First String Quartet Playing Score

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 NørgÃ¥rd 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.

Par LEWIS GEORGE. Although his Signifying Riffs (1998) for percussion and strings is halfway there, String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living (2016) is the first proper string quartet by composer George Lewis. Borrowing its title from the writings of John Stuart Mill, Experiments in Living leads the performers through a series of idiosyncratic episodes featuring extremes of gesture and extended technique over the course of a single, 16-minute movement. Commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living was composed for Spektral Quartet, who gave the premiere performance in October 2016 at Chicago\'s Harris Theater. This set of score and parts has been made available for sale by Edition Peters as part of the Peters Contemporary Chamber Series and includes full performance notes. Chopsticks and superball mallets are required to achieve some of the score\'s percussive playing techniques. / Date parution : 2022-09-07/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

This String Quartet has some technical difficulties particularly for the first violinist but the musical result is worth the effort and players familiar with Beethoven's quartets will enjoy playing it. It is one of three Hummel opus 30 quartets published by SJ Music. All three are classical in style and pleasurable to listen to and play and many would say that they have been unjustly neglected. Johann Nepomuk Hummel was a Hungarian pianist conductor and composer born in Pozsony (now Bratislava) in 1778. He died in Weimar in 1837. Mozart heard him play aged seven in Vienna and was so impressed that he offered him lessons and took him to live with him for the next two years.As an adult in Vienna he became good friends with Beethoven.

Born in South Africa but now an Irish citizen Kevin Volans? musical idiom has been shaped by an unusually diverse range of experiences including studies with Stockhausen in Cologne field trips to South Africa tostudy traditional music his own involvement with the New Simplicity movement his collection of contemporary art and African textiles friendships with composers like Morton Feldman and Gerald Barry as well as a love of virtuosopiano music which he performs broadcasts and records. While having an easily recognised unique voice Volans? music resists compartmentalisation. He is as comfortable working in conventional genres as embarking oninnovative collaborations with artists of other disciplines. String Quartet No.1 (White Man Sleeps) was written for the Kronos Quartet and was first performed by them in July 1986 London.The title?White Man Sleeps? comes from a moment in nyanga Panpipe music where the performers leave off playing their loud pipes for a few cycles and dance only to the sound of their ankle rattles to let the whitelandowner sleep for a minute or two.'In composing this piece I drew from the following sources: the first movement owes something to the style of Basotho concertina music; the second and fourth movements are drawnfrom traditional Nyungwe music played by Makina Chirenje and his Nyanga panpipe group at Nsava Tete Mozambique recorded and transcribed by Andrew Tracey (to be found in an article entitled ?The nyanga Panpipe dance? in AfricanMusic Vol.5 No.1 (1971); the third movement derives from the San bow music (recorded by Tony Traill of the University of Witwatersrand) and from Basotho lesiba music transcribed by myself; in the fifth movement I added my owninvented folklore. My approach to the original music was anything but purist it is played in Western tuning filtered slowed down by a few ?time-octaves? cast into non-African metres (like the 13-beat pattern of the first

for String Quartet-This is the full score of Aheym for String Quartet composed by Bryce Dessner best known as the guitarist of The National but also an acclaimed composer in his ownright. Composed in 2009 for the Kronos Quartet for their performance in Brooklyn's Prospect Park for the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival Aheym (meaning 'homeward' in Yiddish) was directly inspiredby his grandmother's migration to America. Dessner states that the stories and information she used to tell them permeated their collective imagination and created a close connection to the past. He dedicatesAheym to his grandmother Sarah Dessner.  The score in this edition was first performed on the 12th of March 2009 at the MusicNOW Festival and on the 18th of July 2009 inProspect Park Brooklyn. The work lasts around 10 minutes and is filled with dynamic tempo changes a mix of staccato and smooth playing and all-round excitement. It's a fantastic piece to play and the genius composition will keepaudiences on their toes.