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.
String Quartet SKU: HL.14030980 Parts. Composed by Bent Sorensen. ...(+)
String Quartet
SKU:
HL.14030980
Parts. Composed by
Bent Sorensen. Music
Sales America. Classical.
Set of Parts. Edition
Wilhelm Hansen #KP00249.
Published by Edition
Wilhelm Hansen
(HL.14030980).
ISBN
9788759871973.
12.0x16.0x0.285
inches.
Score
available: KP00250 The
composer writes: 'Even
when I was writing Adieu,
I knew that I wished to
write Angel's 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
Angel's 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 of the
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
Angel's 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 general
pattern almost
fractionally into the
smallest cells of the
music, or more correctly;
crawl from the small
cells into the general
pattern.'.
String quartet SKU: FG.55011-510-1 Composed by Matthew Whittall. Score an...(+)
String quartet
SKU:
FG.55011-510-1
Composed by Matthew
Whittall. Score and
parts. Fennica Gehrman
#55011-510-1. Published
by Fennica Gehrman
(FG.55011-510-1).
ISBN
9790550115101.
Matt
hew Whittall's preface to
Bright Ferment (2019): I
have a complicated
history with the string
quartet. Actually, it's
not that complicated. I
spent months writing a
huge one in my early
twenties and hastily
withdrew it after a long
delayed premiere, vowing
never to write another.
In a typical case of
karmic retribution, my
fear of the form would
eventually be overcome by
the unrefusable offer to
write the compulsory
piece for the Banff
International String
Quartet Competition in my
native Canada. The short
duration requested, about
nine minutes, also felt
like a good way to wade
gingerly back into the
medium. The title was
originally just a
nice-sounding pair of
words that surfaced in a
brainstorming session
with fellow composer Alex
Freeman over an
injudicious amount of
fermented barley. When I
looked it up later, I
found that it was a
phrase of older coinage,
seemingly used more for
poetic resonance than any
fixed meaning. Ferment by
itself denotes a state of
confusion, change or lack
of order. With bright, it
takes on a more positive
connotation with regard
to society and
creativity: a wild
profusion of ideas barely
checked by reason. (It
may not actually mean
that, but it describes
this piece nicely, so
let's go with it.)
Fermentation in its
trendy culinary usage is
also hinted at via a
recurrent percolating
device of scattered
pizzicati. As one may
guess from the tone of
this introduction, there
is little attempt at
gravity in Bright
Ferment, the only means
by which I felt I could
sidestep the historical
and expressive weight of
the string quartet genre.
Styles, gestures and
moods are tossed around,
cross-cut and abandoned
in
stream-of-consciousness
fashion, connected by
little except an
intuitive sense of
rightness in their
juxtaposition. If the
piece acquires depth in
spite of me, it will only
be because its disparate
parts amplify and
strengthen each other
simply by being together
- much like the ensemble
itself. Bright Ferment
was commissioned by the
Banff Centre for the Arts
and Creativity and the
Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, with
additional funding from
the Americas Society (New
York), for the 2019 Banff
International String
Quartet Competition.
Duration: ca. 9
minutes.
Harbor Music Quatuor à cordes: 2 violons, alto, violoncelle [Conducteur] Theodore Presser Co.
String Quartet SKU: PR.16400222S Composed by Dan Welcher. Full score (stu...(+)
String Quartet
SKU:
PR.16400222S
Composed
by Dan Welcher. Full
score (study). With
Standard notation.
Duration 11 minutes.
Theodore Presser Company
#164-00222S. Published by
Theodore Presser Company
(PR.16400222S).
UPC:
680160037841.
This
work follows my Quartet
No. 1 by five years. In
terms of style and
aesthetic aim, however,
it seems light years
away. Where the first
work, a 28-minute,
four-movement piece, took
aim at cosmic conflicts
and heroic resolutions,
the present work is
intended as a kind of
divertissment. Harbor
Music lasts a mere eleven
minutes, is cast in a
single movement with six
sections, and should
leave both performers and
listeners with a feeling
of good humor and
affection. The
title comes from my
experience as a guest in
the magnificent city of
Sydney, Australia. One of
its most attractive
features is its unique
system of ferry boats:
the city is laid out
around a large,
multi-channeled harbor,
with destinations more
easily approached by
water than by land.
Consequently, inhabitants
of Sydney get around on
small, people-friendly
boats that come and go
from the central docks at
Circular Quay. During a
week's visit in 1991, I
must have boarded these
boats at least a dozen
times, always bound for a
new location - the resort
town of Manley, or the
Zoo at Taronga Park, or
the shopping district at
Darling Harbour.
In casting about for a
form for my second string
quartet, a kind of loose
rondo came to mind. Each
new destination would be
approached from the same
starting-out point
(although there are
subtle variations in the
repeating theme; it's
always in a new key, and
the texture is never the
same). The result, I
hope, is a sense of
constant new information
presented with
introductory frames of a
more familiar nature.
The embarkation
theme, which begins the
piece, is a sort of
bi-tonal fanfare in which
the violins are in G
major and the viola and
cello are in B-flat
major. It is bold, eager,
and forward-looking. The
first voyage maintains
this bi-tonality,
beginning as a 9/8 due
for second violin and
viola in a kind of
rocking motion -much as a
boat produces when
reaching the deeper water
in the harbor. A sweet,
nostalgic theme emerges
over this rocking
accompaniment. This music
is developed somewhat,
then transforms quickly
into a much faster and
lighter episode, filled
with rising and falling
scales (again, in
differing keys). A
scherzando interlude in
short notes and changing
meters provides contrast,
and the episode ends with
a reprise of the scales.
The second
embarkation follows, this
time in A major/C major.
It leads quickly into a
very warm and slow theme,
in wide-leaping intervals
for the viola. This
section is interrupted
twice by solo cadenzas
for the cello, suggesting
distant boat-horns in
major thirds. The end of
the episode becomes a
transition, with
boat-horns leading into
the final appearance of
the embarkation music,
this time in trills and
tremolos instead of
sharply accented chords.
The nostalgic theme of
the first episode makes a
final appearance, serving
now as a coda. The
rocking motion continues,
in a lullaby fashion,
leaving us drowsy and
satisfied on our homeward
journey. Harbor
Music was written for the
Cavani Quartet, and is
dedicated to Richard J.
Bogomolny. Commissioned
by his employees at First
National Supermarkets as
a gift, it represents a
thank you from many of
the people (including
this composer) who have
benefitted from his
vision and generosity. An
ardent advocate of
chamber music (and a
cellist himself), Mr.
Bogomolny has for many
years been Chairman of
the Board of Chamber
Music America. -- Dan
Welcher.
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.'
String quartet SKU: HL.49045639 Chaconne. Composed by Fred Lerdahl...(+)
String quartet
SKU:
HL.49045639
Chaconne. Composed
by Fred Lerdahl. This
edition: Saddle
stitching. Sheet music.
String Ensemble.
Softcover. Composed 2016.
108 pages. Duration 990
seconds. Schott Music #ED
30174. Published by
Schott Music
(HL.49045639).
ISBN
9781540004796. UPC:
888680710774.
9.5x12.0x0.37
inches.
Chaconne
(2016), for string
quartet, was commissioned
by the Daedalus Quartet
to celebrate its 15th
anniversary. The
commission was supported
by New Music USA, made
possible by annual
program support and/or
endowment gifts from
Pennsylvania Council on
the Arts, Helen F.
Whitaker Fund, and Aaron
Copland Fund for Music.My
music has a substantial
history with Daedalus. I
composed the Third String
Quartet (2008) for them,
and subsequently they
performed my three string
quartets on several
occasions and recorded
them brilliantly on
Bridge Records (Bridge
9352: Music of Fred
Lerdahl, vol. 3).
Chaconne is in one
movement lasting 19
minutes. It is
effectively my fourth
string quartet. Quartets
1-3 form a unified cycle
lasting 70 minutes. When
I finished the cycle, I
thought I would never
write again for the
medium; yet I could not
resist the opportunity of
working again with
Daedalus. The issue was
how to compose another
string quartet unrelated
to the earlier cycle. The
solution came from my
solo cello piece There
and Back Again (2010),
which was based on a
four-bar variation
pattern from a
17th-century chaconne.
Unlike the asymmetrical
phrases and expanding
variations of much of my
music, the chaconne form
requires symmetrical
phrases and strictly
periodic variations. I
wished to work again with
these symmetries but on a
larger scale. Chaconne
also differs in character
and expression from the
three-quartet cycle. The
cycle is inward and
intense, a kind of
psychological excavation.
Chaconne is, for the most
part, transparent and
playful. Many of its
textures emerge from
little canons, not
completely unlike the
rounds that children
sing. Any composer who
writes in chaconne form
(one thinks above all of
the last movement of
Bach's D minor violin
partita and the finale of
Brahms's Fourth Symphony)
is confronted with the
challenge of how to
create a larger form out
of a constantly repeating
pattern.My Chaconne grows
from paired
antecedent-consequent
phrases, each variation
lasting eight bars. The
50 variations group into
three large rotations,
forming three arcs of
tension and relaxation,
with subtle parallel
connections across the
rotations.
Notwithstanding my
attraction to chaconne
form, I purposefully
disguised its symmetries
and periodicities in
order to build an overall
dramatic shape. Fred
Lerdahl.
Wash Rag for String Quartet Quatuor à cordes: 2 violons, alto, violoncelle - Facile LudwigMasters Publications
String Quartet - Grade 3 SKU: AP.36-52703617 Composed by Alan Shulman. Th...(+)
String Quartet - Grade 3
SKU:
AP.36-52703617
Composed by Alan Shulman.
This edition: Latham
Music. Quartet; Solo
Small Ensembles; String -
Quartet. LudwigMasters -
Latham Music. Book.
LudwigMasters
Publications
#36-52703617. Published
by LudwigMasters
Publications
(AP.36-52703617).
UPC:
735816385521.
English.
This
humorous little vignette
for string quartet was
composed in 1979 and was
originally intended to be
published by Piedmont
Music, the ASCAP division
of EB Marks Classical.
For reasons unknown,
however, it remained in
manuscript form until
2021, when a copy of the
composer's autograph
parts was discovered in
the archives of a
completely different Alan
Shulman piece. This newly
engraved Latham Music
edition therefore
represents the first
publication of Shulman's
delightful work, as well
as the first full score.
As the title suggests,
this is a medium-slow
rag, or cakewalk in a
loose AABA form. The
bluesy and graceful main
melody is introduced by
the first violin in a
call and response
exchange with the rest of
the ensemble. The
restatement of the
primary theme is led by
the second violin, with
the entire ensemble
playing pizzicato, having
the effect of playful
mockery. In the B
section, the first violin
earnestly reasserts the
stately grace from the
opening however, the
cello is clearly becoming
restless and decides to
take over the lead just
before the final reprise.
The lighthearted ending
again has the first
violin doing its best to
bring the tune to a
refined conclusion, but
the rest of the group
still has mischief in
mind. After a couple
moments of seeming
confusion, the ensemble
regroups at last and
plays the final riff with
resolute emphasis. If
you're looking to add a
light moment to a recital
program, or looking for a
short, medium level
contest piece that
players and audiences
alike will enjoy, this
little miniature is an
ideal choice!
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.
String quartet SKU: HH.HH462-FSP Composed by Ming Wang. String Quartet. F...(+)
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.