Edward Gregson: String Quartet No. 1: String Quartet: Score and Parts

The original version of this setting of the well-known traditional English folk song was completed in 1974 and was commissioned by Rachel McMillan College of Education (where Gregson was a lecturer at the time) for its Music Department Choir (female voices). It then had the somewhat unusual instrumentation of spinet flute and string quartet. In 2017 Gregson was asked to revise it for performance and publication in a new version for upper voices and piano. Arranged for SATB with Piano accompaniment.

In memory of Christopher Rowland. Originally a concerto for Cello and chamber orchestra now for Cello with a Piano reduction of the orchestral part.The concerto is in four movements which are played without a break: Meditation Intermezzo Toccata-Scherzo and Song. The work lasts for some 18 minutes and was scored for two oboes two horns timpani (doubling tubular bells) and strings(found here in a Cello/Piano form). It is organised in one large arch-shaped structure with two fast inner movements flanked by two outer slow ones. The solo cello opens the work reflectively and introduces core melodic material which is continuously developed throughout theconcerto. Gradually the strings enter then wind and timpani and build a pyramid twelve-note chord at the peak of which there is a dramatic climax. The music then subsides (solo cello again) but links to the two faster middle movements. The second movement Intermezzo has an ABA structure and in its middle section quotes the opening of Shostakovich's Third String Quartet (written in the same year as Christopher Rowland was born!). Indeed the ghost of Shostakovich looms large throughout the concerto in more ways than one. The Toccata-Scherzo is energetic and rhythmically-charged again using an ABA structure. Here the writing for solo cello is quite virtuosic but not I hope in a shallow sense. The music builds inexorably towards a powerful climax underpinned by the opening twelve-note chord's re-appearance together with a violent outburst from the timpani at which point a tonal resolution (on G) arrives through a pianissimo held chord on strings which leads directly to the final movement - Song. And so the music arrives at its emotional heart through a simple melody (present in other forms throughout the work) announced by solo cello at the very top of its register against a quiet backdrop of horns and strings. A solo oboe enters with cello in canonic reply and all the time the music builds in texture and

The original version of this setting of the well-known traditional English folk song was completed in 1974, and was commissioned by Rachel McMillan College of Education (where Gregson was a lecturer at the time) for its Music Department choir (female voices). It then had the somewhat unusual instrumentation of spinet, flute and string quartet. In 2017 Gregson made a revision for performance and publication in a new version for upper voices and piano / Ssa Et Piano