sales America. 20th Century. Score. Composed 1993. 48 pages. Chester Music #CH60850. Published by Chester Music (HL.14023669).

ISBN 9780711977570. 9.0x12.0x0.155 inches.

There are two primary ideas behind this composition, the first being to create and almost orchestral chamber music, the idea for this coming from a performance of the Grosse Fuge performed by the Arditti Quartet. The second idea was to excercise the impressive and oppresive history of the string quartet by making the work a compendium of quotations from quartet repertoire. Influence from Schoenberg can be heard in chromatic, harmonic sequences and modal/diatonic varioations are also actively displayed within the piece. The quartet is written with amplification in mind and it is the composer's preference that it is performed in this way. String Quartet No.1 is dedicated to the memory of Thurston Dart. It was commissioned by the Arditti Quartet and first performed by them on 23 September 1985, Warsaw. Duration 26 minutes. Instrumental parts are available on sale.