String Quartet
SKU:
HL.14031851
Composed
by Vagn Holmboe. Music
Sales America. Classical.
Book [Softcover]. 24
pages. Music Sales
#KP00797. Published by
Music Sales
(HL.14031851).
ISBN
9788759880661.
Danish.
Holmboe'
s last quartet work,
which is
unofficially also
String Quartet No.
21, was the last
work he ever composed,
and was unfinished on his
death in 1996. His pupil
Per
Nørgård
has finished the quartet,
and himself characterizes
his contribution by
saying that the score
existed “in an only
partly completed form,
which could however be
written out with only a
few cases of
doubt”. With only
two movements and a
playing time of
about nine minutes it is
at its existing
length the shortest of
Holmboe's string
quartets. The first
movement takes the form
of one long arch in a
rocking triple time which
constantly shiftsamong
different tempo and pulse
sensations. At the same
time the rhythmic
energy increases
until the movement, in a
faster Con moto
tempo accelerates to
a more flowing 12/8 time,
coloured both
rhythmically by
cross-rhythms in
duple time and timbrally
by harmonics in the
viola. In its middle
section, Con fuoco,
the movement
culminates in both tempo
and expression until it
falls calm in brief
recapitulations in
reverse order of the
first two sections. The
rocking feeling continues
in the second movement,
but now at a more
extroverted level from
the outset, Allegro
and pizzicato. The
energy builds up
further as the mood
intensifies to Con
fuoco, while all
instruments go over to
bowed playing, but like
the first movement, this
movement ends Adagio
here however not as
a gradual attenuation but
through a sudden shift in
tempo to a calm,
imitative passage before
the movement slowly thins
out to the almost
inaudible through a last,
dense, open sounding
chord with a brief violin
solo above it.
The
quartet is dedicated to
Holmboe's wife MeLa May
Holmboe, and was given
its first performance by
the Kontra Quartet on
22nd March 1997 at the
Carl Nielsen Academy of
Music in Odense,
Denmark.
Denmark
