Format : Partitions
Richard Reed Parry's Quartet For Heart And Breath for mixed Ensemble.Quartet for Heart And Breath was commissioned for Kronos Quartet by the 2009 MusicNOW Festival. The mixedEnsemble arrangement was premiered by yMusic.Instrumentation: Flute Clarinet in Bb Trumpet in Bb Violin Viola Violoncello and Double Bass (optional).'This piece is based around the idea of using the widelyvarying internal rhythms of the performers bodies as performance parameters. There is no actual tempo or meter built into the piece. The breathing rates of the players are used in alternation with the individual performers heartrates to determine the pace at which all of the musical material is played. This requires that the performers generally play quietly and delicately with little or no vibrato so as to be able to hear their heartbeats adequately.This in combination with thenatural variance between the different heart rates results in a kind of delicate musical pointillism : starts and stops which are somewhat staggered parts which repeatedly line up and fall out ofsync with each other different individuals pulses rising and falling. The piece is never performed exactly the same way twice.The performers wear stethoscopes positioned over their hearts so that each can follow his orher own heart rate. Two eighth notes/quavers correspond to the two sounds of a normal heartbeat and performers should match as closely as possible the staccato and irregular rhythm they hear. When instructed to play to breath the natural cycle of one inhalation and one exhalation or vice versa will determine the length of the bar (two quarter notes/crotchets) without any attempt to make it metronomic. For wind players this means that the phrase isextended to encompass the whole of their natural breath without straining to hold for as long as possible. When one instrument is designated the leader their breath will determine the starts of phrases and the procession from
SKU: HL.14043527
9.25x12.0x0.091 inches. English.
Richard Reed Parry 's Quartet For Heart And Breath is an innovative and original piece based on the performers' own bodily rhythms. This sheet music is for String Quartet (Violin/Violin/Viola/Cello). Richard Reed Parry is familiarto millions as the lead singer of rock band Arcade Fire, yet his foray into classical music is equally worthy of attention. Quartet For Heart And Breath is an experiment into using the performers' heartbeats and breathing to dictate the tempo. The performers are instructed to wear stethoscopes in order to listen to their heartbeats closely, while one complete breath corresponds to one bar and two heartbeats equal two crotchets. The result is a quiet and subtle piece, as each instrument has to play softly so as to be able to keep in time. The piece also has a naturally occurring dynamism in that the players' heart rates constantly change as the performance goes on, with each instrument falling in and out of sync sometimes culminating in a beautiful moment of all heartbeats matching each other. Interestingly, this unique aspect means that no performance will ever be the same, meaning to hear or play this composition will be a truly once in a lifetime experience. Quartet For Heart And Breath is a superbly one-of-a-kind composition by Richard Reed Parry . Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, this piece makes for a wonderfully distinctive performance, with fascinating implications for the connection between the music and the body.
SKU: HL.14043462
9.25x12.0x0.112 inches.
Quartet for combination of Flute, Clarinet, Trumpet, Violin, Viola, Cello or Double Bass. In this unique piece, the pianists wear stethoscopes positioned over their hearts so that each can follow his or her own heart rate and they play to match the staccato and irregular rhythm they hear. The strings are instructed to play to breath; the natural cycle of one inhalation and one exhalation, or vice versa, will determine the legnth of the bar without any attempt to make it metronomic.